A master craftsman understands that each of his tools serves a specific purpose, and coaches know that their athletes achieve great things when working toward a common goal. Organizations that have adopted unified communications as a service (UCaaS) could benefit from this perspective by tapping into the synergy between UCaaS and software-defined wide area networks (SD-WAN).

Small, medium, and enterprise-level businesses around the globe and across many industries now rely on managed UCaaS to deliver cloud-enabled communications and collaboration capabilities. Whether it’s a single office or a series of facilities scattered throughout the world, UCaaS enables voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), instant messaging, collaboration, phones, contact center, and other applications to streamline workflows.

UCaaS can also be easily scaled for growth, allowing firms to add branches and applications to their platforms as needed.

At the same time, other businesses are moving away from traditional multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) networks and toward more cloud-friendly SD-WAN solutions. With SD-WAN, routing distant remote locations to their central cloud solutions is simple and efficient, while presenting less of an outage risk than traditional MPLS networks. On their own, these technologies provide substantial benefits to retailers, manufacturers, and a wide variety of enterprises and verticals. However, finding synergy between the two solutions could be the secret to unlocking the full potential of both.

UCaaS powered by SD-WAN: A winning team

Like two critical components of a well-oiled machine, UCaaS and SD-WAN solutions are capable of working in tandem to bring out the best in any organization that deploys them together. While UCaaS platforms can tie together disparate members of a team and give them the tools to collaborate effectively, SD-WAN systems provide the bandwidth, processing power, and stability to keep the entire operation running smoothly.

One example of this is how SD-WAN, when used in conjunction with UCaaS, can greatly enhance the quality of any voice and video conferencing programs through the use of strong cloud connections. This process has the added benefit of combining voice, video, and text messaging applications into a single, dedicated platform.

For any business that views voice functionality as mission-critical, including but not limited to retailers and call centers, every call that drops or doesn’t connect means lost revenue. That means a reliable connection is a must-have in these cases. Hosted UCaaS gives these enterprises a redundant and robust connection that enables collaboration across locations and is also flexible enough to fill new roles as the business evolves. The addition of SD-WAN can enable unified communications to operate at peak performance.

With UCaaS and SD-WAN working together, businesses with global footprints benefit from the dependable communications they need, with the added benefits of faster speeds and increased bandwidth. Additionally, cloud-based UCaaS presents cost reductions over older on-site solutions. When SD-WAN is introduced to the landscape, the savings are amplified thanks to SD-WAN’s reliable connections minimizing costly downtime and dropped calls.

Contact CBTS for more information on how the dynamic duo of SD-WAN and UCaaS can take your enterprise to new heights of connectivity, collaboration, and efficiency.

Solidarity during times of crisis—neighbors assisting neighbors simply for the sake of being helpful­—is how communities pull through. The same is true of businesses that lend a hand to one another during difficult periods.

While the United States struggles as a nation to respond to the dangerously contagious novel coronavirus known as COVID-19, businesses are shutting down and people are confining themselves to their homes in an attempt to “flatten the curve,” or reduce the infection rate, as much as possible and prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. The healthcare industry has been on the front lines of this public health crisis. One healthcare organization in particular was recently facing a significant challenge it couldn’t easily address on its own. That’s where solidarity came in.

Rising to the task

Indiana University Health, a nonprofit healthcare system that operates 17 hospitals throughout Indiana and employs nearly 30,000 people, is recognized as the largest and most comprehensive healthcare system in the state. When the COVID-19 pandemic began reaching local communities served by IU Health, it was clear that immediate action was needed. The hospital system sought ways to serve populations at risk of infection without putting other patients in unnecessary danger of exposure or infection.

The decision was made to establish a series of remote testing centers dedicated to providing treatment outside of primary IU Health facilities. These “pop-up” clinics would serve as additional resources for potential and confirmed COVID-19 cases while reducing the logistical burden on traditional, physical hospitals.

However, these clinics would need the same level of data center access, information security, and connection reliability that the main hospitals had. The medical professionals staffing these clinics would also expect high quality of service, predictable performance, and consistent bandwidth from the network, as well as the ability to securely use the devices and applications they’re accustomed to using in their day-to-day hospital environments.

