With a new year comes the certification of the crucial Cyber Essentials Plus award from the National Cyber Security Centre, helping Amillan demonstrate its commitment to cybersecurity.
Holding this certification shows Amillan’s renewed commitment to protecting against common cyber threats for its customers and will ensure a greater level of care and consideration. Also a key contributor to the ISO27001 information security standard, the certification becomes an essential aspect of this accreditation.
Cyber Essentials is a Government-backed, industry-supported scheme to help organisations protect themselves against common cyber-attacks. The scheme identifies fundamental security controls that organisations should have in place to secure themselves against common cyber threats.
According to the UK Government, 80% of cyber-attacks could be prevented if organisations put simple cybersecurity controls in place.
A simple virus or piece of malware could result in loss of company and client data, disrupt cash flow and take up staff time. An attack could also put off customers, stop you trading and damage your hard-earned reputation. Loss of data could breach the Data Protection Act and lead to fines or prosecution.
Amillan Managing Director Phil Jordan had this to say:
“Achieving the Cyber Essentials Security Plus certification shows the importance we place on Cybersecurity here at Amillan for ourselves and for our customers. It’s an essential consideration in the ever-growing digital landscape and holding the award recognises this. We look forward to using this certification with our services to remain at the forefront of Communications Technology”
About Amillan
Amillan is a leading solutions integrator delivering unified communications, IP voice and data networking, contact centre, ICT infrastructure, robotic process automation and mobility solutions on-premise or in the cloud.
About Cyber Essentials
Cyber Essentials is a simple but effective, scheme that will help you to protect your organisation, whatever its size, against a whole range of the most common cyber-attacks.
Cyber-attacks come in many shapes and sizes, but the vast majority are very basic in nature, carried out by relatively unskilled individuals. They’re the digital equivalent of a thief trying your front door to see if it’s unlocked.
Find out more here.
Senior Software Consultant Esben Ehrenskjold has achieved the advanced SAP IRPA certification ‘How to Build Bots with SAP Intelligent Process Automation’, allowing Amillan to provide its customers with greater IRPA solutions.
This development comes after Amillan’s partnership with SAP to offer tailored IRPA solutions to its clients, formed in July 2019.
The course provides a solution overview and step-by-step tutorials on how to create a bot, from initial application declaration to workflow design, deployment, and how to design user interface elements and make bots run in attended and unattended modes.
Amillan Director of Operations, Patrick Daly had this to say: “Having Esben complete this advanced SAP course allows Amillan to expand on it’s already advanced RPA offering to existing and prospective customers. We look forward to continuing our work with SAP solutions to enhance the IRPA offering to our clients. Also, a huge well done to Esben, who is leading the way for Amillan in IRPA.”
Now having completed the course Esben will be able to create bots in the SAP Desktop Studio, know how to configure and monitor them with the SAP Cloud Factory, and understand how to make them run as digital workers or digital assistants, all fantastic assets for Amillan.
Software robots can accomplish multiple simultaneous activities, tirelessly, quickly and accurately, freeing up their human counterparts for more complex, high value, and sensitive tasks that require human attributes such as emotional intelligence, reasoning or judgment.
New innovative RPA applications are being developed by our team for end-user clients daily. Find out more about what RPA can do for your business here.
About Amillan
Amillan is a leading solutions integrator delivering unified communications, IP voice and data networking, contact centre, ICT infrastructure, robotic process automation and mobility solutions on-premise or in the cloud.
About SAP Intelligent RPA
SAP stands for Systems, Applications, and Products in Data. SAP was founded in 1972 in Walldorf, Germany and now has offices around the world.
SAP innovations help 437,000 customers worldwide work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively.
Why does digital transformation matter to educators?
Gone are the days when students sit in the classroom and learn solely by listening to lectures. Today, education must be collaborative and interactive. Teachers are making drastic changes to the way they approach instruction, with technology in the classroom playing a major role. Digital transformation positively impacts student learning by opening a world of endless possibilities and collaboration.
