Tags: VoIP

NEC Ranks Highest in Customer Service, Trust, and Technology

Posted by Mark Pendleton on Posted in Unified Communications Tagged , , ,

nemertes-pilothouse-nec-ip-telephonyOur unified communications (UC) customers have always said that NEC provides highly reliable communications solutions designed to support their unique businesses, and industry analysts have also agreed.

Recently, Nemertes Research surveyed 500 IT decision-makers to determine how they rate their technology vendors. The survey asked 20 key questions that were designed to help determine which IP telephony vendor has the best customer service, and what that service actually means when put into context.
The survey results show that NEC ranks the highest among vendors in the following categories:

Trusted Advisor

IT decision-makers know that vendor credibility is as important when making a purchasing decision as the architecture of the solution purchased.

A trusted telephony vendor should be able to stand behind its solution. It should commit to providing consistent product software updates and maintain a track record of evolving customer technology. A trusted telephony vendor doesn’t do forklift upgrades, preferring instead to provide value, measurement and consistency. And, most importantly, a trusted telephony vendor should always make a commitment to businesses of all sizes—small, medium, and enterprise alike.

To better understand how IP telephony providers measure up in this area, Nemertes built “Trusted Advisor” questions into its survey. These questions help numerically determine each vendor’s:

• technology expertise
• credibility
• innovativeness
• character
• timeliness in response to customer needs

NEC ranks highly in all of these sub-categories, but two of our greatest strengths have always been our expertise and credibility. As one of the original telephony vendors, we not only understand, but have also helped define both the industry and its technologies.

We bring our expertise and credibility to the market in multiple ways. One way is through innovative products. The second, according to the report, is through our value-added resellers or dealers. NEC customers have determined that we are the most capable at passing our knowledge to our dealers—who serve as an equally knowledgeable and capable extension of NEC.

Technology

In today’s environment it’s extremely important to choose the right UC solution. IT organizations are under pressure to select multiple business solutions that provide the best technology available and that deliver the best value possible—and communications technology is no exception.
The technology portion of the Nemertes report shows how each vendor’s products rank in the following sub-categories:

• reliability
• interoperability
• management capabilities
• technology roadmap

NEC consistently ranks highly among communications vendors as providing reliable, interoperable and innovative communications and IT solutions. In fact, our highest scoring metric was product reliability, meaning that in the eyes of our customers we not only provide innovative products, but also deliver reliable and dependable products that provide a continuous path forward.

Customer Service

According to Nemertes, NEC unequivocally ranked highest in the Customer Service category. The survey assessed the customer’s needs in the following categories:

• pre-sales responsiveness
• post-sales responsiveness
• break-fix responsiveness
• accuracy and timeliness in delivering invoices

From the results Nemertes determined that no other vendor is currently providing the same quality of response to its customers as well as NEC.

NEC is proud to rank highest in this category, and we continue to make customer service of the utmost importance to our business. We have award-winning products. When our technology is factored with our credibility, expertise and the quality of our customer service, it’s easy to see why the report shows that NEC has the highest percentage of organizations who wish to stay our customers of all the vendors polled.

Don’t just take our word for it, though. Download the Nemertes Report now.

Nemertes-IP-Telephony-Customer-Satisfaction-NEC-1

E911: 6 Things Every Hospitality Technology Professional Should Know (Part 2)

Posted by Mike Gray on Posted in Unified Communications Tagged , ,

nec-hospitality-technology-e911We’re at the 2014 HITEC conference this week in Los Angeles, and we’re excited to bring you the second half of our post on E911 technology.

As adoption of hosted and cloud-based telephony services continues to grow in the hospitality industry, the success of E911 implementation will rely, as it always has, on IT’s understanding of E911 legislation, and how best to prepare for installation, ongoing maintenance, or, in some cases, an upgrade.

It is, however, always safe to make sure that your current system is in compliance with 911 laws, and provides your customers with access to the emergency services they need. t This post will focus  on what to look for in your current system, and how to properly test your 911 dialing capabilities.