Additionally, IU Health’s medical professionals and IT specialists alike needed the network to not only handle communications and computer activity, but to also monitor patients connected to other networked medical equipment.

The operative issue was to adapt IU Health’s existing IT infrastructure to this new functionality and get the new pop-up sites networked and operational on a strict timeline.

A reliable partner

Fortunately for IU Health and the communities it serves, a strong and productive partnership already existed between the hospital network and CBTS. With their wealth of knowledge about IU Health’s day-to-day networking technology needs, CBTS was in a position to offer immediate and effective assistance. Despite global inventory shortages and shipping delays, IU Health’s networking technology partners were able to develop and deploy a VMware SD-WAN solution powered by VeloCloud on short notice, with patient service and wellness being the top priorities.

Through a combination of close cooperation, forethought, and nimble problem-solving, IU Health and CBTS were able to design and deploy a scalable, agile, and highly mobile cloud computing network that grants reliable data center access to all of IU Health’s newly established remote contact centers—all within 24 hours. This network allows these pop-up clinics, often located in parking lots and other disparate areas, to operate with the same effectiveness as fully network hospitals while enjoying reliable connections to existing data centers, despite the distances involved.

Additionally, this VMware SD-WAN solution by VeloCloud includes proprietary collaboration tools and cloud applications, as well as the capability to prioritize mission-critical traffic over any transport conditions. As a managed solution, the network can also be monitored, maintained, and updated as needed from a single point of contact.

Moving forward together

Like two neighbors coming together to address a serious issue, this partnership between a client and a provider led to a synergistic and effective solution. By working closely, the two entities accomplished a significant feat in rapidly deploying multiple pop-up clinics in one day, taking the fight against COVID-19 to the front lines, and providing testing and treatment to tens of thousands of patients in non-traditional locations.

To find out more about what partnership with CBTS and VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud can offer your enterprise, contact us.

Many enterprises have turned to Network as a Service (NaaS) as a means to rid themselves of rigid, silo-laden, legacy network architectures. Not only is NaaS a lower-cost option, but provides the flexibility needed to compete in a rapidly evolving digital economy.

Start-up organizations do not have this problem, however, because they have no legacy networks to contend with. Today’s emerging company is purpose-built for advanced virtual and cloud-based infrastructure. For them, NaaS provides an altogether different, but no less significant, advantage: the ability to scale networks to support rapidly expanding workflows.

One of the fastest-growing industries these days is cannabis. Whether for medical or recreational purposes, the pot industry is growing by leaps and bounds even though it remains fully legal in only a handful of states.

For one company at the forefront of Michigan’s nascent cannabis industry, rapid growth had them in a bind when it came to sourcing and provisioning network infrastructure. With limited staff and a limited budget, expansion to multiple sites across the state, not to mention plans to branch out to other states, posed a heady challenge, both in terms of initial capital costs and ongoing licensing, maintenance and support.

Instead, the company chose to deploy NaaS as a managed service by CBTS. The overriding factor in this decision was one of logistics: while a traditional hardware-centric network required a great deal of time and implementation of complex technical solutions, NaaS can be deployed at the speeds needed in today’s economy. This is particularly important when the expanding customer base is dependent on the reliable delivery of a basic medical product that is vital to their quality of life.

As a matter of capital costs, NaaS provides a much more elegant solution to a greenfield network deployment than the complex process of selecting the right hardware, shipping it to dispersed locations, installing it, integrating software, followed by testing, debugging and a host of other steps—only to produce a system that will steadily lose value and provide diminishing performance with the passage of time. With NaaS, the enterprise is equipped with a state-of-the-art network that is continuously upgraded and backed by 24x7x365 support by thoroughly trained professionals. At the same time, companies can scale the consumption of virtual resources according to workload demands, thereby eliminating the need to maintain idle capacity during non-peak hours.