What is digital transformation?
Digital transformation is a physical AND philosophical change designed to meet the ever-growing demands of your students, faculty and campus to create a learning environment where everything connects. This is an ecosystem that combines technology, services and security to bridge the digital gap to create collaborative, interactive and personalized learning experiences.
What issues are driving digital transformation?
• Campus security
• Information security
• Student success
• IT strategy
• Data enablement
• Student-centric services
• Affordability
• Digital integration
• Artificial intelligence
How do you create a digitally transformed campus?
• Build a strong IT foundation
• Foster successful students
• Create a safe campus
• Deliver state-of-the-art cybersecurity
• Deploy operational efficiencies
What do I need to do in order to digitally transform?
Digital transformation starts with a strategy. A clearly defined strategy that leverages opportunities presented by the new technology while meeting the objectives of your stakeholders. The following four steps will help you develop a digital transformation strategy for education:
1. Connect everything to support tomorrow’s digital world Set up strong strategic partnerships and build an ecosystem connecting your people, processes and things to build a communications network that is high capacity, secure and smart.
2. Deploy analytics to automate, understand and save money. Use real-life, real-time data to drive strategic initiatives that improve performance, roll out upgrades and make infrastructure decisions.
3. Roll out new business models “Freemium” software and on-demand services are cheaper, more flexible and simpler to manage than traditional systems, and may be just the ticket for your campus.
4. Move towards a single, simple platform Whether it is on-premises or in the cloud, the ultimate goal of digital transformation is to provide a single platform as the foundation of your network and communications infrastructure.
What’s the bottom line?
Digital transformation is creating a world of difference by rethinking the digital tools that are used in the classroom. Digital tools are driving new levels of collaboration and innovation to create a campus of endless learning possibilities.
Amillan can offer tailored solutions that address all of these challenges for your business, helping you meet the evergrowing needs in the sector.
Contact us today to find out how we can help we can implement our tailored solutions for your business.
In many organisations, people spend a lot of time interacting with the different applications of their business systems. To carry out their mission, they frequently have to re-enter or to copy and paste data from one application to another or to compare and verify information from two applications. Robotic process automation, or RPA, consists of implementing “software robots” to automate as much as possible these tedious mundane tasks.
This “automation of white-collar jobs” can free up 15% to 30% of an employee’s time, which can be used more effectively for actions bringing real value for the organisation and improving the quality of the service to its customers.
This automation improves the comfort of employees, and this is not the least of its advantages: the employee who spends his workday in front of computer tools will adhere better to the strategic vision of the management who wants to accelerate the digital transformation of the company.
Enterprise’s business processes involve many components of the information system, from database servers where data is stored to employees’ desktops (obviously via various applications and software solutions), access to large transactional systems, client-server, intranet/extranet, cloud applications, CRM, ERP, ECM…
Automation can be done on the desktop, where the “software robot” will execute the interactions as the human being does: like a human, the robots read the content of an application window, identify the fields containing useful data, copy them into another window, launch a transaction, and so on. While performing these tasks, the robot may, if needed, “hand over” the person in front of the PC to make a decision based on his or her intelligence and experience. The robot can also carry out some checks on the data it handles: this gives the company additional guarantees regarding compliance with certain regulatory requirements and the quality of the result of the processes.
This aspect of the Robotic Process Automation where the robot appears as a software assistant for a human being interacting with a PC while respecting the business logic is called “attended RPA” or sometimes, “Robotic Desktop Automation” with the acronym RDA.
Its deployment is very fast and the “attended RPA” has no impact on the information system and does not require any modification on applications, which continue to function without any change. As a result, Robotic Desktop Automation’s projects are short, and their ROI is fast: it takes only a few weeks to set up an RPA robot that can save 20% of their time to tens or even hundreds of employees. And considering that the desktop is not going to be simplified by magic in the short term, “attended RPA” solutions will benefit the company for many years…
Some processes can be automated from end to end, by robots installed within server farms and running without any interaction with a human being. A software robot can autonomously connect to databases to retrieve information, apply business rules, perform processes that produce new data, and then inject them into other applications using their own programming interfaces (APIs). This aspect of Robotic Process Automation where the robot works at the heart of the information system or in the cloud is called “unattended RPA.”
