Why your telco systems (almost certainly) need an upgrade

Grab­bing people’s atten­tion for a chat about uni­fied com­mu­ni­ca­tion isn’t easy. They’d rather talk about apps or 5G. We think that’s a big mis­take. Com­pa­nies rely on telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions. They need the best infra­struc­ture pos­si­ble and most are miles off track.

Here’s an exam­ple. Cen­tral Eng­land Co-oper­a­tive is part of The Co-oper­a­tive Group with 450 stores employ­ing 9,000 staff. They had a hunch their exist­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions sup­pli­er was being com­pla­cent, so they put their core net­work, calls, lines, store con­nec­tiv­i­ty and failover out to ten­der.

Onecom picked up the con­tract. We gave their infra­struc­ture a mighty shake-up. The stores need con­stant con­nec­tiv­i­ty. If the line goes down, the store can’t func­tion. So we pushed the bound­aries of remote man­age­ment and mul­ti-con­nec­tion deploy­ments. We com­bined VPLS FTTC, ADSL and 4G to ensure max­i­mum reli­a­bil­i­ty. The 4G fail­safe was a real break­through. Usu­al­ly 4G comes with a lack of a sta­t­ic IP address on a SIM card. This presents all sorts of prob­lems.

We used a router with auto-failover to 4G that cre­ates a VPN net­work simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to solve the prob­lem. Stores now have dif­fer­ent lev­els of exter­nal anten­na and 4G SIMs on two dif­fer­ent net­works to guar­an­tee uptime.

The fixed line net­work was upgrad­ed too. We switched their ISDN and PSTN to Onecom, achiev­ing a small for­tune in sav­ings. The feed­back? In the first month, 97 per cent of stores report­ed a notable improve­ment in net­work per­for­mance and reli­a­bil­i­ty. Fig­ures like that real­ly get peo­ple con­cen­trat­ing.

Here’s anoth­er rad­i­cal makeover we exe­cut­ed for a client with an out-of-date set-up. Nobles Con­struc­tion is a Mersey­side-based busi­ness spe­cial­is­ing in inno­v­a­tive, high-val­ue, new-build and refur­bish­ment projects. They have a lot of work­ers out on sites and at oth­er loca­tions.

Their old sys­tem relied on a bog-stan­dard PBX. It meant calls could not be rerout­ed. Urgent inquiries just went unan­swered. Onecom pro­vid­ed Nobles Con­struc­tion with a new method­ol­o­gy in which mobiles, fixed lines and devices are all total­ly inte­grat­ed. Calls can be rout­ed to col­leagues or to mobiles. Now the annoy­ance of calls ring­ing unan­swered is a mere mem­o­ry. To fin­ish the job, 4G broad­band routers were installed at all of Nobles’ con­struc­tion sites, replac­ing the need for don­gles, sav­ing at least £200 a month.

Switch­ing the com­pa­ny over to Microsoft 365 changed the way Nobles Con­struc­tion worked in the field. Now every­one has access to the most up-to-date doc­u­ments, plans and draw­ings no mat­ter where they are.

These two exam­ples prove how much inno­va­tion is pos­si­ble in tele­coms. Even com­pa­nies that think they have a decent infra­struc­ture can be helped huge­ly by a spe­cial­ist review. When a com­pa­ny wants to upgrade, we offer four pieces of advice to ensure they select the right provider.

First is the eval­u­a­tion. Any decent provider should give your process­es a foren­sic exam­i­na­tion before sug­gest­ing any­thing. Every com­pa­ny is dif­fer­ent, with unique needs.

Onecom is the UK’s largest inde­pen­dent busi­ness telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider deliv­er­ing fixed line and mobile voice, data and high-integri­ty broad­band ser­vices

Sec­ond is a sin­gle point of con­tact. Too many com­pa­nies endure eva­sive sup­pli­ers. They get passed from man­ag­er to tech­ni­cal expert to accounts. There’s no account­abil­i­ty. This is wrong. Every com­pa­ny should have a ded­i­cat­ed UK-based account man­ag­er who takes full respon­si­bil­i­ty.

Third is access to the lat­est tech­nolo­gies. The tele­coms indus­try is mov­ing fast. New prod­ucts arrive all the time. Ask your provider what new solu­tions they can rec­om­mend. What break­throughs have they pio­neered? The right provider will be able to talk you through the lat­est improve­ments and how they can help your busi­ness.

The fourth is a com­mit­ment to ser­vice. Lots of com­mu­ni­ca­tions providers say they offer bril­liant ser­vice, but do they? Ask around.

Onecom is the UK’s largest inde­pen­dent busi­ness telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider deliv­er­ing fixed line and mobile voice, data and high-integri­ty broad­band ser­vices.

We con­tribute more than 25 per cent of Vodafone’s total UK enter­prise busi­ness, and our tech­ni­cal exper­tise and inno­v­a­tive approach has been cit­ed on numer­ous occa­sions as the rea­son com­pa­nies have cho­sen to part­ner with us. Clients see that on all four counts list­ed above, we excel. Our growth is a result of us prac­tis­ing what we preach.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions mat­ter. Com­pa­nies need rock-sol­id reli­a­bil­i­ty. They need the lat­est solu­tions. And they need every­thing deployed smooth­ly and intel­li­gent­ly. If you aren’t get­ting this, it’s time to take action.

To find out more vis­it Onecom.co.uk

ULTIMATE MOBILE FLEET MANAGEMENT

The cen­tre­piece of Onecom’s offer­ing is Comms­Man­ag­er. Devel­oped entire­ly in-house, Comms­Man­ag­er is an always-on user por­tal pro­vid­ing com­pre­hen­sive, self-serve mobile fleet man­age­ment via a sim­ple-to-use cus­tomer inter­face.
Fea­tures include new device order­ing and ini­ti­a­tion, device repair and replace­ment co-ordi­na­tion, con­sump­tion mon­i­tor­ing, flex­i­ble cost cen­tre allo­ca­tion, report­ing and sum­ma­ry func­tion, itemised billing by employ­ee and/or month, and billing by device or group. User records may also be updat­ed.

CommsManager’s dash­board fea­ture allows autho­rised users to access an overview of spend, usage and activ­i­ty, bro­ken down by depart­ment as required. Usage can be mon­i­tored in gran­u­lar detail, iso­lat­ing activ­i­ty by month and view­ing an employee’s indi­vid­ual con­sump­tion of voice min­utes, SMS and data.

The asset man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ty allows users to iden­ti­fy and mon­i­tor com­pa­ny-owned and employ­ee-owned assets, includ­ing those that are archived. Asset sta­tus may be record­ed – spare, lost or stolen, live – and num­bers allo­cat­ed or real­lo­cat­ed. Records may be fil­tered by user­name or mobile num­ber.

Invoic­es can be viewed and com­pared with month­ly charges dis­played by num­ber, cost cen­tre and depart­ment. Reports may be export­ed to an Excel work­book.

Designed pri­mar­i­ly for larg­er mobile fleet oper­a­tors, Comms­Man­ag­er is cur­rent­ly being scaled to pro­vide appro­pri­ate func­tion­al­i­ty for small­er organ­i­sa­tions at a pro­por­tion­al cost.

For rea­sons of secu­ri­ty, every ver­sion of Comms­Man­ag­er is con­fig­ured inde­pen­dent­ly with a ded­i­cat­ed URL assigned to each cus­tomer.

Late 2016 will see the launch of Comms­Man­ag­er FL, extend­ing the capa­bil­i­ty of the Comms­Man­ag­er plat­form to include fixed line ser­vice man­age­ment.