One of the key advantages of the CBTS NaaS platform is the Cisco Meraki dashboard, which provides the option to offload day-to-day management operations to CBTS technical staff even as the enterprise retains the ability to step in and implement its own management decisions when the need arises. The system provides deep visibility into networking conditions—everything from overall uptime, performance and application usage to detailed metrics on how users are engaging the system. This provides a thorough understanding of what is happening both internally and externally to the native network footprint so executives can make informed business decisions related to the impact on network consumption.

As well, network configurations can be designed around a number of security and redundancy features, including firewalls at each site and high-availability pairs at centralized locations to enable seamless failover in the event of an outage. Under this architecture, the enterprise is able to maintain virtual private networks between sites while still keeping confidential data secure.

With the pace of economic activity at a fever pitch these days, start-ups need to maintain single focus on growing their business, not building and maintaining data infrastructure. With a managed NaaS platform, fast-growing organizations are finding they can do just that. By handing off network implementation and management tasks to a provider, all company resources can be devoted to enhancing revenue streams, tapping new markets and optimizing core business processes.

For information on how CBTS can solve your networking problems, visit cbts.com.

Read how a cannabis cultivation company utilized NaaS to overcome its network challenges, support rapid growth, and offload day-to-day network monitoring to CBTS.

When it comes to healthcare, effective communications can make all the difference between life and death. Without the right communications technology in place, doctors, nurses, emergency personnel, and other stakeholders can risk the delivery of information vital to successful patient outcomes.

The need for rapid, highly-targeted, and widely-distributed communications is absolutely necessary today. With specialized systems governing life support, patient monitoring, and drug delivery, and other crucial functions becoming more intelligent and autonomous, these systems also need to communicate more effectively with medical staff and each other.

Advanced communications can positively impact patient outcomes

The problems with a significant number of mass-communication systems in place are similar to the issues related to data operations in general. Many platforms are outdated, having evolved over decades to meet the needs of an on-premises, data center-centric approach. Additionally, the manual and on-site nature of managing and operating this infrastructure is out of step with the high-speed, automated performance requirements of today’s communications environments.

With regulatory requirements and the rapid need for swift medical care, the adoption of advanced communications can lag behind patient-focused technology needs. Critical communications infrastructure requirements are absolutely front and center issues. Meanwhile, online doctor consultations and virtual visits are still necessary and require a different approach to communications, without disrupting the functioning of the rest of the healthcare organization.

Healthcare systems need to move to a communications environment with the capability to handle today’s current pandemic, post-COVID-19 worst-case scenario incidents, natural disasters, or mass casualty events. Timely, accurate delivery of information has a positive impact on real-time steps affecting patient outcomes.

Consider cloud-based mass-alert technology

CBTS addresses the needs of modern healthcare organizations through its Hosted Unified Communications as a Services (UCaaS). One critical advantage CBTS brings to healthcare providers is the integration of Singlewire Software’s InformaCast Fusion platform, a cloud-based mass-alert technology with world-class messaging tools designed for campus installations and wide geographic areas. With a Unified Communications Solution in place, organizations can prioritize messages to defined groups using advanced VoIP, teleconferencing, mobile, and global collaboration tools via a turnkey, centralized dashboard.

Using mass notifications, organizations can quickly integrate IP speakers, digital signage solutions, panic buttons, and other devices to share critical information automatically. The solution not only enhances the speed and reach of communications infrastructure, but it also lowers overall costs by removing the need to invest in multiple technologies to oversee these diverse lines of connectivity. Specifically, this technology improves communications in four key areas:

• Automated paging – contact the right people at the right time, whether it’s a pre-recorded message or a code blue.
• Patient tracking – automate the connectivity to tracking devices and send instant alerts when their location triggers a warning.
• Lockdown – quickly initiate and share lockdown procedures with staff and visitors via mobile, email and on-prem devices.
• Severe weather – pull alerts directly from the National Weather Service and distribute them to all users, along with any instructions and follow-up messages.

Integrate mass communications capabilities for IoT devices

Equally important is the need to integrate mass communications capabilities into the growing arsenal of IoT devices that are populating the healthcare industry. These devices include everything from light and temperature control systems to access entry, fire alarms, and medical devices.

