Comms Dealer

Call recording and workforce management specialist Sinclair Voicenet  has been named Partner of the Year by NICE Systems. 

The award was presented at the company's EMEA Business Partners Sales Summit 2013 year in Budapest, Hungary.

"We are delighted to have been recognised as NICE Systems' top Partner across the EMEA region as this confirms our position as the UK's leading provider of innovative interaction recording solutions and associated applications that set new standards for business excellence and client satisfaction," commented Sinclair Voicenet Director Peter Gough.

Over the last twelve months, East Kilbride based Sinclair Voicenet has opened a new office in Greater Manchester and built a technical server laboratory which will be used to stage the increasing number of large and complex implementations.  The company  has also recruited additional staff, including marketing and field service specialists as well as pre-sales and project management consultants.

South Lakes Housing (SLH) has undergone an overhaul of its ICT systems, completed by managed services and cloud computing specialist Intrinsic Technology.
 
The project followed the relocation of SLH's headquarters, and saw the installation of a new LAN, WAN and telephony infrastructure. The work succeeded in giving the housing association complete ICT independence from South Lakeland District Council.
 
Adam Jarvis, CEO at Intrinsic Technology said: "This project illustrated the efficiencies that can be achieved when an entire infrastructure is designed holistically. We have a wealth of experience partnering with registered providers, so we were well placed to advise and implement a cutting-edge system tailored to SLH's needs. "
 
Based on the latest Cisco technology, the new resilient LAN has delivered improved network access forstaff, while the Avaya telephony system has led to improved staff collaboration and customer service.
 
The WAN links all the organisation's key sites by a fibre and private broadband. This includes SLH's sheltered housing schemes, supporting its digital inclusion policy. 
 
Underpinning the entire infrastructure will be Fusion, Intrinsic's managed services offering. Once implemented, Fusion will proactively monitor the new infrastructure, ensuring that SLH's ICT is available 24x7 by identifying and responding to any issues before they impact on the availability of services.
 
Lindsay Simons, director of finance at SLH, commented: "The relocation of our headquarters provided us with the perfect platform to overhaul and transform our ICT, and Intrinsic has been the ideal partner to see us through that process. 
 
"We've seen improvements both internally and in terms of tenant experience. The on-going support from Intrinsic has provided an extra layer of security, so we can get on with serving our tenants with the knowledge that our ICT systems will be running smoothly."  

Satellite broadband provider BroadbandEverywhere has joined forces with global satellite operator SES to launch a superfast broadband service based on SES Broadband Services, offering high speed Internet even where traditional ADSL fails to reach, claims the firm.

SES Broadband Services provides reliable and secure satellite communications solutions to broadcast, telecom, corporate and government customers worldwide.

Launched by IT and technology sales company Box in June 2013, BroadbandEverywhere can provide up to 20 Mbit per second download speeds to customers, suitable for areas where there is no, or slow standard ADSL broadband services.
 
"BroadbandEverywhere frees users from the limitations of terrestrial Internet connections and brings fast, reliable broadband, anywhere," stated Jason Fernyhough of BroadbandEverywhere.  

"It enables high-speed Internet without a phone line or mobile dongle, unaffected by landscape. If broadband is required at the top of a mountain, in the middle of a field, or simply living in a rural hamlet - this is the perfect service.
 
"With BroadbandEverywhere you can stop living in the dark ages. With your own static UK IP address you can access all the sites that you've never been able to use because they require fast download speeds - such as BBC iPlayer, Netflix and more. We can even fit special dishes to motorhomes and caravans which, along with the UK IP address, means you can always access UK sites such as the BBC without issue, wherever you are."
 
Patrick Biewer, Managing Director of SES Broadband Services, said: "Having launched our new high speed broadband service earlier this year we are vey pleased with the demand already being seen in the market. BroadbandEverywhere has packaged the offering competitively and we look forward to a long and fruitful relationship."

SIP and hosted carrier tIPicall has unveiled an enhanced hosted PBX offering called OnePBX and a sister project, MobiPBX, offering hosted seats as a mobile application.

Both services are built inside tIPicall's SIP environment and integrate with its SIP trunk and international numbering services.

Guy Miller, Head of Hosted Services, said: "When we approached this project we looked at the problems with the UK hosted market and identified three key areas for improvement.