However, this autonomous robot remains under the supervision of human beings: it is indeed necessary to monitor the execution of the processes to ensure that they are properly executed. In case of anomaly, it is a human expert, a “robot supervisor,” who will be able to understand the cause of the problem, to correct it and then to restart the robots so that the processes resume where they had stopped.
As they are installed on servers and therefore inside the information system, unattended RPA robots require the provision of some infrastructure. And because they act directly on application data, they need to use their APIs, which requires programming work. As a result, as we observed, “unattended RPA” projects are likely to be more complex, and therefore a little longer, especially when it comes to going live.
Clearly, organisations should consider RPA globally, taking advantage of the complementary approaches: it can start on the desktops with attended RPA, focusing first on the most repetitive and time-consuming processes. The first benefits are quick, and it helps employees to embrace the digital transformation of the organisation they are working for. Then the RPA journey can be extended by implementing unattended RPA on servers to handle complex processes.
Some business processes can even benefit from a hybrid RPA approach, mixing attended and unattended robots to maximise the benefits an organisation can get from robotic process automation.
RPA fosters digital transformation, and its main benefits have been proven:
Original blog from SAP: What is Robotic Process Automation? (2019)
Solihull, West Midlands 22nd October 2019 – Leading communications integrator, Amillan, has been awarded a place as a supplier on Crown Commercial Service’s (CCS) RM3808 Network Services 2 (NS2). Amillan’s successful application will give public sector organisations easier access to its expertise in telephony and communications technology without having to go through the full EU tendering process.
Amillan is now listed on lot 2 – local connectivity services, lot 5 – IP telephony services, lot 10- unified communications and lot 13 – contact centre services. Amillan were named as a supplier following a highly complicated bid process, where applicants were evaluated for multiple service lots, based on multiple criteria, including service offerings, implementation skills, service delivery, customer references, and experience.
Patrick Daly, Operations Director, Amillan, said: “We are delighted to have won a place on the NS2 framework. This award gives us access to an expanded pipeline of public sector procurement opportunities and will enable us to transact business much more quickly and seamlessly with existing and new public sector customers. It will help streamline the whole process both for us and our clients.”
The NS2 framework is for the provision of telecommunications and network services and can be used by the whole of the UK Public Sector and their associated bodies and agencies, the voluntary sector, charities, and/or other private organisations acting as managing agents or procuring on behalf of the public sector delivering services of a public nature.
NS2 aims to simplify and speed up communications and networking procurement for public sector organisations, with pre-defined and agreed contract terms and conditions and a shortlist of pre-approved suppliers providing a wide range of services. The framework will run until 2023 and CCS expect public sector organisations to spend £5 billion on it over its four-year duration.
About Amillan
Amillan is a leading solutions integrator delivering unified communications, IP voice and data networking, contact centre, ICT infrastructure, robotic process automation and mobility solutions on-premise or in the cloud. For more information, please visit, www.amillan.co.uk
About Crown Commercial Service
Crown Commercial Service (CCS) is an Executive Agency of the Cabinet Office, supporting the public sector to achieve maximum commercial value when procuring common goods and services.
To find out more about CCS, visit: www.crowncommercial.gov.uk
Follow us on Twitter: @gov_procurement
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/2827044
Amillan is proud to have worked with the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) for over 20 years, most recently supporting the club in their delivery of another successful edition of the world famous Wimbledon Tennis Championships.
As always this year’s tournament delivered plenty exciting moments, enjoyed by almost 500,000 visitors and a global TV audience of over 1bn.
Having worked to support the Championships for successive years, Amillan was well prepared to react to the dynamic environment, with engineers on-site throughout Wimbledon fortnight to quickly and efficiently resolve any issues that arose ensuring they caused no disruption.