With the implementation of these capabilities, healthcare providers can ensure the information required to maintain optimal care is going to the right person or device without drowning medical professionals in unnecessary or redundant alerts and messages. Simultaneously, CBTS takes over the time-consuming tasks of configuring phones, allocating bandwidth, and ensuring high-quality communications under its hosted managed service solution.

Faster, better, secure solutions

The healthcare industry is similar to other sectors of the economy when it comes to technology. It requires faster, better solutions that are secure, easy to implement and operate, and less expensive than traditional platforms. When it comes to communications, the best way to achieve these goals is through a hosted cloud-based solution that provides both the scale and flexibility to operate at the speed required of today’s digital applications and services.

We are watching our healthcare system transforming daily. Functions like mass communications and mass alerting can help organizations manage digital assets and incorporate next-gen technologies into mainstream operations.

For more information on how CBTS can help your organization manage this transition today, give us a call at (866) 587-2287, or visit our website at https://www.cbts.com/communications/.

Of all the specializations in the healthcare industry, mental health providers face some of the most complex sets of data and regulatory challenges.

As researchers continue to uncover significant links between mental and physical health, the mental health patient load has increased dramatically. And in this period of rising mental illness and a shortage of mental health resources, these same healthcare organizations are tasked with improving data privacy and security, provider access, personal and professional communication, storage, and analytics. Moreover, mental health providers face some of the most stringent legal and regulatory burdens in the industry.

When a North Carolina mental healthcare provider came to CBTS to update its network infrastructure, the primary goal was to consolidate the wide disparity of equipment and platforms that had evolved over the years, as the practice had expanded from a single office to multiple sites across several states in the southeastern U.S. With only two members on their IT team, the new infrastructure had to meet numerous requirements:

• Low cost.
• Easy to operate.
• Easy to upgrade.
• Supports HIPAA compliance and other regulatory requirements.
• Top-notch security.
• High availability.
• Dynamically scalable.

After reviewing several on-premises and service delivery options, it became clear the best approach was a Network as a Service (NaaS) solution with Cisco Meraki technology at its core.

Unlike traditional network environments, NaaS provides a virtualized, software-defined solution that is cheaper and easier to deploy and operate, with a level of flexibility more in tune with the dynamic nature of today’s data flows.

As a managed service, NaaS provides the robust connectivity organizations need without requiring the addition of personnel to maintain it. Once the Cisco Meraki Dashboard is in place, day-to-day operational responsibilities—such as resource provisioning, network mapping, and security monitoring—are handled by experienced professionals at CBTS, while preserving the ability for internal IT staff to monitor and adjust the network as necessary.

This level of fine-grain visibility extends across the network architecture, from the local data center to branch or secondary locations and beyond to the next-gen UTM edge. Technicians on the enterprise side maintain full control through a simple, user-friendly interface, and can see all alerts, discrepancies, and operational metrics on any device no matter their location.

And to support HIPAA compliance efforts of healthcare organizations, NaaS can be configured to encrypt data before transmission. Although not formally designated as a HIPAA-compliant solution—since that extends beyond the scope of networking—NaaS nevertheless reinforces compliance by adding an extra layer of data protection at the network level, which is coming increasingly under attack by hackers. With data encrypted in motion, criminals who manage to break into the network are not able to decipher the data without access to the original encryption keys.

The NaaS framework is deployed easily and tailored to the organization’s unique data demands without expensive retrofitting or forklift upgrades. With NaaS, the networking infrastructure is continually updated, so the organization is always equipped with state-of-the-art technology without significant upfront capital outlays. Additionally, NaaS facilitates the expansion of new sites and easily handles ever-increasing data loads. In these scenarios, business policies can be set to ensure the network can manage increased volume without interrupting or degrading performance for existing users.

Serving mental health needs in today’s hectic, chaotic world is a stressful endeavor, which can ultimately wear on the mental health of providers. One of the ways to relieve that burden is to shed responsibility for support services, like networking, to a provider whose core business is to deliver stress-free IT services to clients.

