AIQ Podcast: Helps when cash runs tight or for companies seeking to have a higher value.

When household brand name companies must reduce expenses, they have been approaching AIQ to find savings on their IT and services spend. According to AIQ’s Blake Wetzel, AIQ uses a highly patented reverse auction process to cut services costs by an average of 44.6%. These reverse auctions and their accompanying lower cost, more tailored services, improve EBITDA and can help firms increase their value. “We work with the client to determine which vendors they would like to invite to the client, verses inviting everyone and then we work to make sure the vendors are qualified to provide the services,” says Blake. The curated reverse auction than helps get the cost of the services, that are needed, to be lower. As this is a cost cutting project with external vendors, the saving s come without an internal head count reduction. The idea is to gain the services needed at a better price than may have previously been arranged or offered. “We touch on over 100 categories on IT and IT adjacent spend,” adds Wetzel.

In this podcast, Wetzel walks us through the process, including a very thorough assessment, done for free. AIQ discovers what the contractual obligations are, looks at the way the firm is spending, looks at the operation of the firm, including mission critical services. AIQ holds reverse auctions every week and Is experienced in holding a competitive auction process that results in getting needed services delivered for less.

Wetzel sees this as not only an inviting process for the enterprise readers, but also a channel opportunity. A channel can bring a cost savings story to a client without having to do the actual vendor development. All this is done while the channel retains their connection as the valued advisor- in this case the value advisor who saved the company, the client, on significant recurring costs.

Visit https://www.aiq.co/

https://youtu.be/zpJ30RK7lpA

In this episode of the podcast, Doug is joined by Sriram Sampath, Vice President - CX Management & Collaboration Platforms at Tata Communications, a global digital ecosystem enabler, to discuss the changing landscape of hybrid work.

Is hybrid work an advantage or a disruption? Sriram explores how businesses have taken this opportunity to adapt and evolve their technology solutions to support remote and hybrid work. Enterprise technology has boosted productivity for virtual teams through high-speed connections, availability of smart devices, cloud services, and improved network security and collaboration services. However, there is a challenge too. While collaboration services and tools make it easier for people to work from anywhere, employees tend to be isolated, and a distance grows with how managers work with their teams.

Sriram provides insights into Tata Communications' role as a CommTech player to power enterprises with remote and hybrid work adoption. He also offers a forward-looking perspective on the direction of hybrid work, emphasizing the importance for businesses to stay ahead of the tech-driven and ever-evolving workforce trends. Click here to know more about Tata Communications offerings for Unified Communications and Business Collaboration.

by Gary Audin

I hate robocalls and spam so much that when it was at its worst, I let all my calls go to voicemail, no matter who I thought was calling. The FCC decided to do something about it to protect American consumers and mandated that carriers implement call blocking and labeling analytics on their networks. Because they're run by algorithms, they have become overzealous, labeling up to 25% of calls as spam.

Improper call blocking and labeling have been an issue since 2017, and many businesses don't know it could be happening to them. If you're a business conducting outbound calls directly, via a call center, operating a help desk, supporting emergency services, conducting surveys, etc., mislabeled phone calls can significantly impact your operational success.

Do you know if you have these problems affecting your calls right now?

In this 18-minute EDUcast, "Number Reputation Management, DIY or Not," Molly Slater, Product Enablement and Lifecycle Manager at Numeracle, and Gary Audin discuss the recurring problem of mislabeled phone calls and how a Number Reputation Management Solution that prioritizes your calling identity can solve it.

There's also the added problem of having phone numbers get mislabeled repeatedly, even when the initial spam or scam label has been resolved. This is why an ongoing and active approach to your number reputation is crucial for your business. Molly provides insight into these issues as well as the solutions available to do it yourself or by partnering with a trusted industry solution provider.

The agenda of this EDUcast includes:

The Problem with Spam

Number Reputation

About Numeracle

Number Check Solutions

Valuable Resources

You can tackle this problem yourself if you believe you already have all the necessary resources, or you can streamline the process by leveraging Numerable's Entity Identity Management (EIM) service. The EIM platform enables enterprises, call centers, and service and platform providers to manage the identity of end entities and implement Know Your Customer (KYC) identity vetting and verification policies to outbound communications, developed in support of evolving regulations and telecom standards.

You can leverage their EIM solution to establish yourself as a Verified Identity™ with the analytics and carrier to prevent 97% of improper call blocking and labeling events on your phone numbers. They'll work on the remaining 3% of troublesome numbers with their Number Reputation Management solution and Remediation capabilities to remove the labels and barriers preventing you from completing your calls.

The platform also allows you to add and manage your branded presentation across the wireless network via their Smart Branding solution to further ensure that your brand and identity are presented as intended, with transparency and consistency.

