Some industries – like those employing field engineers or on-site consultants – have no choice but to support mobile working. Others still have a choice about providing remote working, but possibly not for much longer.
Virtually any employee has the right to request flexible working provisions, including working from home and your business is legally bound to consider each request. Attitudes towards work are changing however, and candidates are increasingly choosing roles that allow them to work from home.
Understandably, some firms are nervous about this change. You can’t see your remote employees, so how do you know they are working? And how do you build a team that works closely together when some members are in a completely different physical place? How do you give them access to the systems and data they need to do their jobs? What is the wider impact of having people based outside the office?
These are all legitimate concerns. But they can also be addressed to help you build a distributed workforce that delivers value for customers and your business.
Technology
Thanks to broadband connectivity and the Internet, it is now much easier to enable access to corporate IT systems. Many of the applications you use are probably already hosted in the cloud, for instance. Once issued with a user name and password, employees can access and use these systems from anywhere in the world, allowing them to be productive anywhere in the world.
The same is true of your internal communications systems, like telephone and instant messaging. VoIP telecoms are typically accessible anywhere, allowing your remote employees to connect to the company switchboard using a handset in their home office – or even a mobile app.
Indeed, Unified Communications brings together telecoms with core productivity tools like calendars, email and files. Almost everything needed to work can be accessed from a single interface at home or in the office. Your workers can accept incoming client calls or join an inter-office video conference call with just a few mouse clicks.
The Unified Communications approach has the added advantage of collecting analytics about how the platform is used. As well as ‘presence’ indicators that show who is online and available, analytics allow managers to report on the activities employees have been engaged on and ensure they’re being as productive as expected.
Consistency
Inconsistency is the enemy of productivity. Confront employees with an unfamiliar IT experience and you can expect a corresponding drop in output.
As you investigate remote working provisions you should also take a look at the tools and systems used by employees. Consolidating and standardising processes and software will help in-house employees be more effective – and help to reduce your annual licensing and maintenance bills. Ideally, you’re looking to create a platform that works in the same way for workers in the office or out in the field.
Standardisation ensures that your employees really can work anywhere, permanently or temporarily. You will also find that administrative overheads and cost of support reduce too.
Education
The best tools in the world are useless if your people don’t know how to use them. Beyond standardising the platform that everyone uses, you also need to ensure that staff are properly trained to get the most from the available tools.
Over time employees develop bad working habits, defaulting to certain tools because they are “easier” – even if they come at the cost of productivity and profitability. Remote workers may decide to make customer calls direct from their mobile because it’s a few less taps, for instance. Although seemingly easier for the remote worker, your business loses out on the additional analytics and reporting data that is recorded when they use their Unified Communications app.
Training staff to use the chosen systems will give them the confidence and knowledge they need moving forward. Then, when they make the move into the field, your workers will take the same habits and practices with them delivering a consistent experience for your customers too.
The world of work is definitely changing. Whether you’re looking to reduce office costs by building a remote workforce or hope to shift to a project-based production model that uses a distributed network of contractors, your business needs to take remote working seriously.
Yes, there are barriers to remote working – but they can all be overcome to deliver a better experience to your customers and a stronger profit margin for your business. You can learn more in our free ebook: Creating The Modern Workplace or visit our ROI calculator to further understand the current impact of your technology setup.
Amillan supports a Unified Communications approach, allowing workers to unleash productivity by being able to work more flexible and efficient. Contact Us today to see how we can implement UC for your business.
Original Article can be found here: Maintaining Productivity While Managing A Mobile Workforce (2020)
In a strong economy, most businesses will enjoy greater prosperity. Disposable income is at a high, consumers are financially confident, which means they’re more likely to increase their purchasing. For SMEs, it can be a double-edged sword. As trading ramps up, SME workforces can feel too stretched to handle all the new business. If the economy slumps, they’re the first to feel the pinch. And unlike their enterprise counterparts, SMEs often lack the steady cashflow and financial resilience needed to survive, what can be, a rollercoaster economy.
While SMEs rarely say no to new customers, when it comes to effective communications they can’t always adequately deal with them. So, while being busy is a nice problem to have – it’s still a problem. In this case, businesses should consider their current communications solution. Traditional technology is inherently inflexible, changes can be slow to make and the systems can lack features designed to make customer service delivery easier.