With NaaS, organizations tasked with improving the mental health of patients will find that they can deliver improved services and achieve better outcomes than those that continue to rely on aging infrastructure. And in this way, they can help make entire communities safer and more productive.

To learn more about how CBTS can help you solve your networking pain points with NaaS, visit cbts.com/communications/network-service-naas.

How to leverage technology to work around the Coronavirus

By embracing collaboration technology, modern enterprises can begin to move away from traditional face-to-face meetings as the go-to tool for driving business operations. The teleconferencing trend shows no signs of slowing down, especially in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As reported cases of the novel Coronavirus grow in number and quarantine becomes necessary to safeguard employees, companies across multiple industries are leaning on video conferences and other collaboration technology more than ever. Effective use of these tools, however, is crucial for continuing business operations and avoiding costly downtime.

Tips to ensure remote work efficiency

Video meeting capabilities give modern organizations significant flexibility in times of crisis.

One approach that has successfully connected global workplaces is the “video first” approach, which emphasizes video conferencing as a reliable alternative for when in-person meetings aren’t feasible due to travel, remote offices, or illness. This strategy is rapidly catching on in the modern business world­; a survey by Deloitte found that 70 percent of respondents expect to use collaboration platforms more often in the near future.

Here are some helpful tips to follow when your teammates are working from home:

• Get everyone on the same page by using the same tools.
• Create online work spaces for projects to keep essential team members in the loop.
• Keep meeting documents, presentations, and notes in a shared place.
• Record meetings for people who are not able to attend.
• Turn your video on; it makes a difference.

The Right Tools for the Job

Many enterprise employees worldwide are being required or encouraged to stay home from the office to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19. Platforms such as Cisco Webex Meetings and Webex Teams can be critical for allowing these enterprises to maintain their day-to-day functionality and continue to serve their clients throughout a public health crisis. There is a wealth of options available for enterprises looking to empower their employees to work remotely without sacrificing collaboration or productivity. CBTS can implement the features you need, such as Call Forward All, Single Number Reach (SNR), and Voicemail to E-mail to keep your team engaged and performing at their best no matter their location.

Webex Meetings enables teams to coordinate their efforts even with miles between them. Anyone inside or outside your organization can quickly join a meeting from a smartphone, desktop, video room devices, or through their browser. Everyone can enjoy consistent meeting experiences and be fully engaged in the conference with minimal technical complexity. Webex Meetings removes the complexity of the video meeting experience—with crystal-clear audio and content sharing in the same session.

Cisco Webex Teams is an easy-to-use collaboration solution that keeps teams and departments connected anytime, anywhere.

• Start calls instantly, have high-quality video meetings with screen sharing at the touch of a button.
• Create secure virtual workspaces for every purpose.
• Include outside vendors or customers in collaborative spaces.
• Simplify day-to-day interactions with messaging and file sharing.
• Third-party app integrations for a seamless workflow.
• Increase productivity and engagement with real-time communications.
• Express your ideas on digital whiteboards and add colleagues at any time.

For more information on how CBTS can help your organization during the COVID-19 health crisis, check out our Contingency planning post or collaboration and meeting solutions page at CBTS.com.

Learn more about the workforce of the future from our recent webcast: Webcast recap: What does the workplace of the future look like?

Several collaboration technology platforms have emerged in recent years incorporating robust and secure voice, video, and content sharing functionality alongside its messaging.

Evaluating these different vendors and platforms goes far beyond researching the features and benefits of existing collaboration apps used inside the organization. The process also involves establishing user policies and formulating a plan for implementation and training.

Questions to ask when conducting research

Here are three questions companies need to ask when conducting their search:

1. How established is the collaboration company and its tools, and is security a top priority? The top companies in the space use a holistic approach to security and will employ experienced security personnel to identify and eliminate threats proactively.
2. How does the collaboration company support rollout and training? An experienced collaboration partner can help establish policies to reinforce your company’s security posture and simplify implementation across all functional teams.
3. Does the collaboration solution support end-to-end connectivity required by today’s agile workforce? Managing your hosted application environment requires a high-performance solution to support visibility across the organization, monitor security threats in real-time, and implement changes to address threats quickly.