For more information, visit www.numeracle.com or reach out to them at https://www.numeracle.com/contact-us.

“Crawl, walk, run,” says Josh Robbins of SimpleVoIP. “We build everything through templates. Measure twice, cut once.” In this podcast Robbins discusses the methodical approach his company takes to deploying SimpleVoIP, by careful planning, beginning with a couple of sites out of many and then rolling out a consistent plan. SimpleVoIP specializes in enterprises with multiple sites. Today, these distributed organizations face challenges from migration of updating a company with multiple retail stores and other such business locations in other service industries such as restaurants. “We make it very easy for our customers, we make it easy for our partners.”

Elevators and POTS lines

We also learn that SimpleVoIP offers solutions for one of the year’s harder tests for firms with many legacy locations: POTS lines. City and county regulations have placed a POTS line in most elevators. There are other locations on every enterprise campus that have similar, rarely used, but must be operational lines. We learn how SimpleVoIP has an effective solution for that challenge as well.

SimpleVoIP is now a member of the Cloud Communication Alliance.

Visit www.simplevoip.com

Vonage has managed to assemble a communications platform that captures and inspires the 1.15 million developers’ creative entrepreneurial spirits to envision tomorrow and deliver it today. Vonage’s core includes cloud native, SaaS native, security first and data driven characteristics which provides the creativity power developers need to construct applications that respond to the customers needs.

Sanjay Macwan

Sanjay Macwan, CIO, CISO at Vonage Speaks with Don Witt of The Chanel Daily News about businesses and how they can ensure security while migrating from a PBX to the cloud.  There are many benefits in moving to the cloud including ROI, financial as well as the employee and customer experience. Vonage enhances the cloud solution with Two Factor Authentication (2FA).

Of course, Vonage is involved in AI and is seeing more significant adoption of AI-enabled automation across all enterprise workflows and processes. The number of routine clerical and administrative functions can, and will, increasingly be fulfilled by AI-enabled solutions. Listen in for more very informative discussion about Vonage and the Industry.

Now we're talking! Technology is supposed to make things easier. Right? So, why does the business communications business seem to make things so complicated? It’s simple to Vonage: They want you to understand their unified communications solutions without needing a PhD. They want to maximize the impact and minimize the jargon. They don’t want to work with celebrity spokespeople. They’re too busy working with businesses and developers. They don’t care about their technology being fancy, they want it to be so good you forget about it. Because it’s not about how advanced the technology is, it’s about what you can do with it. They’re keeping communications how they should be: straightforward. Now we’re talking. It is all about the experience!

For more information, go to: www.vonage.com or call 1-844-365-9460

COTU is a suite of cloud-based SaaS applications that integrates seamlessly for Wildix partners who have customers who operate a contact center.  In this podcast, Sam Hodgetts​, Director at COTU, walks us through several key products available from COTU through the Wildix partner portal. We learn about ipScape, an innovative cloud-based customer experience technology that is feature-rich, scalable and offers integration capabilities. ipScape enables easily build out of campaigns and access live reports to monitor customer service and sales teams. Partners with contact center customers can also offer RAMP (Recording Archive Management Platform, which delivers secure, GDPR compliant, long-term storage of call recordings. MyWallboards an easy to configure enhancement of your Wildix Customer Experience is something that will be a gain for any PBX customer.

Branding

Sam also describes how COTU works to maintain Wildix’s major focus on having partners maintain their brand. Not only do COTU products maintain partner branding, COTU’s products allow the partner to enable the final customer to brand, so that as the contact center operation interacts with callers and contacts, the customer’s brand is what people experience and see.

Learn more at cotu.uk

Wildix partners can work through their Wildix representatives as well.

“Frameworks should not be a burden. They are really an asset,” says,” says Walt Czerminski, CEO at Cytellix. “Frameworks give you that advantage. They let you know where your doors are open in your house, what you should be taking care of, what needs to be addressed and where your risks are. And that visibility allows for quicker movement and taking action that matters that reduces obvious risk.” In this way, Walt explains how structure equals utility. In this podcast, we learn that we live in a risk environment where the, “… volume is logarithmic.” Thanks to AI, faux emails are looking more genuine. Bad actors are probing more and more often. Frameworks are a tool that CISOs can use to standup an effective defense. In this podcast we learn how a combination of technology security initiatives and creating a security conscious, a security hygiene corporate culture, to punch back at the threat. Much as a home has a frame, and protects the occupants from the elements, in cybersecurity, a framework can be modified for different risks, and as with a house, conscious choices are made.