Proper E911 Programming

In our first post we discussed the history of E911. If you look at VoIP history, you’ll find that initially, dialing a 9 before the complete telephone number was required to get an outside line on older PBX systems. The trunking technology needed the 9 to discern that the caller wanted to reach a number outside of the establishment.  This has created problems when common convention tells the phone user to dial 911 rather than 9+911.

The problem stems from a programming error—the fix to which is actually quite simple. Most modern IP phone systems will distinguish, if programmed correctly, 911, 9+911, or any other dialing pattern. Technically speaking you can program any combination of numbers into the system that signal it to dial emergency services.

But that won’t work.  Changing the access code to another digit does not solve dialing confusion—just makes it worse.

Having a technician come in to check your system is your safest bet if you’re unsure about how your system is set up.  Be sure to ask your technician to check the whole system. But it’s good for all Hospitality Technology Professionals to know the following:

  • How your trunk access codes are routed
  • If you have Automatic Route Selection Enabled (speeds up dialing by establishing extension priorities)
  • If you have any Call Patterns/Restriction Classes in place
    • Time of Day
    • Do not Disturb/Room Cut Off Patterns

It should be noted that none of these changes require expensive re-programming; these are all simple fixes. Many hoteliers have found that re-programming, however, is the safest alternative for their customers.

Other alternatives, like routing the call to an internal operator or security desk, actually creates more risk for your business and your customers, as security personnel are rarely trained properly to handle all types of emergencies.

Don’t Forget to Test

Re-programming your phones without testing them is the equivalent of having no system in place at all. Your hotel’s technology professional should test the system once the re-programming has been completed.

While this might sound like a simple thing to do, it can actually be a bit tricky. Many organizations forget to do this, and reacting to an emergency when it happens becomes incredibly more difficult.

But how do you go about testing 911 dialing capabilities without tying up valuable emergency services resources?

  • Locate the administrative or non-emergency phone number for your local police department on your city’s website.
  • Call the number, and explain that you would like to test a 911 call from your facility to ensure that the proper information is being displayed to emergency services employee who took the call.
  • Follow all explicit test instructions that are required by your state/city.

Following these procedures should allow you to appropriately test your re-programmed system. However, you need to be certain that your system is programmed the right way before running the test. If you fail the test, there could be legal ramifications for your business—depending on your state’s E911 laws.

Again, having a technician come to your facility is one of your safest options. If they’ve re-programmed your system for you, they can perform the test afterwards.

Don’t Sweat your Outdated PBX

While it’s always smart for hotels to get as much value as they can from their communications tools, the propensity to hang on to old analog or end-of-life VoIP technology means that your business is running on a communications system that’s intrinsic value has diminished. Don’t rely on an older phone system because of perceived value. Because there’s a chance that the phones you think are supporting your business aren’t.

Don’t let E911 legislation dissuade you from upgrading to IP telephony. It’s much easier for organizations to become E911 capable and to manage E911 services with the current tools and capabilities that are inherent in modern IP and Unified Communications systems.

It bears mentioning that all NEC communications solutions can dial 911 or 9+911 with proper programming, regardless of age, class of service, or room status. The best way for your organization to assess your status, is to have a technician come check your system.

In an emergency, most people simply react to what they have been taught. What we have been taught is to dial 911, and that’s why 9+911 may never come to mind.

This week, NEC will be at the HITEC conference. Stop by and see us at booth 827.

We’ll have Hospitality experts there demoing our hospitality solutions that include:

  • Unified Communications & Collaboration,
  • Facial Detection & Analytics,
  • Back Office Efficiency,
  • and Contact Center technologies.

If you know it’s time for you to have your system reviewed, call an NEC technician. We’ll be happy to help you maintain your compliance with your state’s E911 laws. 

E911: 6 Things Every Hospitality Technology Professional Should Know

Posted by Mike Gray on Posted in Unified Communications Tagged , , , ,

Recently, there have been stories hitting the news about the ability to call 911 from phones in hotels. Do you have to dial a 9 for an outside line first? Or can you just dial 911 straight away? These are questions that the public is asking hoteliers to answer.

nec---e911---hospitality---hitecThe ability to access emergency services by dialing 911 is a vital component of public safety and emergency preparedness. The history of 911 and VoIP phones is confusing at best. As legislation has started changing, Enhanced 911 (E911) capabilities have become standard on smart, modern VoIP systems.