Focus on security makes Cisco Webex a trusted collaboration technology

Cisco Webex® is a proven suite of applications enabling today’s global employees, virtual teams, and remote employees to work side-by-side to achieve objectives, as if in the same room. The security features built into Cisco Webex applications make it a trusted solution for corporations, institutions, and government agencies worldwide.

CBTS, a Cisco Webex Master Service Provider

Why hire a technology partner to manage implementation and ongoing support and maintenance of your collaboration solution? Because in-house teams working diligently to meet business goals for encouraging innovation through digital collaboration shouldn’t be burdened with ever-changing security and compliance responsibilities.

With CBTS as your technology partner, IT leaders can integrate new collaboration functionality into the corporate environment while continually addressing security concerns, no matter the location of distributed team members.

Learn more about the top goals of IT executives implementing collaboration technology and how CBTS can help.

While an increasing number of CIOs recognize the benefits of implementing standardized, corporate-wide collaboration tools, the top priority for most companies continues to be security.

Yet, the collaboration tools used extensively every day by employees contain some of your company’s most sensitive information, from customer data to logon credentials to details about a proprietary process or an innovation driving a new product offering.

In an environment where mobility is not only valued but mandatory, IT is still responsible for complying with mounting regulatory requirements, including safeguarding all information shared across collaboration platforms.

Collaboration suite vulnerability threats

Threats most often identified as arising from collaboration suite vulnerabilities include:

• Users accessing collaboration tools from the public Internet versus a secure VPN, opening up threats from web-based opportunists.
• Unauthorized individuals breaching logon credentials, allowing them to gather details for accessing proprietary company data, customer information, and even financial records.
• When limited encryption gives hackers an opening, making the organization vulnerable to considerable compliance risks.
• When code-related issues accidentally expose confidential data.
• Third-party integrations into collaboration tools.

To keep security risks to a minimum, enterprises must begin to reign in and consolidate the numerous collaboration tools used by different teams throughout the organization. CIOs can initiate the process by engaging stakeholders to determine functionality crucial to the lines of business, while carefully considering the diverse needs of corporate headquarters, branch, and remote users.

Focus on security makes Cisco Webex a trusted collaboration tool

Cisco Webex® is a proven suite of applications enabling today’s global employees, virtual teams, and remote employees to work side-by-side to achieve objectives, as if in the same room. The security features built into Cisco Webex applications make it a trusted solution for corporations, institutions, and government agencies worldwide.

Get more done with Cisco Webex. Learn how.

CBTS, a Cisco Webex Master Service Provider

Why hire a technology partner to manage implementation, ongoing support, and maintenance of your collaboration tools? Because in-house teams working diligently to meet business goals for encouraging innovation through digital collaboration shouldn’t be burdened with ever-changing security and compliance responsibilities.

With CBTS as your technology partner, IT leaders can integrate new collaboration functionality into the corporate environment while continually addressing security concerns, no matter the location of distributed team members.

Schedule a collaboration security assessment today.

Now, more than ever, enterprises recognize the positive impact of remote workers on the business and the value of secure collaboration technology to connect them, no matter their location, on any device.

Indeed, according to a recent, eye-opening study by Upwork, more than 63% of companies globally now employ remote workers, and over 48% regularly hire independent contractors, many of them on-demand. As a result of these more agile team structures, modern offices have become temporary anchor points for specialized, project-based services.

Secure collaboration balances risks and rewards

Modern corporations have discovered an agile workforce isn’t just a trend designed to keep today’s mobile, digitally connected employees engaged and happy, but a strategy that makes good business sense.

A distributed workforce can tackle project tasks around the clock, and the organization can benefit from talented people living in locations outside commuting distance to corporate headquarters or branch offices. Also, many of today’s flexible meeting rooms, offices, and co-working spaces provide an environment conducive to secure collaboration technology.

Still, many companies have not embraced the implementation of universal collaboration tools, risking security, and often struggling to keep their widely distributed teams aligned and on target with corporate initiatives. Without access to secure, virtual meeting spaces—integrating voice, messaging, video, and content sharing—suboptimal user experiences are common, with valuable meeting time wasted on technology setup or addressing issues with seemingly simple, collaborative functionality.

