Unified Communications

DOES YOUR NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE SUPPORT CLOUD COMMUNICATIONS?

The telecom industry has gone through a number of transformations in recent years. The impact of this innovation has revolutionized how businesses approach communication. However, what hasn’t changed is the need for excellent communication and collaboration tools. The concept of hyperconnectivity has been eagerly adopted by businesses as a way to stay competitive.

Many have taken to cloud-based UC platforms as a way to achieve this higher level of connectivity. UC systems work by integrating applications into a single, seamless interface, which make it ideal for unifying communication efforts. Not to mention, they have also been recognized for their ability to ability to boost business productivity and growth opportunities.

If you’re looking at your current system and feeling underwhelmed by its functionality, consider a UC system. It’s not hard to switch, but one thing you do need is a fast connection and secure network. Make sure to consider if your network is sufficient to support a new UC system. If not, we’ll offer some ways to optimize it.

 
Tools.
The quality of your UC platform communication relies heavily on bandwidth speed. Many major internet providers have free speed tests available. You can find them on websites or even apps. Here are  tools you can use to measure your internets speed:

https://fitsmallbusiness.com/voip-speed-test/
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

 
Bandwidth. 
Network congestion is unavoidable for most business, especially with employees downloading and transferring files. The real challenge isn’t how to eliminate network congestion, but rather how to minimize its effects. One of …

Upgrade Your Phone System to Go Green

For businesses today, going green is more than a trend. With a wide range of benefits, including increased consumer support and reduced energy costs, making a conscious effort to reduce negative environmental impact is just good business. What’s more, becoming an environmentally friendly business is no longer difficult or expensive to achieve. By simply making green changes to your everyday practices, you can achieve a smaller footprint without disrupting operations. For example, choosing to upgrade your phone system can have a huge impact. Here’s how:

You may not realize it, but your desktop phones are horrible for the environment. Implementing Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) and Unified Communications (UC) in your business can simultaneously improve both efficiency and environmentalism, meaning double the benefits.
VoIP Requires Less Hardware
Your plain old telephone system (POTS) requires a lot of stuff. From the plastic used to make handsets, to underground copper cable systems, to switchboards and satellites, a lot of material and energy goes into communication that we take for granted. POTS require upgrades every two years or less, on average, which results in a lot of hardware being dumped in landfills. In comparison, VoIP requires much less investment in physical devices. Because it uses your existing internet connection, and doesn’t require a dedicated handset — your telephone hardware could consist of as little as just one VoIP router. With options such as softphones on desktops or laptops, or integration with employees’ personal mobile phones with a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy, you can say goodbye …

how financial institutions benefit from unified communications

5 Reasons Financial Institutions Can Benefit From Unified Communications

When it comes to banking, customers want nothing but the best from their community bank. With e-commerce transactions and mobile banking more popular than ever, customers expect top-notch service when they do go into a bank. Customers want speed, accuracy, and ease when solving their problems, which is why it has become even more important today for banks to have the best unified communications services.

Having the right phone system minimizes the chances of jeopardizing valuable customer relationships, and it also ensures that your bank employees are able to excel in their services in every possible way.
What are Unified Communications Services?
Let it be clear that unified communications are much more than just IP telephony—it is a sophisticated and robust information center that brings together phone, voice messages, and email services to provide optimal efficiency on all fronts.

At Millennia, we have the technology and expertise to equip your bank’s communication system with features that are a cut above the ordinary. This is why many community banks have put their faith in our phone system to help them achieve their goals. When we work with financial institutions on their unified communications solutions, these are the features we find they need for efficiency.
Essential Features that Every Bank’s Phone System Must Have
1. Easy deployment & scaling
Our distributed architecture follows a simple plug and play system that makes it easy to implement on our solid-state voice switches or on your servers in the form of …

Breaking Down the Features of Mitel Connect Cloud

First established in 1996, Mitel entered the phone market with its IP Telephony venture in 1998 at the beginning of the Internet explosion in office communications. Since that time, Mitel has expanded its offerings with its desktop management products, mobility services and connections, and cloud services some 20 years later. Today, Mitel Connect Cloud brings all of its past services to bear with the massive scalability of the cloud, allowing both small and large businesses to enjoy the same benefits, many of which were previously only available to enterprise-size systems.
Unified Communications at the Forefront
The key factor in Mitel’s Cloud design is a focus on unified communications. Instead of disparate systems and multiple individual units, Mitel’s approach aims at wrapping all of a company’s communication assets together into one woven system for seamless crossover and sharing. Further, Mitel’s latest features are expanding the same benefits to the mobility side, allowing connection and access to the same information databases and assets while company personnel are on the road, boosting productivity while traveling.