Feature-rich call management
Fortunately for SMEs, call management solutions have come a long way from the old switchboard – or indeed, the legacy desk-phone with a choice of three lines for callers. Today sees some exceptional feature-rich solutions using IP-based technology, SIP Trunking. These solutions offer intelligent call routing and redirection based on the number dialled, time and location of the caller, efficient call queuing and designated call continuity plans, that the business can control.
This last feature is crucial for SMEs, who can’t afford to miss a call and know that an unanswered phone might mean custom going elsewhere. Email alerts are available for missed calls and automatic call diversions if the desired number is busy or unable to answer
Caller identification has never been easier
We’re living in an age of data and analytics and there’s no reason that the telephone should be excluded from that. After all, the easiest way to make something better is to fully understand how it works.
Inbound call management solutions are data-rich systems, designed to give businesses a greater understanding of who is calling, when and why. With that information, they can adapt staffing schedules to account for busy times and even take on new people if the data tells them it’s the right thing to do.
This, as with every other aspect of a call management system, is hosted in a simple-to-use online portal, which is also supported by an app. Again, this is a huge boost for SMEs. Quick access to key call management tools makes it easy to manage inbound calls with no need to burden staff or for outsourcing.
Keep talking, keep working
We all know that SMEs are integral to national prosperity. Whether that’s because they employ so much of the UK workforce, or because they form the economic heart of the nation. But more and more we’re seeing stories about SMEs being squeezed, or struggling to grow as well as they might.
By replacing traditional ISDN-based telephony with SIP, SMEs are not only able to take on more business but can also save up to 50% on line rental and up to 25% on calls. These savings can free up resources for innovation projects to capitalise on the new sources of income.
Success depends on being able to take every opportunity that opens up. That’s why it’s vital for SMEs to know who’s talking to them and what they want from the conversation. SIP-based communication solutions enable exactly that.
What Amillan can offer …
Amillan has the skills and support level to ensure you always have the services you need up and running. We possess the ability to ‘port’ existing numbers over to your SIP trunks, a vital consideration for business continuity and customer confidence.
Contact Amillan today, so that we can guide you through your transition to SIP and VoIP.
Original article can be found here: How SIP solutions can help SMEs take control of inbound calls (2020)
About Yorkshire Housing
The Yorkshire Housing group was formed in 1999 and became Yorkshire Housing in 2008. Today they manage more than 18,000 affordable and social rent homes across 20 local authorities. They are a not-for-profit organisation, meaning all earnings are re-invested into the services provided.
Yorkshire Housing’s ambition is for everyone to have the opportunity to live in a quality home they can afford. To do this they are growing as a business, building 3,000 homes by 2021 and increasing the range of services available.
Yorkshire Housing had taken the decision to move 250 staff to a new central location, with the focus on increasing customer service, whilst boosting staff productivity and efficiency.
The Solution
Amillan was chosen to supply Yorkshire Housing with a Unified Communications and IP telephony solution for it’s new ‘Corporate Centre’ location in Leeds, together with a new cabling and data network infrastructure as part of a wider technology roll-out. This encompassed five additional office locations and numerous satellite offices across Yorkshire.
The unified communications solution provided Yorkshire Housing with advanced presence capabilities – knowing who is available to handle enquiries or to call-out to sites, skills-based routing to transfer calls to the most appropriate person, collaboration, conferencing, and mobility for its workforce meaning that staff were able to be contacted whether in the office, at a satellite location or working remotely.
“A key factor in the success of the project has been Amillan’s precise and encompassing project management. The fact that one company has been able to provide all aspects of the solution for Yorkshire Housing Ltd has made the whole installation much more straightforward, combined with its ability to carefully manage not only their own installation but to have provided co-ordination with third parties too. This has proved invaluable, and we are delighted with the project.”
Unified Communications – Lyons Seafoods
By Amillan Limted, Your Trusted Managed Services Provider
About the Client
Lyons Seafoods is one of the UKʼs leading suppliers of prawns and chilled seafood, operating from two key production sites and employing approximately 300 staff.
