IT Roadmap

Downtown Louisville enjoyed over 50,000 visitors, a 40% increase in business and over $3 million in spending over the St. Patrick’s Day weekend, though it had nothing to do with green beer.  The crowds were here to see the NCAA tournament being held for the first time at the KFC YUM! Center, and the boice.net team was right in the middle of it.  From start to finish our team – consisting of Ashley Murphy, Jeremy Holmes, Jon Wiesner, Ray Singer, and Paul Wenz -- were there to set up and implement IT needs alongside the Kentucky State Fair Board’s IT team.

Tags: Information Technology, Kentucky State Fair Board, 2012 NCAA Tournament Champions, boice.net, KFC YUM! Center

Customers demand easy access to information—through self-service Web portals as well as from customer service representatives. Customer-focused organizations can improve customer interactions dramatically by integrating communications systems with customer information.

Data center virtualization, in combination with unified communications systems, improves customer interactions, provides customer service agents with real-time access to up-to-date customer data, offers intuitive self-service options, and protects availability and security of valuable customer information.

Data center virtualization is the unified “back-end” for a Unified Communications platform. Virtualized data centers offer ubiquitous, always on access to critical customer information. The seamless integration of applications and data services within a virtualized IT infrastructure enhances any customer service or call center operation.

Take a look at 4 Advantages:

• Always On: Virtualized application services assure that customer service applications are always available to self-service customers or customer service agents. There is no need for expensive redundant data centers or failover operations, since the virtualized infrastructure is inherently redundant.


• Up-to-Date: Virtualized data services assure that customer information is always up-to-date and in sync regardless of access methods (e.g., web or CRM) or application instance.  Customers and service agents enjoy real-time customer information from any access point.


• Ubiquitous response: Whether a customer is signing in from New Delhi or New York, virtualization enables them to be routed to the most efficient resource to meet their information needs.  Call-center agents are also routed to the most efficient processor within the virtualized infrastructure assuring optimum performance and response times regardless of locale or current application/information workloads.


• Reduced Cost: The cost of providing customer information application services is dramatically reduced, thanks to a reduction in CapEx and OpEx  costs  associated with the procurement, appointment and ongoing management of a virtualized IT infrastructure.

When combined with a Unified Communications platform, data center virtualization empowers customer call centers or self-service customer applications to deliver the information needed quickly, reliably and in real time, wherever it’s required.

Tags: Untagged

You’ve heard us talk about the value of Unified Communications. It’s one thing for a systems integrator to tell you what’s possible and roll through statistics about customer achievements. It’s entirely another for a vendor to show you how they use it, what they’ve achieved and allow you to put “hands on” their system to see how it works for yourself.

There’s been a lot of interest in unified communications, a similar amount of confusion and some doubts as to what collaboration actually enables companies to achieve. Some people are under the misconception that unified communications is only for mid-to-large companies. We’d like to dispel that myth by sharing the real-world business results our 46-person office has achieved in short order.

Cisco recently featured boice.net in a success story to underscore the benefits our team has experienced from “walking our talk.” Take a look at a few examples of what’s possible for your company:

• Increased productivity. Scott Klink, data center architect, reports that the ability to identify available staff and get instant answers while designing a project has increased his personal productivity by 50%--plus he gets those designs to customers faster, speeding project implementations.


• Lower costs of sales/service. Keith Grieshaber, vice president of technology, says that because customers can dial one number to reach him anywhere, at any time, he’s able to service customers on demand. He can also get them the answers they need more quickly through using presence to locate and connect with the right resources, as needed.


• Better service. With the ability to forward voice mail, customer service reps and other staff can hear the urgency in the customer’s voice when an issue arises. Hearing the message directly, rather than as a request from the office, makes a huge impact on delivering the appropriate response to improve customer satisfaction.

These are only a few of the achievements we’ve seen within our company.

Download the success story [PDF] to learn more about how we reduced sales cycles by 50% and achieved 100% user adoption based on the ability for our employees to better manage the blurring of work and their personal lives.

Then, ask yourself this: Wouldn’t you prefer to buy from a vendor that has hands-on experience with getting stellar results by using the products and solutions they’re selling? Not to mention that, in this case, the solution will also be used in the provision of services to satisfy your company’s needs.

Tags: Untagged

A convergence of technologies is set to increase our capacity to interact by a factor of between two and five in the near future. This enhanced interactive capacity will create new ways to configure businesses, organize companies, and serve customers, and have profound effects on the structure, strategy, and competitive dynamics of industries. -- McKinsey & Co.

Organizations have spent a considerable amount of time and money over the last decade focused on improving efficiencies, streamlining operations and driving out costs associated with manual processes. The question is whether all this automation has fully prepared our enterprises for the growing demands and expectations of today’s customers. 

IT organizations have delivered tremendous results. But the bar continues to reach new levels. It’s no longer enough to be efficient as lone enterprises. We are now moving into an era in which our ability to compete and perform revolves around our ability to effectively manage interactions across organizational and geographical boundaries

Globalization, specialization and technological change have made interactions increasingly pervasive in modern economies. Indeed, it’s estimated by McKinsey that 80% of all employment in the United States now involves participation in interactions as opposed to the extraction of raw materials or the production of finished goods.

Research indicates that sectors hiring in today’s difficult economy are seeking employees who tend to be engaged in complex interactions – ones who must exercise a high level of judgment and most likely are actively collaborating in teams.  “[T]he most complex type of interactions — those requiring employees to analyze information, grapple with ambiguity, and solve problems — make up the fastest-growing segment,” according to the firm.

Beyond the efficiencies associated with intra-enterprise automation, it’s now time to seize the opportunities associated with inter-enterprise collaboration and interaction. Collaboration technology will play a critical role in enhancing the quality and speed of analysis, decisions and actions. It will make it easier for individuals to engage in complex interactions to produce results.

As McKinsey puts it, “The use of technology to complement and enhance what talented decision makers do rather than to replace them calls for a very different kind of thinking about the organizational structures that best facilitate their work, the mix of skills companies need, hiring and developing talent, and the way technology supports high-value labor. Technology and organizational strategies are inextricably conjoined in this new world of performance improvement.”

Tags: Untagged

Communication technology can be a game-changing differentiator for companies. What makes this so is the way communications technology is applied to improve the techniques for exchanging information that drives business results. Rather than selecting technology first, companies must determine which capabilities are needed to improve business transactions and then apply technology as a means to deliver those abilities.

Some examples include:

• If your leaders are road warriors who need to connect into conference calls via their smart phones, making sure your video conferencing platform enables mobile connectivity should be on your list.


• When speeding time to market for new products is hindered by distributed teams, providing the capability of a unified workspace for project collaboration over changes to product design in real time will deliver a quantifiable return on investment—despite different locations or time zones.


• When customers ask your service reps for technical information beyond their expertise level, presence enables the rep access to a specialist to get the information needed to facilitate higher first-call resolution—not to mention increased satisfaction.

Once you’ve established your communications capability needs and backed that list into functionality requirements, you’ll want to seek some expertise to help you determine whether on premise, or off is the best choice. Phasing in the changes incrementally can also aid in driving user adoption by focusing on the people with the most need for the capabilities.

Additionally, the functionality should be implemented to work together, not as siloed tools. It’s also just as important to ensure that you’re prepared to evolve in parallel with the technologies, because they certainly will evolve—likely faster than you think.

Integrating communications capabilities with business applications and processes is what puts the “killer” in their application to achieve business objectives.

Tags: Untagged