To discuss how Amillan can provide support for your organisation during critical times please contact us to schedule a meeting.
An alliance focused on driving closer ties and enhanced collaboration and connectivity for customer-facing organisations
Enghouse Interactive has signed leading communications integrator, Amillan, as an elite member of its EMEA partner programme. The new agreement marks an expansion to an existing long-term relationship between the companies.
As a gold partner, Amillan will sell, market and deliver a range of Enghouse Interactive products, including its flagship Enghouse Interactive Communications Center (“EICC”) solution and Quality Management Suite (QMS). In addition, Amillan will have access to a range of Enghouse resources including account planning, marketing and lead generation alongside pre-sales support.
Patrick Daly, Operations Director, Amillan, said: “Enghouse Interactive and Amillan complement each other well. Enghouse’s contact centre solutions are intuitive, can be delivered to scale and have a great reputation for reliability in the marketplace. We have also been impressed with the speed at which Enghouse has developed its communications solutions portfolio to meet customer requirements.”
The strength of Enghouse Interactive’s relationship with Microsoft is important to Amillan. The communications integrator was originally introduced to Enghouse by Microsoft. Today, Enghouse’s partnership with Microsoft and its understanding of the Microsoft product roadmap are key to Enghouse and Amillan winning business together.
Another advantage to Amillan is that Enghouse’s products are platform-agnostic. Their interoperability with other leading UC and PBX platforms from companies such as Cisco and Avaya opens up new avenues for Amillan to explore.
The two companies have already achieved success together primarily across the education, housing and local authority sectors. The new partnership will allow them to further build on this.
“People are key to any partnership,” continued Daly. “We have an open working relationship with a similar ‘can do’ attitude and a drive to win business, based on delivering excellent customer service.”
Jas Jhita, Channel Director, Enghouse Interactive, said: “We are delighted to welcome Amillan as a gold partner within our EMEA partner programme. They share our vision of communications and contact centre solutions and delivering enhanced collaboration and connectivity for customers. Amillan has demonstrated its commitment to our solutions by investing in training and quickly becoming self-sufficient in sales, delivery and support.”
Looking to the future, Amillan plans to expand its portfolio of Enghouse solutions. There is increased demand for Enghouse’s Contact Center Enterprise solution and great potential in leveraging Enghouse Interactive’s Communications Portal for elements such as app development, self-service bots, robotic process automation and AI. Moving forwards, both partners are committed to further exploring the opportunities that automation and AI present to drive benefits for businesses today.
65% of guests use your Wi-Fi within 7 minutes of arriving at your hotel. So how can you make their first experience an excellent one?
Did you know that your hotel guests would have a hard time choosing between wireless access and air conditioning in your hotel? And, that the majority of your guests would also pick wireless over food? Yes, you read that right – Arbitrip’s 2017 report found wireless service and air conditioning tied as the top guest amenity with breakfast coming in second.
Simply providing wireless connectivity is no longer enough. Guests expect fast, reliable and secure Wi-Fi, to the point that they may choose another hotel if your network does not provide sufficient connectivity for their devices. If your hotel network is frequently the source of guest complaints, you are not alone. Many hotels have aging networks that were not built to handle the high network bandwidth they need today, which is largely due to the sheer number of mobile devices that arrive with each guest.
Upgrading your hotel network: Happy guests, productive employees and new services
When you upgrade your hotel network to meet (or hopefully exceed) today’s demands, you give your property a competitive edge. Your guests will be happy with the super-fast wireless, and they will be thrilled by the new services – check-in/checkout, order a drink while at the pool or turn the lights on in their room before entering – that your hotel can now offer with smartphone apps. Your staff can also now communicate and coordinate with each other, as well as guests, using mobile technology from anywhere on the property.