Currently, only 17 states currently have E911 legislation enacted. Most states still do not require VoIP vendors, or businesses using VoIP services, to provide E911 dialing capabilities.

The legal confusion and the intricacies of programming have made adoption of certain kinds of VoIP technology difficult and a bit unpopular for hospitality organizations intending to provide easy access to emergency services for their customers. While hotels can currently nominate a single trunk to provide 911 dialing services, the growing adoption and the need for hospitality organizations to have hosted telephony solutions or managed services has brought the E911 discussion back into focus.

The success of an E911 implementation relies on your hotel’s technology professionals understanding of how E911 works. We’ve written this post to help you assess your current risk and build a budget that prepares you for installation, maintenance, or upgrade costs.

E911’s History with Public Safety

VoIP is a much more flexible telephony option than land line phone service. But the confusion around 911 dialing has, for a few years, aggravated hoteliers and customers, often leading to trepidation about upgrading to more modern systems. Dispelling the trepidation is key to successful adoption of VoIP in hospitality based industries, which is important because modern telephony systems provide many new technologies and features that hoteliers and customers will love.

If you look at VoIP history, you’ll find that initially, dialing a 9 before the complete telephone number was required to get an outside line on large PBX systems. So in the past, you had to dial 9 to get outside. The technology required it. So at that time the only option callers had was to dial a 9+911.

And on older phone systems, or on phone systems that haven’t been programmed properly, this could still be the case; a fact that has created tragedies in situations when the standard convention directs the user to dial 911 in an emergency.

Modern IP phones have been upgraded to include dialing capabilities for 911 and 9+911.

But they have to be programmed appropriately to be able to do it—which requires a qualified technician.

Assessing your Risk

The liabilities exposed by E911 are multi-faceted. All enterprises must evaluate their footprint in states with legislation and assess their tolerance for risk related to applicable legal liabilities. Additionally, the impetus for E911 legislation continues to build, with additional states passing E911 statutes each year. Enterprises need to continue to comply with statutes in each state, because non–compliance in these states could provide proof of negligence (negligence per se) in an exigent situation. Even in those states without such statutes, failure to implement E911 technology appropriately or at all may be hard to justify with the technology so readily available with modern IP systems.

Explaining to your workforce or other stakeholders why E911 has not been implemented properly after a catastrophic event could cause irreparable damage to workplace morale, productivity, and public perception.

The risk assessment process has two basic parts: technical assessment and policy/procedures assessment. Methods used to assess are:

  • Penetration Tests /Vulnerability Scans—tests your system security
  • Security Policy Compliance—tests  your organization’s compliance within its own security policy
  • Legal Compliance—assess your compliance with your state’s E911 laws
  • Best Practices Assessment—determines if your policies and technology are aligned with the best practices at comparable institutions

While internal security teams can perform a risk assessment, it’s often prudent to contract an independent party to conduct the evaluation. Outside auditors bring their breadth of knowledge and experience from working with other companies.

Building a Budget for E911

Building support inside your organization to implement an E911 initiative or even to get buy-in on a maintenance plan is an important task. There are multiple stakeholders within your organization that will be affected in some way by the E911 project, and it is important to explain everything to them, and identify how E911 will affect them.

These stakeholders typically include:

  • Front Office
  • Housekeeping
  • Uniformed Services
  • Food and Beverage
  • Maintenance

Fortunately, there are E911 solutions for every budget. The best place to start is often basic research. Consider the size of your business and the complexity of your phone network. Remember the following when starting to plan for an implementation, upgrade, or maintenance:

  1. Take your time and include your team. A budget is not the forecast you put together on the weekend. It must be the result of coordinated input and effort by you and your management team.
  2. Don’t try to budget to the last penny. Accurately predicting actual results is not the objective. It’s all about giving your company a direction to use as a jumping off point, and then later for course corrections—providing details on the financial points that matter most.
  3. Make the tradeoffs when necessary. You have a finite amount of resources available to you. The same can be said for VoIP providers. All communications solutions have their strengths, but vendors cannot provide every single tool that’s available in the whole market. Prepare your budget with the knowledge that you might not have access to the tool you want, but can use that budget to finance a tool that maybe you didn’t plan for.  Most importantly, this discipline will keep you from overspending. But, it will also remind you to assess each vendor’s strengths as a whole—and not based on the one or two applications they cannot provide.