As a result, companies are collecting a variety of different collaboration and communications tools downloaded by their employees.

Although these apps give distributed workers the ability to share content and gather feedback needed to keep the momentum after a meeting, the sheer number of apps creates fragmentation. Content, contacts, and conversations get distributed across these various apps, and information either gets lost or becomes difficult to track down—hurdles CIOs and executive teams understand can slow operations and stall innovation.

Focus on security makes Cisco Webex a trusted collaboration platform

Cisco Webex® is a proven suite of applications enabling today’s global employees, virtual teams, and remote employees to work side-by-side to achieve objectives, as if in the same room. The security features built into Cisco Webex applications make it a trusted and secure collaboration solution for corporations, institutions, and government agencies worldwide.

Get more done with Cisco Webex. Learn how.

CBTS, a Cisco Webex Master Service Provider

Why hire a technology partner to manage implementation and ongoing support and maintenance of your collaboration solution? Because in-house teams working diligently to meet business goals for encouraging innovation through digital collaboration shouldn’t be burdened with ever-changing security and compliance responsibilities.

With CBTS as your technology partner, IT leaders can integrate new collaboration functionality into the corporate environment while continually addressing security concerns, no matter the location of distributed team members.

Schedule a collaboration security assessment today.

Synopsis: CBTS recently conducted a network upgrade for an auto retailer by implementing Network as a Service (NaaS). As a result, the auto retailer experienced a significant cost savings of approximately 55 percent. Read this article to learn about more results the retailer enjoyed and other benefits of NaaS.

Customer satisfaction is a principal performance indicator for service centers. However, it becomes increasingly difficult to satisfy customers when the necessary technological and equipment support is not provided. An old and unreliable network infrastructure means that prospective customers will struggle to contact the service center, and when they do, the quality of both the call and customer engagement is compromised.

A network upgrade from CBTS provides a reduction in network downtime, an improvement in customer engagement, and access to vital customer data and analytics.

Network challenges for service centers

Multi-site service centers that run on outdated networks are bound to face a number of challenges.

CBTS recently worked with a service center client whose legacy equipment was being run on a copper network and could no longer efficiently serve its 103 locations. Constant network outages resulted in numerous lost business opportunities as prospective customers could not get in touch with the client while their resources were being expended to keep the network online.

Additionally, because of the obsolete nature of the technology the client was operating with, modern amenities were not available. A network upgrade was required to not only stabilize but enhance the network.

CBTS NaaS offers a wide range of solutions

Network as a Service from CBTS offers businesses a flexible avenue to expand, secure, and maintain their networks. It provides hardware upgrades, the ability to connect multiple locations seamlessly, 24x7x365 support, and more.

Impact of network upgrade on the client’s business

CBTS upgraded the client’s technology with our NaaS solution to provide their business with an ultramodern network managed and supported by CBTS. Voice calls and wireless services are more reliable and of higher quality, downtime across all branches has been reduced by 10 percent, and approximately 55 percent has been saved in operational expenses.

While waiting to be attended to, visitors get to enjoy Wi-Fi services; this allows the service center to gather valuable customer data and analytics such as how much is gained (or lost) depending on what time the store opens and closes. Data like this can be used to optimize service delivery, improve customer engagement, and increase customer satisfaction.

Furthermore, by selling advert spaces on the customer authentication page to vendors, the client generates even more revenue. The authentication page can also be used to provide customers with information on promotional offers, new locations, and so on.

Conclusion

CBTS NaaS helped upgrade this service center’s network from copper-based equipment with unreliable voice call services to a modern cloud-hosted infrastructure that seamlessly connects hundreds of locations. The solution is not only superior, it requires less time and resources to maintain. It provides a means to generate further income, and it allows the client to collect and leverage customer analytics.

The client’s IT staff now has complete visibility into their network with a centrally managed dashboard and has 24x7x365 support from CBTS expert engineers for all of their locations nationwide.