Renowned for their commitment to sustainability and responsible sourcing, Lyons plays a vital role in the UKʼs food manufacturing and retail supply chain. Amillan has extensive experience working in the manufacturing vertical, with deep understanding of the sector’s specific communication challenges and operational requirements.
The Challenge
Lyons Seafoods operated with an ageing telephony infrastructure that was increasingly unreliable and difficult to manage. Poor Wi-Fi coverage in production areas hindered communication, and there was a clear need to unify all sites under a single, modern communications framework that could support operational agility and future
digital initiatives.
The Amillan Solution
Amillan delivered a complete Unified Communications transformation across Lyons Seafoodsʼ UK operations. This included Microsoft Teams with Direct Routing, improved network infrastructure with extended Wi-Fi coverage into production zones, and full migration support from legacy systems.
Amillan also provides 24×7 remote maintenance support for the Cisco LAN systems installed across all sites, including PTRG network monitoring and proactive engineering support. In addition, Amillan has carried out extensive copper and fibre optic cabling solutions across Lyons Seafoods sites to support their communications and manufacturing systems. This project was delivered in collaboration with Quiss Technology, which provided additional support for infrastructure and desktop integration across the production sites.
Benefits Delivered
Customer Testimonials
“Amillan helped us replace outdated systems with a future-ready communications platform. Their experience in manufacturing, combined with collaboration from Quiss Technology, made the project seamless from planning through to support.”
— Quote from Marco Nice, Head of IT Infrastructure, Operations & Applications and Development, Lyons Seafoods
“Lyons Seafoods needed more than just a technical upgrade—they needed a partner who understands the pace and challenges of food manufacturing. Weʼre proud to deliver a solution that enhances productivity from the office to the factory floor.”
— Quote from Stuart Taylor, Account Director, Amillan
Microsoft has announced it will be taking its first steps into the Robotic Process Automation market with UI Flows, part of the Power Automate application, providing enterprise organisations with a range of automation for their business and customers.
It enables end-users and developers alike to build workflows that automate highly repetitive, manual, time-consuming tasks, also enabling automation across legacy, on-premises, and cloud apps and services. This has the potential to offer automation for your entire IT landscape.
Why Power Automate?
The enterprise application landscape is filled with a mixture of legacy applications and modern services, some running on-premises and some running in the cloud. In some cases, the use of such applications is at the surface level, while in some cases cognitive skills like natural language processing (NLP) and vision understanding are required. In an increasingly connected, quicker, and app-heavy world, there is a strong customer demand for rich automation capabilities that allow customers to do more with less. Microsoft believes this should be a core capability of the Power Platform and are therefore adding new capabilities to Power Automate.
What is the new RPA feature in Power Automate?
UI flows is an RPA capability in Power Automate that enables enterprise customers including business users, technical users, and end-users to automate repetitive tasks across legacy applications — to simplify how they work in a scalable, secure way. They can streamline how they work by recording mouse clicks, keyboard use, and data entry and automate the replay of the steps to be included in more complex process automations.
What are the key benefits of the RPA feature called UI flows?
UI flows within Power Automate is Microsoft’s feature for UI automation. Previously, Flow played primarily in the digital process automation (DPA) space where one could use the service to automate business processes that provided APIs. With UI flows, the Power Automate platform extends to also automate legacy applications that can only be driven from their front end. This allows customers to create complete business process automation. With UI flows, customers can record step-by-step UI actions—such as mouse clicks, keyboard use, and data entry—and then replay those actions.
This enables organisations to:
• Automate in a single platform across apps and services that do not have APIs
• Customize, build and manage UI flow scripts in a secure cloud environment
• Low-code experience with a step-by-step record and playback experience
• Seamlessly Integrate UI automation with API based automation by combining UI flows with regular flows.
Amillan and Power Automate
Microsoft Partner Amillan is ready to support organisations looking to be the early adopters of Power Automate and UI Flows. With experts in Microsoft Robotic Process Automation in-house, we can create tailored and bespoke systems to elevate your business processes.
Contact us today to start your RPA journey!
About Perenco
Perenco is Europe’s first independent oil and gas company, with a worldwide portfolio of assets resulting from a unique know-how in the operation of mature fields and from an ambitious acquisition strategy.