This approach ensures that you get the support you need, which is the key to the success of your project. Once you’ve budgeted, you can begin assessing vendors. We find that most hotels benefit most from highly redundant software solutions.

Next week we’ll be at the 2014 Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference (HITEC), most comprehensive showcase of hospitality technology in the world.

There we’ll be unveiling the second half of our post, which covers E911 programming and modern hospitality communications technologies.

If you’d like more information on becoming E911 capable, stop by booth 827 so that NEC Hospitality experts can answer your questions.

Is Your Business at Risk Running an Outdated PBX

Posted by Mark Pendleton on Posted in Unified Communications Tagged , , , , , , , ,

nec-risk-of-outdated-pbx-benefits-of-ucYou know your PBX is way past its prime, and economic pressures have lead you to delay its upgrade or replacement.

But there comes a point in time when continuing to sweat your communications  assets no longer makes sense—from both a financial perspective and a business/productivity perspective. Retaining outdated equipment can essentially increase your IT costs and prevent your users from utilizing communications tools that help your business processes.

Phone systems are one of the assets that many companies sweat for too long, and, as a result, many of these organizations are sitting on archaic (or end-of-life) equipment that is no longer efficiently supporting their business while possibly putting it a risk.

Yet for some, the prevailing practice is to continue operating the existing system well past its useful life and beyond the end-of-support.

We often hear the following reasons to avoid upgrading:

  • We don’t have the budget, or there is a higher priority budgetary request.
  • The lifespan on the last PBX was too short.
  • We’re afraid that if we upgrade tomorrow, something better will come out next week (a.k.a. the cycle of obsolescence).
  • We’re unclear on our unified communications plans and how our phone system should fit in with UC.
  • Newer phone systems are becoming too complex to use.
  • The buying cycle is too long, and we will have to get too many people involved who will all have different opinions.
  • We don’t know which approach to take—i.e. premises, hybrid, or cloud-based.

There’s a chance that the phones you think are supporting your business aren’t. While the value of your older technology may not have appeared to change—for example, the phones still work, and you can still make calls—the outdated system may be hurting your business.

We know the decision to move to a new telephony system is sometimes a difficult one to make. That’s why we’ve created the following list of 3 of the benefits of a modern unified communications system over an outdated phone system.

1. System Stabilization

If you are a business owner or decision maker, you have probably thought, “We save money keeping the old system. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Every day your business uses an analog, TDM, or older VoIP phone system that has reached end-of-life, you run the risk of having your phone system fail without access to support. If that happens, revenue will likely be lost as a result. How much? Well, you could lose what equates to hours, days, or even weeks of revenue—depending on the amount of time it takes to quickly repair or worst case find and install a new system.

And hurrying to find a new system isn’t ideal. If your system fails, it could mean you are forced to make a quick replacement decision. Companies that don’t have the time or don’t take the time to research properly before purchase usually discover they’ve spent too much money or are unhappy with their purchase after it is too late to change it. Taking the time to find the right IP Telephony solution or Unified Communications solution will improve your business processes and efficiencies without over-extending your budget.

2. Improved Operational Costs

Maintaining separate systems like directories, conferencing software, voicemail, and telephony is expensive and time consuming for IT departments to sustain. In fact, it can be so time consuming that the IT department spends the majority of their day keeping these systems functional—time that can be better spent on more strategic IT projects.

The older the system, the higher the operational cost is when you don’t upgrade. Some of the costs businesses accrue using older systems include:

  • Proprietary hardware at each location (equipment, phones, PBX)
  • Installation
  • Licensing
  • Maintenance, repairs and upgrades
  • Additional services
    • Fax
    • Business SMS
    • HD video meetings
    • Audio conferencing

When you factor the lost IT time spent maintaining each separate communications system  with the opportunity cost of not having the advanced applications and features that modern unified communications provides, you end up with a total cost that is just too high for most businesses to ignore.