Cytellix is a first-of-its kind patented SaaS platform that brings together cybersecurity, compliance, and risk management under one fully integrated umbrella. Cytellix helps companies better understand their “real security posture” and provides a new way to manage and deploy cybersecurity capabilities, risk awareness, and compliance with a plan tailored to specific situations and needs.

Visit www.cytellix.com

Vonage (Voice on Net AGE) has been on my radar from their start way back at the end of the last century. At a time where nothing in Telecommunications happened for 150 years and all things were proprietary and wired. They started their journey delivering VoIP and targeting the home and small business because big business was controlled by the AT&T, Motorola NCR, etc., and high-speed internet and SIP were not around.

Sanjay Macwan

Sanjay Macwan, CIO, CISO at Vonage takes Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, and the rest of us back farther adding some additional communications history to the story. He also describes early Vonage with a current core business product set of Unified Communications, Contact Centers and CPaaS APIs.

Sanjay does a great job on this podcast as he walks through the evolving technological landscape and describes how Vonage is committed to a security-first approach for their customers to become more productive, mobile, flexible, profitable, and more security-focused. He then moves into two factor authentication.

Reinventing communications all over again

Change is an essential part of the Vonage DNA. Their original business brought VoIP to families and small businesses. And now they’re making communications more flexible, intelligent, and personal to help enterprises the world over stay ahead. They've brought leaders in unified communications, contact centers, and communications APIs all under one roof. Together, they’ve created the world’s most flexible cloud communications platform.

Unified Communications, Contact Centers, Communications APIs: take your pick.

... or pick them all. They’re uniquely flexible when it comes to our capabilities. Choose from their stock of proven applications, all ready to go. Select from their extensive portfolio of APIs to create your own apps and integrations. Or get the best of both: choose the apps you need and customize them with their APIs. You can’t do that with anyone else.

For more information, go to: www.vonage.com.

“We’re looking for the top 3% of fractional consultants,” says Robert Burke, CEO and Founder of Sobo. “We have a very tight and very extensive vetting process to make sure that we’re getting consultants that will perform many types of engagements and are trained and happy to do those engagements.” Burke adds,” So you need a fractional VP of Sales. We’re going to give you that fractional VP of Sales, he’s going to build out your sales team, he’s going to hold your sale’s team accountable, he’s going to take you from a lackluster sale to a high-performance sales team.”

“You’re getting what you need when you need it, and you’re getting it on demand from a trusted source.” Burke notes that as with the Uber model, the consultant is being paid upon achieving milestones, rather like completing each trip along the way. In the world of hiring outside help, this avoids the problems of hiring the wrong help, or somehow having little to show for your spend.

Sobo is a tech company who’s on-demand platform delivers actionable insights and verified consultant matching with AI to help owners, leaders, employees, and fractional advisors make businesses better and stronger. Fractional consulting is an agile business model that enables consultants to offer their specialized skills on a part-time, as-needed basis. This setup allows startups to tap into high-level expertise without the hefty price tag of a full-time executive. The 'fractional' aspect ensures the consultant's time and skills are flexibly allocated across multiple projects, aligning their services with each startup's unique needs and constraints.

Visit www.sobo.ai

“It’s very much a patchwork quilt out there,” says Akixi’s Mike Wilkinson. Offering a glimpse at his recent talks given at the Netaxis Solutions Inspiration Day 2023, Wilkinson notes that the Teams ecosystem is still forming, especially the rapid way in which Teams became so widely adopted. Presenting on the collaboration market, Wilkinson was struck by the dominance of Teams in the collaboration market and how so many companies have positioned themselves or repositioned themselves as firms offering still-needed services that you might need even as you use for collaboration. It’s thought that 300,000,000 of over 400,000,000 “PBX seats” might now involve Teams. The paradox is that even as teams becomes ubiquitous, none of the many firms now in the orbit of the Teams world, are dominant.

“We kind of know the sorts of things that, small businesses, in particular, need to know about their telephony infrastructure. And that does not really change that much whether the infrastructure is sitting on BroadWorks, or sitting on Teams or is sitting on Webex calling.” Akixi can overlay the analytics, even in the fragmented market.

We learn about upcoming Akixi offerings on Webex Calling that will present a nicely sized and cost effective solution for Cisco customers running a small inside sales desk or a small customer service center.

Akixi is a fast-growing and profitable private equity (PE) owned company, operating in the UK, Europe, and US, and headquartered near London. Akixi work with leading service providers to offer cloud-based, real-time call reporting and business insights software to small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). With over 7,000 customers and more than 300,000 users benefiting from Akixi’s multiple award-winning solution, Akixi is a Cisco Select Developer Partner and proudly part of the Cisco Partner Ecosystem. Akixi is an active member of the Cloud Communications Alliance.

Visit www.akixi.com