"Firstly, a reliance on one main system manufacturer among most of the top resellers means there is little differentiation outside price for resellers.

"Secondly the systems typically don't give enough control to the client leading to frustration and increased support overheads for the reseller. And thirdly, the systems are too complicated to manage effectively with multiple portals and a painful provisioning process. We have solved all three of these issues."

According to Miller every employee wants the latest smartphone and employers are not willing to spend this much money each time, therefore users end up with two phones, business and personal and two contracts are being paid for.

"With MobiPBX, businesses can load an app on the users own smartphone and allow them to make and receive business calls in working hours all charged back to the company, whether they have good data coverage or not. This is a huge cost saver," added Miller.

OnePBX and MobiPBX are available to UK channel now and include white labeled versions and the ability for distributors to add their own reseller channel to the service.

SIP services can be delivered with the product allowing free on-net calling between SIP trunks, hosted seats and mobile users. International numbers can also be delivered to hosted seats and auto-provisioning services mean that handsets can be ordered direct from distribution for next day delivery and be truly plug and play.

Liquid Voice has launched an upgrade to its Enterprise Call Recording platform that integrates real-time speech recognition, analytics and dashboard reporting to help organisations meet compliance, coaching and customer experience drivers.

"The last few years has seen a great deal of progress in natural speech recognition engines, fuelled in part by more powerful processors and demand from the consumer sector," says Andy Barrett, Technical Director for Liquid Voice. "Our aim with the new version is to integrate all this technology into a contact centre environment where it can be used effectively to speed up processes such as complaint call detection, FSA compliance and effective agent training."

The new 6.4 update to the Liquid Voice Enterprise Call Recording platform will include a number of optional features including deep integration with the AVAYA voice recognition engine and an automated tagging engine able to recognise user programmable phrases based around key business issues.

The new version also includes a real-time Dashboard to display key metrics and overall trends.

"The new Dashboard goes beyond simple call durations and activity by allowing users to create the interface using a simple graphical editor and that includes actionable information gleaned from Speech Analytics and other third party applications," explains Barrett.

"For example, if you are in a regulated industry that requires certain phrases be repeated to callers, the speech engine can detect when these have not been delivered and tag them for later inspection. Another example could include the automatic detection of a complaint call which can be flagged in real-time on the Dashboard or trigger an alert to a line manager."

The new Dashboard developed in Microsoft Silverlight uses a standard SQL database and provides integration points into third party applications to allow organisations to build unique views suitable for their own contact centre environments.

Liquid Voice has also added a coaching feature to allow calls to be saved, annotated and shared for training purposes. The platform can also manage the process of distributing this teaching material through tracked links which also ensure that the recipient of the coaching material have listened to the entire call or the relevant portion. This system avoids the need to send sensitive material and large audio files over email which may travel outside of the control of the organisation.

"We have spent many months working on the new version and gathered feedback on many of the features from a number of beta customers," added Barrett. "The goal of this upgrade is to allow organisations to start adopting voice recognition in a way that provides real and identifiable business benefits. For example, one of our customers has a policy where each complaint call must be reviewed by a manager to ensure proper procedures have been followed.

"The Speech Analytics engine can effectively detect and queue the most relevant portions of the call more effectively than any equivalent manual process with a high degree of accuracy. In this case, the customer reported that a single manager can check three times as many calls in any given time period."

South West Communications Group has become the fastest growing new ShoreTel reseller in the EMEA region outside North America since launching with the vendor in June 2012.

The Exeter-based reseller made the decision to introduce the ShoreTel brilliantly simple unified communications (UC) platform to enhance its existing product portfolio in June 2012, in order to address the contact centre and mobility needs of its customers and prospects.

Since then, South West Communications Group has successfully secured the sale of more than £500,000 of ShoreTel products for deployment to a range of UK companies, including paint and wallpaper producers Farrow & Ball, toy manufacturers TOMY and Bradley's estate agents.

Adrian Hipkiss, EMEA vice president and managing director at ShoreTel, commented: "South West Communications Group's adoption of the ShoreTel product family has been remarkable, as the sales figures prove. We believe South West Communications Group will go from strength to strength and will continue to flourish as one of the leading ShoreTel resellers in the UK."

South West Communications Group has invested heavily into the skills and knowledge needed to sell, install and support their customer needs, fulfilled with ShoreTel's UC solutions. This delivers the highest levels of customer satisfaction and return on investment.