Since Perenco was founded in 1975, the company has diversified to become the leading independent oil and gas company in Europe today. The company produces 465,000 BOEPD through its drilling, development and operations, thanks to its onshore and offshore presence in 14 countries.
Perenco’s objectives presented a unique challenge for Amillan, due to the company requiring IP telephony for offshore locations in the North Sea, where Perenco is a leading operator processing almost 15% of the UK national gas production.
The Solution
Amillan we’re initially given the opportunity to implement it’s cost-effective and high-quality annual Maintenance and Support contract for four Perenco sites across the UK. The contract consisted of services such as Problem & Incident Management, Reporting, Field Engineering, 24/7 telephone assistance and much more.
After the effectiveness of the Maintenance and Support contract, Amillan were selected to further provide upgrades to three of its offshore locations, replacing the current ageing systems with a new hybrid telephony platform. This provided native support for digital, analogue, IP, SIP desk phones to preserve phone, cabling and network investments.
The solution provided was completely modular and resilient to address the evolution of daily business, as well as the ability to expand capacity or add additional features and applications in the future. This also addressed the limitations of a restricted environment, allowing for a fully VoIP solution, or to install Analog and Digital telephony.
Amillan continues to support Perenco’s Hybrid telephony system in seven offshore and onshore locations across the UK, delivering our bespoke services to the organisation.
About the University of Highlands & Islands
The University of the Highlands and Islands is a leading integrated University encompassing both further and higher education.
Based in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, it is a distinctive partnership of 13 independent colleges and research institutions. These partners are separate legal entities which employ their own staff and own their own assets. They are locally based and rooted in communities, but with national and international reach, as part of a regional university structure.
The reputation of the institution is built on an innovative approach to learning with a distinctive research and curriculum – all enriched by the people, natural environment, economy, culture and heritage of the Highlands and Islands and its communities.
Amillan realised the importance of ensuring good sound communications and collaboration was paramount to the University as it strives to meet the ever-changing requirements and goals of its students and partners.
The Solution
The University was looking to procure a third line support contract for its existing IP telephony system and Contact Centre estate, across all 13 institutions.
With varying sites being more critical than others and with varying hours of operations, the bespoke & tailored support package addressed all areas that allowed the university to thrive with seamless communications. Ranging from Problem & Incident Management, Reporting, Field Engineering, Service Review Meetings and much more. This precisely matched the requirements of the university.
Amillan remains fully committed to continuing to supply an uninterrupted service and support package for the University of Highlands & Islands and look forward to continuing to build the relationship, whilst constantly refining the services provided.
ISDN is fast becoming a technology of the past with the service set to be phased out by 2025 and replaced by SIP, an IP based service delivered over broadband and/or leased live circuits.
Here are some considerations that organisations need to think about when planning a move away from ISDN to SIP.
This is a great time to define your business needs and document your existing communications connectivity, for example, how many phone lines and numbers you have and where they lead to or terminate. Consider too what currently happens to calls if your lines are busy – are they queued or handled by voicemail?
Because SIP trunks are more flexible and versatile than ISDN this is also the time to map out how you could use and benefit from the new features that will be available once you have made the switch. This would include for example updating your disaster recovery and business continuity plans as SIP trunks can have user-configured failover to secondary circuits for resilience and/or call redirection to alternative locations. At the same time, you can assess your remote and homeworking plans so that employees working outside of the main head office have access to free ‘on-net’ calls due to the fact they are on the same dialling plan.
SIP is perfect for seasonal business or planned changes in call activity volumes such as a sales and marketing campaign so you can factor these requirements in with your supplier – and remember, unlike ISDN with SIP you only pay for the services you use and not for spare trunks to sit idle when they are not required.
Many PBX phone systems designed after 2007 are compatible with SIP but today many users are ditching legacy, hardware-based telephony solutions for cloud or hosted telephony and now is a great time to examine the deployment benefits of these new solutions. Again, with cloud telephony, you only pay for what you use which is perfect for fast-growing organisations and those with seasonal requirements.
What Amillan can offer …
Amillan has the skills and support level to ensure you always have the services you need up and running. We possess the ability to ‘port’ existing numbers over to your SIP trunks, a vital consideration for business continuity and customer confidence.