These mobile features include:

Worker location and presence along with traditional digital communications tools.
Seamless switching between databases of contacts, events, file information, and calendaring.
Multiple digital communication channel switching and management to control more than one conference at a time.
Agenda management tools and timers for meeting benefit control.
Intuitive app design for easy learning and adaption to mobile tools provided by Mitel for Cloud connecting.
Secure connection without the delay of VPN …

Easing UC Implementation Fears

Today’s workforce is demanding enterprise mobility that makes workflows accessible in a familiar format. Businesses today looking to attract top talent need to do so with simplified interfaces that work in connection with mobile devices. Most businesses today need one infrastructure that everyone can use with all their different modalities.

But with the transition to a new Unified Communications (UC) solution, there may be some concern about the impact the transition will have. However, a carefully planned UC implementation process can virtually eliminate those fears.
Unified Communication Benefits
Cloud-based UC systems provide flexibility in communications. Team members are able to receive company calls, set up virtual conferences using basic internet connections, access corporate voicemail and use call forwarding to any device. Wherever team members are located, unified communication solutions makes employees more effective when communicating with other team players, clients and customers, as well as management.

Employees are empowered with an efficient flow of data, documents, files, and customer information, activities, and preferences right on their screens during a conversation. They are equipped to share, discuss in detail, revise, and implement business changes through audio, video conferencing, instant messaging, and even fax relay. On-screen file sharing is instant with UC conversations and off-site communications.

With a cloud-based VoIP system, your staff will know when to contact people (availability and presence), the history of a caller or customer and their preferences, as well as be able to schedule conference calls and video work sessions. These features will greatly reduce commuting time and expense.
Implementing …

Creating a Secured Unified Communications Strategy

The task of creating a secured unified communications (UC) strategy might seem overwhelming. But with VOIP the convenience of email, instant messaging, web collaboration apps, voicemail, and video means that businesses today are taking on the challenge. In doing so, however, leading businesses are realizing the importance of making the change with security as their top priority.
Valid Concerns
Here are the common security concerns businesses today face with UC:

IP-based security concerns
Mobile usage and password security
Data access and usage
The risks of data loss on public access points
Software and application usage and storage

While your small business may not have the means to implement the sophisticated and costly communications security measures that large organizations can afford, this doesn’t mean you’ll be left to face the threats unarmed. There are many simple and effective solutions you can implement.
Securing Individual Mobile Devices
Authentication

Investigate ways to authenticate each device your employees will be using. Once you’ve found the tool that suits your organization, implement it and only allow access to authenticated devices.

Encryption

Unlike communication exchanged within your brick and mortar location, messages and data sent over the internet aren’t going just to the intended recipient, they are traveling through many servers. Implementing end-to-end message and data encryption ensures your messages and data remain encrypted from the time they are sent to the time they are received, minimizing the chances of sensitive information falling into hostile hands lurking on the internet.

Lock and Kill

Require that every device to be used has a remote lock in place …

VoIP Michigan Options: Why Work with a Michigan-Based Mitel Provider?

Small business leaders understand that just because an integrated system is easier to use doesn’t mean there’s lower quality technology backing up the system. In fact, the opposite is true. The highest technology available today is applied to fully integrate computer and communications technology for a user-friendly and comprehensive communications experience.

For an example, what if you wanted to only be contacted by email messages after 9 pm every night? When using Millennia and Mitel Michigan’s unified communications technologies, you can have everything from faxes to voice mail converted to email communications. This system uniquely unites your VoIP and computer systems in a simple format, where you can decide to switch to all text messages on your cell when you take the family out to the park, and you’ll never miss an urgent client email again.
Expand the Advantages
Just some of the features available allow you to communicate directly from their address books, receive client, customer, or patient history or updates on their PC screens just as a call from that person is coming in. It might be surprising how quickly the magic of that convenience becomes routine.