South West Communications Group is currently a ShoreTel Silver Partner with sales staff and technical staff trained and accredited to the same level as a Gold Partner, achieving certification in design, architecture, and demonstration skills. Engineering staff have unified communications, IP telephony, contact centre and mobility accreditation.

Sarah Flowers, sales director of South West Communications Group, said: "We have wholeheartedly embraced the ShoreTel platform and our sales figures confirm that customers have welcomed our decision."

Kcom has become a Blackberry Strategic Partner following a period of collaboration with BlackBerry since 2005 to deliver a range of mobile solutions.

Kcom has deployed BlackBerry Mobile Voice System (MVS) since 2011, a solution which unifies office phone functionality with mobile voice communications to provide customers with one business phone number, one caller ID and one voice mailbox through BlackBerry smartphones.

Sally Fuller, Director of Strategic Propositions at Kcom, says: "We're delighted that Kcom has become a Strategic Partner in the BlackBerry Partner Programme. We have a number of customers who are considering the best way to drive the BYOD agenda within their organisation and through the BlackBerry Partner Programme, we are able to showcase how the full breadth of BlackBerry's enterprise mobility solutions can best address the needs of our customers' business."

Mobile airtime provider Daisy Distribution is providing its partners with affordable MiFi dongles to showcase the high speed capability of the EE network.

The Huawei e776 MiFi device, which allows the creation of a personal 4G network to which multiple devices can connect, is available to partners to demonstrate how the 4GEE proposition can work within a customer's office.

Daisy Distribution is offering its partners the chance to take a subsidised solution on a 24-month term with a view to underwriting some of the costs and partial use of airtime to boost the purchase of its MiFi devices. In addition, the partner will receive 50% of the device's trade cost back.

Julien Parven, Marketing Director of Daisy Distribution commented: "We are witnessing exponential growth in our EE numbers as it becomes more and more established. However, with greater understanding of the offering and its strengths, we believe the take-up of 4G could see a considerate rise.

"With this new offer, we are hoping to stimulate sales for our 4G products and give our partners an incentive to sell the MiFi device and its capability. By providing an affordable demonstration device, our partners have an opportunity to show their customers, first-hand, that 4G speeds can be up to four times faster than that of a standard fibre optic broadband solution."

Provider of cloud-based contract and credit management applications ccapps has bolstered its management team with three key hires.

The move builds on the firm's presence in the IT and telecoms sector and its successful deployments with a growing range of vendors, channel partners and funding providers.

Paul Cunningham has been appointed Business Development Director with overall responsibility for ccapps' sales and marketing activities.

Prior to joining ccapps he was engaged as an independent consultant by a number of UK and US software vendors and channel organisations, having previously held senior business development management positions with Westcon Group, Comstor, BMC Software and Oracle Corporation.

Mario De'Cristofano joins as Technical Director and is tasked with defining and delivering ccapps' core products and integration services in support of the company's expanding customer and project base. De'Cristofano was previously Technical Lead at Server Centre, a provider of software and cloud systems and services.

Jenna Forbes has been appointed as Business Development Manager for ccapps' growing Client Services team, which provides a complete outsourcing solution for vendor and channel partner finance operations. Sher was previously Senior Account Manager for BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions.

HENLEY based service provider New Star Networks has hit a £3m turnover in just 28 months after moving exclusively into hosted solutions.

Managing Director Mark Shraga says the success is down to the popularity of NSN's next generation iPBX platform coupled with easy to use data pricing tools.

"Our growth has exceeded all expectations and we are setting a standard of excellence in the channel that I have personally been striving for since entering the telecoms industry 14 years ago."

Operations Director Nick Shraga commented: "We are confident resellers won't get a better experience in the market today in terms of pricing, efficiency and delivery. Partners and customers are enjoying the NSN experience and are delighted with the full spectrum of services we can provide across the SME space."

Due to its positive trading results ahead of plan, NSN is extending its support beyond the day-to-day interests of the business to The Sunshine Children's Charity in the form of sponsoring one of its partners on a charity bike ride to Monaco.

"We plan to focus on more charities over the course of the year and we are also planning an awesome Partner Incentive to both New York and South Africa's Sun City," added Mark Shraga.