Contact Amillan today, so that we can guide you through your transition to SIP and VoIP.
Original article can be found here: The SIP Series (III): How do I replace ISDN? (2017)
About Polygon
Polygon is the European market leader in property damage restoration, serving a range of sectors including insurance, property management, government and industrial clients.
For over 60 years, they have delivered best-in-class service, while their constant investment in people, technology and equipment ensures that their solutions are proven, repeatable, environmentally sustainable, results-oriented and cost-effective.
Their combination of people, knowledge and technology makes Polygon the global expert in property damage control, preventing, controlling and mitigating the effects of water, fire and climate.
To learn more about Polygon Group please visit their website: https://www.polygongroup.com/en-GB/
The Solution
Polygon was looking for an RPA solution that could bring significant benefit to the process of preparing, collating and distributing Time Control reports.
The requirement was to automate the creation of a finance tracking report for hourly and monthly paid employees. This was a laborious manual process involving data manipulation that could run to over 15,000 entries. The process was open to cut and paste error and took over 4 hours to complete so could only be justified running 2-3 times per month.
Amillan has developed a solution using the SAP IRPA platform that complies the report in under 10 minutes, is run up to 8 times per day and automatically distributed to authorised recipients. This gives Polygon daily cost tracking data that brings a new level of accuracy to budget forecasting and management with associated benefits to the business.
We are moving towards an enterprise world where highly repetitive human tasks are automated. By increasing the level of automation and reducing the number of tedious, repetitive tasks, organisations can give employees more time to focus on valuable tasks and increase human interaction.
We can embark on the intelligent enterprise journey by automating key business processes using two technologies, intelligent robotic process automation (arms) and conversational AI (eyes and mouth), working together. They perfectly show how human expertise and computer insights can build the intelligent enterprise of tomorrow.
This article will use the example of ordering IT equipment to show how it works. You can enhance quality and reduce cost by using both capabilities to create a digital workforce of robotic applications that automatically run your business processes in the background.
Common issues in manual processes
Nowadays, many companies around the world use complex and manual order-management processes for things such as IT equipment ordering. They face several issues, including:
These kinds of processes make it difficult to get a complete picture of your sales-order processing cycle.
Speed this process with intelligent RPA and conversational AI
Let’s start with a concrete example. An employee’s laptop is broken, and he needs to order another one.
That’s it! The purchase order, with a specific order number, is created automatically because the conversational AI chatbot triggers an RPA bot in the background to create a purchase order in the cloud system. The employee will receive the new laptop within the next few days.
In this case, RPA acts like the arms of the digital assistant, ensuring hands-free order creation. On the other side, the conversational AI chatbot keeps interactions natural and engaging, regularly communicating results to the user. It acts as the ears and mouth of the digital assistant.
To sum up, this process provides:
How intelligent technologies elevate employees
This example of IT equipment ordering is just one of countless examples of how intelligent technologies can speed business processes and help your organisation achieve the high level of automation necessary to become an intelligent enterprise. It’s easy to imagine other use cases, including purchase-order approval or flight-ticket booking, for example.
With intelligent RPA, the first step is to let the bot know what to do, which you can do with a visual interface to create new skills for your bot and define the workflow of tasks to execute. The second step is to schedule the RPA bot execution – to define the trigger that will start the RPA bot.
Then the RPA bot will do the tasks independently, which brings two major benefits: First, by responding to user needs proactively and augmenting resources, it delivers a streamlined experience. Second, by reducing repetitive and time-consuming manual activities, it helps employees focus on higher-value processes, leading to new levels of operational speed and efficiency.
Meanwhile, with conversational AI technology, you can effectively train, build, connect, and monitor intelligent chatbots for the enterprise – for example, guiding the user to the right page, answering FAQs, and executing repetitive tasks. Natural language processing (NLP) technology in the background analyses text inputs and enriches key data for a human-like understanding of information in any language.
Chatbots can be connected seamlessly to external communication channels like Messenger or Slack, as well as back-end systems. With training analytics, you can also understand how your users interact with your chatbots and improve their user experience based on collected data.
Original blog from SAP: Automate Your Enterprise IT Support With Intelligent RPA And Conversational AI Bots (2019)
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