This unified communications system also assists your clients by finding you wherever you are – when you want them to – a feature that truly enhances the entire company’s ability respond and communicate effectively.

Cost efficiency is improved as well. When a small business has to upgrade by installing a new phone system, the initial upfront cost …

What a UC Implementation Means for the IT Department

Your IT department is a valuable resource. They are responsible for ensuring you have the tools and resources that keep your business moving. From system security, software and application updates to new equipment set-up and repairs, they are the lifeblood of connectivity for a business. Because of this, when you are making the wise choice to move over to Unified Communications (UC), the IT department will play another extremely valuable role. But how exactly will the implementation change the way your IT department functions?

Here are a few IT changes you may experience:
Shifted Responsibilities:
There’s a long list of benefits of implementing a UC solution including enhanced user experience, mobile-friendly options, chat features, video conferencing and more. However, the downside is that it does take some time to switch over from a traditional phone system to a UC solution. Depending on the size of your business, this could mean weeks or months of transition time changing over equipment and processes. Additionally, even though your new systems will require less IT dependency on phone lines and additional servers, it will still require updates, monitoring, and scaling as business needs change.
Enhanced Security Policies:
A new UC implementation means you are likely implementing a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) process as well. BYOD comes with a list of potential security risks for a business. With important business documentation and applications now being made available on a host of different devices and connections, your IT department will need to …

How to Track Savings for Unified Communications

You’ve made the decision to switch to unified communications (UC) for a number of reasons, one of the major points being that you know it will save your organization money over time. You’re in good company because thousands of companies today are installing UC solutions because they want to improve their collaboration efforts while keeping their costs under control. It’s a wise strategy because research suggests that replacing multiple vendors and a traditional phone system with a single-vendor option offers both significant cost savings as well as improved communication processes.

So you know all this to be true, but how do you know it’s actually producing these results for your business?
Ensure Your Plan is Actually Unified
At the core, unified communications is the process your workforce uses to seamlessly connect and communicate with each other regardless of location or device. This occurs through voice, instant messaging, email, video or conferencing. A truly unified solution should empower your staff to use each of these communications methods through a single interface. To do so, the UC solution should have an escalation process that can provide employees with the ability to easily transfer from using the phone to instant messaging, or they are easily able to pull in others to existing conference calls without having to transfer to another platform to do so.
Identify Your Cost-Savings Elements
Although robust and powerful, most UC solutions do not provide any reporting or analysis tools in order to track the …

how technology can improve interpersonal communication in businesses

How Technology Can Improve Interpersonal Communication

As technology advances, we hear more and more about how disengaged people are becoming as they spend less time talking to each other and more time staring at device screens. But let’s think for a moment about taking advantage of all that staring and turning it into something positive!

How about using those screens to enhance employee collaboration and interpersonal communication? Perhaps instead of asking employees to stay off of social media, turn off their cell phones and disengage from the outside world, instead organizations should shift their focus to finding ways to take advantage of the use of these tools. Because maybe doing so will allow workers to incorporate the technology they love into the business operations, which can increase employee productivity and interpersonal communication.

But how can businesses today make this (sometimes drastic) transition effectively? Here are a few technology transition tips:
Tip #1: Encourage BYOD
Businesses can’t fight the mobile shift any longer, and they’re implementing policies and procedures that promote a ‘work from anywhere’ atmosphere. Allowing an employee to answer emails or conference into a meeting provides the flexibility they need to perhaps catch their daughter’s track meet that afternoon, while still remaining engaged and aware of what’s happening with the business. It’s a convenience that’s seen as a fair trade.

Creating a BYOD (bring your own device) environment keeps employees more deeply connected to the business, encouraging them to respond to emails faster, return phone calls and take care …

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Millennia Technologies is a full-service voice and data solutions company for midsize to enterprise customers. Specializing in UCaaS , CCaaS , Cybersecurity , IoT , Voice , Cloud , and more. Our passion is firmly rooted in showing clients how well-designed data solutions can significantly accelerate business operations, and then celebrating their goal-shattering successes.