3. Competitive Advantage

Have you stopped to think about whether your competitors are taking advantage of modern communications software? If they are and you’re not, then chances are they are able to work smarter, faster, and more efficiently. Working smarter gives them an edge by increasing their productivity and creating a competitive advantage.

Your competitors that are working with updated communications systems, most likely have these advanced features at their disposal:

  • Audio/video/web collaboration, white boarding and document sharing
  • Support for the mobile workforce with a consistent user experience across smartphones and tablets
  • UC clients that provide status, presence, call history
  • Integrated vertical applications through standards and open services

 

While the cost of upgrading may seem high, the advanced applications and features associated with modern communications systems will help re-gain lost competitive edge and offer companies an opportunity to better serve their customers.

Unified communications can help businesses regain competitive advantage in two ways.

First, a new system can help you increase your revenue by providing your business with the communications applications needed to be more productive and efficient. You could gain better advantages and increased competitive edge by choosing a modern solution with a lower total cost of ownership and features that enable collaboration across your business, improving the speed of your communications.

Secondly, UC provides communications software that makes enterprise-level communications applications available on an ad-hoc basis. This either gives you access to applications that you might not have previously been able to budget for, or, saves your organization money as you no longer have to pay the fees required to utilize multiple services. Replacing hosted web, audio or video conferencing services is a perfect example. The accrued savings can boost the return on your unified communications investment, and expand your competitive edge through re-investment into other IT projects that help your business grow.

Increased Productivity

If you fear that your new technology will become obsolescent and use that as an excuse to avoid upgrading, you shouldn’t.  Look for vendors that offer software assurances and extended warranties for hardware that will provide your business with more security and less risk in the long run.

With a modern communications solution, you ensure that your system has the flexibility to handle rapid growth, giving you the ability to provide support to your increasingly mobile and distributed workforce. Your IT team will re-gain some of their time, allowing them to focus on other strategic IT initiatives. And, your employees will re-coup benefits that improve the speed of communication from access to applications that positively impact your daily business—whether it’s through more efficient collaboration with colleagues, or improving customer response times.

Options Available to Your Business

Ultimately there is a high cost, in terms of inefficiencies and operational cost, when you continue to operate an outdated or end-of-life phone system.

Some organizations struggle with selecting the best model (premises, hybrid, or cloud-based) to meet long-term communication needs. Check out the infographic below to learn more about the advantages of each option. Ultimately you’ll look for the platform and vendor that has the flexibility to customize the right solution to meet your specific needs.

NEC-Unified-Communications-Your-Way-Infographic-hi

5 Things Millennials will Love about Unified Communications

Posted by Elizabeth Miller on Posted in Unified Communications Tagged , , , ,

nec-unified-communications-millennials-love-ucSupporting Millennials in the Enterprise becomes easier with Unified Communications Technology.

Everywhere you look these days there’s an article about millennials—the net generation, generation next, echo boomers. I am a millennial. So I have some insight into the millennial/tech conversation.

Yes, it is true that we are inherently good with technology.  That I won’t argue. But we are still very new to the enterprise—and simultaneously, enterprise lingo. Throw a term like “unified communications” at a millennial, and many of my peers will draw a blank.

Despite that little flaw, we are becoming an increasingly significant factor to consider when defining business IT needs. At over 79 million strong in the US, we currently outnumber the baby boomer generation by three million people.  By 2015, we will comprise over half of the labor market globally.

Unified communications offers all of the tools that millennials demand in the workplace. But like me, they may not know that. Because even though we are technologically savvy, the consumer market does not have or use a term like Unified Communications. Millennials have just not had a chance to become familiar with it.

I did a lot of reading about UC when I first heard the phrase. And I learned a lot of technically specific IT information. But I didn’t really “get” UC until I attended a training/demo. The training showed me just how quintessential UC is to my generation. It includes all the features that we like to have on hand as we work—all the tools we already use.

From my training, I’ve developed a list of the Top 5 Features Millennials will Love about UC.

Rich Presence

What it is: Rich presence allows users to locate and identify another user’s availability and contact them on their preferred device.