Here are five things to consider when upgrading your hotel’s network:
1. Coverage
In the past, wireless coverage was only needed in a few places – the guest rooms and maybe the lobby. However, today’s guests expect coverage everywhere in the hotel – even pool areas and the parking garage. And employees need to be able to communicate from the housekeeping closet or the maintenance shed at the back of the property.
2. Traffic patterns
Your guests and employees move around constantly while accessing the network, resulting in unpredictable traffic patterns. And they expect the same level of connectivity wherever they are on the property.
3. Throughput
It’s no longer email and Facebook that your guests want to access. They want to use multimedia applications such as streaming video from wherever they are at the moment – their room, the swimming pool, even the golf cart. The result – high bandwidth use.
4. Security
Guests trust your network with their work documents, banking information, travel plans and more, and they expect a network free of viruses and data breaches. This becomes even more challenging to ensure with so many different people and devices accessing your network.
5. Levels of service/access
Not everyone on your hotel property needs the same network access. Guests, employees, management, IT staff – all have different needs. By having the ability to define multiple user types, you can create a different environment on the same infrastructure for each user type, which improves security and service, and helps control bandwidth. Hotels can also provide VIP guest access with special perks – faster service, more bandwidth, or access to premium services or applications.
Contact Amillan today to discuss our range of Hospitality Communications Technology Solutions
Your network is facing a rapidly evolving threat landscape full of modern applications, exploits, malware, and attack strategies that can avoid traditional methods of detection. Threats are delivered via applications that:
Dynamically hop ports
Use non-standard ports
Tunnel within other applications
Hide within proxies, SSL or other types of encryption
Additionally, your enterprise is exposed to targeted and customised malware, which can easily pass undetected through traditional antivirus solutions.
Many of the above may be stopped by your existing firewall solution, but how many aren’t?
Amillan can now offer all customers a free Security Life-Cycle Report, to help you pinpoint exactly where the holes are in your data network security.
By placing a test appliance on your network and passively monitoring traffic for one week, Amillan can produce a custom risk assessment including real exposure to threats, user behavior, and application usage, helping you better understand the cyber risks your organisation faces.
Contact Amillan today for more information and to arrange your free Security Life-Cycle Report.
Home working, be it part or full time, increases the flexibility of labour while reducing its cost. The ubiquity of high speed internet connections gives an unprecedented flexibility to deploy work more effectively. This technology evolution also has a deep impact on Western countries economics, environment and on enterprise productivity.
Leading management consultants have found that employers expect to use more part time, temporary employees for an optimal use of their permanent workforce. Home working technologies will make it possible to hire a temporary workforce on an ad-hoc basis. This added flexibility could decrease the labour cost by nearly one third in the U.S. and Europe, helping to narrow the off-shored labour cost differences.
Another key factor is the impact on the environment. Home working has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by 50 million tons in 2020. Alcatel-Lucent has calculated that the roll out of home working in one of its subsidiaries of 900 people, home working 50 days a year, had saved over 2,534,000 kilometres (1,575,000 miles), which is the equivalent of driving 63 times around the planet. It saved 318,200 litres (70,000 gallons) of gas.
Each employee also saved money: €231 (£183) each year and time by avoiding more than 100 hours driving during rush hours.
In addition, HR found that remote employees were more productive and satisfied across generations. GenY enjoyed a better work/life balance, and it helped retain and maintain the productivity of 55+ workers. For high performers, setting up their own work while working from any place was liberating and empowering.
What changes in work practices when an employee becomes a home worker? Tasks workers will access their business applications from their laptops while enjoying the voice quality of their IP phone which is just another extension of the telephony system. Knowledge workers will often prefer to collaborate through their PC, enjoying additional media such as IM and video and sharing presentations on line with colleagues, customers and partners. Lastly, travelling knowledge workers will, in many cases, prefer to collaborate from a tablet PC.
But if work is less and less a place we go to, communication and collaboration tools of choice should have the availability they have in the office, providing great ergonomics and be easy to use.
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.
This article originally appeared on The Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Blog and is published with permission
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