Why it matters: Millennials like efficiency. We’ve had Rich Presence—at least in the form of availability—as a feature of our various instant messaging systems for over a decade. To us, it’s second nature to mark ourselves as “Away” or “Out to Lunch” on an Instant Messaging platform. By that rationale, it’s also second nature for us to want to know someone else’s availability before we ever pick up the phone. It is fantastic that UC solutions offer presence features that are capable of showing when co-workers are “On the Phone,” or, “In a Meeting;” as well as if they are in the office or mobile. Rich Presence allows more efficient conversations, and enhances voice and messaging applications to better suit millennials’—and everyone else’s—mobility needs.

Instant Messaging/Chat

What it is: Instant Messaging/Chat technology provides a communications alternative to traditional telephone calls or video conferences that is less-intrusive and enables quick exchange of information.

Why it matters: Millennials are chatty. And while we’re not necessarily more communicative than our Gen X and Baby Boomer peers, the fact is that Millennials communicate differently. Making a phone call is not always our first instinct (admittedly there are those of us who find phone calls to be daunting). So, most millennials are less likely to use a traditional handset—or a phone call in general—until a deeper level of conversation is warranted. When this is the case, millennials will schedule these conversations ahead of time if it’s possible. Why? Because we’ve grown up using communications technology, and chatting digitally via IM or Text message is instinctive to us. So if we have a question or request that can be answered or discussed quickly, you can bet an instant message of some kind is going to be our preferred method.

Soft Phone

What it is: Softphone functionality allows employees to use their computers to send/receive calls, perform desktop video conferencing, and use advanced call forwarding and web-browser dialing.

Why it matters: Millennials love VoIP technology. Check any one of their phones and you’ll find at least one favorite consumer VoIP application. We use them all the time to chat and videoconference with each other. In fact, consumer softphones are so popular with millennials, that we use them personally, and, as a result, softphone applications are becoming more popular and prevalent with SMBs who are trying to attract millennial innovators—i.e. startups, small businesses, marketing and advertising verticals, etc. When you factor in the ever-growing mobility trend, you begin to understand and see that the need for these tools in the enterprise office is not specific to millennial workers alone.

Smart Directories

What it is: Online Smart Directories provide a desktop view of any person or extension in the enterprise, and that person’s availability via a simple search feature.

Why it matters: Millennials have grown up “searching at the speed of Google.” We are instinctive researchers, and our instincts tell us that somewhere online we’ll find the wisdom we seek. So it is incredibly impressive when our UC client can look up any person and any extension in the enterprise via a simple search feature. In fact, this is one of the pleasantly surprising benefits to using enterprise-level UC over a consumer-based option, and something that most millennials may not inherently expect.

Hard Phone

What it is: The device that a user holds to the ear to hear the audio sound through the receiver.

Why it matters: Contrary to popular opinion, there are millennials who are perfectly comfortable picking up the desk phone, and I believe it is inaccurate to say that there is a straight refusal on millennials’ part to use them. Hard phones are great when sitting at a desk working, so long as they are easy to use and have advanced features that allow us to tailor the phone experience to meet our individual needs. Older handset models can be difficult to learn how to use with 100 page handbooks and overtly complicated keypad functions. Unified Communications enabled phones are usually linked to a user’s PC through a UC desktop client, making it intuitively easy for millennials to set-up and access advanced calling features with a few mouse clicks. This client is usually integrated with the enterprise’s messaging and email platforms, making it identifiable to the mobile experiences we’ve come to know.

Final Thoughts

For my generation, work is something we do and not somewhere we must go. So we need tools that enable mobility. That being said, we are not opposed to traditional forms of communication. We still use email. We still make phone calls. We will continue to do so. We’re not going to stop using them just because we get a new tool that has an instant messaging feature.

Most importantly, we understand there is a need to respect others’ communications styles. So if our co-workers prefer phone calls to IMs, we can make that adjustment. In many cases, successful adoption of new communications styles requires management of generational expectations, not just software training.

So, all of this is to say that Unified Communications can unify the multi-gen workforce that most businesses have, and should more than satisfy millennials’ needs through the UC system’s features.

Are you excited to learn more about millennials and Unified Communications?  

Check out the white paper:  file-738886702