Maintel Matters, June 2021

Welcome to the mid year edition of Maintel Matters, bringing you all the latest news and views from across our business.

Maintel Matters

June 2021 Updates and insights that you don't want to miss!

Foreword

I’m delighted to welcome you all to our June edition of Maintel Matters in what is my first formal communication as Group Sales & Marketing Director. As we race towards the half year calendar point, for Maintel this also represents the end of our first half from a financial year perspective, and thus far 2021 has seen great strides in our aim to bring CONTROL, FOCUS and INVESTMENT into our business.

With the impending WLR3 (Wholesale Line Rental) switch off, and the wide ranging portfolio of products and services available, its important we bring CONTROL to organisation and our customers. By way of example, we have recently bolstered our CCaaS offering with the onboarding of Genesys and have already seen notable success in this partnership. Equally, from a Corporate sustainability perspective, control is critical, and I am pleased to announce our recent Gold certification from Ecovadis.

We achieved our aim last year of reaching 100,000 cloud seats and our FOCUS is now firmly on adding a further 50,000 through the course of 2021. In this month's Maintel Matters we showcase the tremendous deployment we have undertaken for Telegraph Media Group in conjunction with Avaya and RingCentral, a flagship win for our newest partnership.

We have continued to INVEST both time and resource with our customers and partners alike in our SD-WAN capability, investment that has been rewarded with several new contracts, two of which are showcased in this edition.

JD Sports has been a long standing Maintel customer and we are excited to be working with them on the deployment of a new SD-WAN into their ever-increasing retail empire, aiming to bring innovation and in-store theatre to their customer base.

I am also extremely proud of our partnership with Sanctuary Housing where we are engaged across their 800+ sites to support their employee's return to the offices as well as bringing improved customer experience to the residents of their care homes in this SD-WAN, LAN and WiFi project.

It's exciting times indeed and we would welcome the opportunity to talk to any of you about our capabilities to help you embrace digitalisation and drive innovation in what has been a hugely transformational 18 months.

If we can help, you can reach out to me by clicking here.

Key News

JD Sports partners with Maintel to deploy SD-WAN enabled future-proofed network to its European wide store estate

JD Sports Fashion plc, more commonly known as JD Sports, has partnered with Maintel, to deliver a future proofed SD-WAN enabled solution for its European wide store network.

The SD-WAN solution will enable JD Sports to improve performance with dynamic prioritisation of store and distribution centre applications as well as being able to quickly and effectively roll out new stores and services - whilst leveraging the widest range of underlay technologies. It will also help the company to enhance its omnichannel offering and personalise the customer experience by providing real in-store theatre.

JD Sports had previously engaged Maintel to upgrade its unified communications infrastructure due to increased capacity requirements and an ever-expanding store network, with a number of new store premises and acquisitions needing to be fully integrated into its network.

The SD-WAN solution provides for a software defined approach to managing JD Sports wide area networks, offering ease of deployment, centralised orchestration and improved visibility, ultimately helping improve connectivity to their stores, data centres and the cloud.

JD Sports is a sports-fashion retail company headquartered in Bury, Lancashire, England with stores throughout the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States, Asia, and Australia. It has over 50 high street brands under its umbrella including sports brands such as JD Sports, Footpatrol, Sprinter, and Sport Zone, premium fashion brands such as Scotts and Tessuti, along with outdoor retailers Blacks, Millets, Go Outdoors, and Ultimate Outdoors.

“Maintel speaks our language and has been our preferred IT supplier for more than 20 years, almost from the very start of our company. We see Maintel as an extension of our team, they understand our business and really care about what they are providing and bring real added value to every project delivered. The SD-WAN enabled network will be the heart and soul of everything we do - we wanted therefore to provide real retail theatre and we can only do this with an appropriate future proofed network. Maintel has helped provide this with the latest SD-WAN upgrade to our European wide store network – an update we felt was vital for us, as it will help improve store connectivity and access to the cloud, while also providing us with the flexibility that will enable the company to adapt to the rapidly changing demands of the retail sector.”

Barry Loftus, Group IT Director, JD Sports

“ As a long standing customer of ours we are very excited to be working with JD Sports on the deployment of a new SD-WAN enabled network for their ever growing retail estate. By providing a modern cloud-based SD-WAN network to help enhance their store connectivity and access to the cloud, this solution will help deliver innovation and in-store theatre to their customer base.”

Simon Ward, Group Sales and Marketing Director, Maintel

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Read the JD case study here

Maintel and Avaya enable Telegraph Media Group’s transition to the cloud with Avaya Cloud Office™

Maintel and Avaya have enabled The Telegraph Media Group (TMG), a leading publisher, to transition from an on-premise telephony solution to a cloud-based UCaaS platform using Avaya Cloud Office™ by RingCentral®.

TMG were previously utilising a PBX telephony system, which had limited functionality, particularly around the ability to add new users. Keen to move to a more flexible and efficient cloud telephony solution, TMG approached Maintel in conjunction with Avaya to support them in their transition.

As one of Maintel’s first customers for the Avaya Cloud Office UCaaS calling solution, Maintel helped migrate TMG’s business communications into the cloud for their London headquarters.

TMG have already started to realise key benefits from moving their voice solution into the cloud, which includes more functionality and cost savings on maintenance and support as well as freeing up time for the IT Team at TMG to focus on other areas of the business.

Simon Ward, Group Sales and Marketing Director, Maintel commented: “As a long standing customer of Maintel’s, and now our very first Avaya Cloud Office customer, we are very excited to have been able to help transition TMG to a cloud communications solution.”

Avaya Cloud Office helps to reduce cost and complexity while empowering workforces to call and connect across any device from wherever they are. Avaya Cloud Office also easily integrates business applications like Google Drive and Salesforce, making for a customisable true cloud unified communications experience - all under one simple app.

Steve Joyner, Managing Director UK & Ireland, Avaya responded: “TMG now have a fully functional, adaptable cloud phone system in Avaya Cloud Office -- A system that works where and how they want it to, enabling their employees to better communicate, call and engage more effectively across any device. This solution continues to deliver the benefits of cloud communications to more customers worldwide, and we are extremely pleased to see TMG adopt Avaya Cloud Office to meet their needs.”

Carol Johnson, IT Director, Telegraph Media Group added: "We at the Telegraph Media Group Ltd are pleased to be the first customer to implement the Avaya Cloud Office solution, partnering with Maintel."

Maintel achieves Gold certification level in the Ecovadis Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainable Procurement audit

We are very pleased to announce that Maintel has achieved Gold certification level in the Ecovadis Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainable Procurement audit. This puts us in the top 5% of companies audited by Ecovadis and above our industry standard in all areas.

These independent checks of our management systems across Environment, Labour and Human Rights, Ethics and Sustainable Procurement are undertaken on an annual review/audit basis.

Aside from the vendor specific accreditations held by Maintel we also currently maintain;

ISO45001 – Health and Safety international standard
ISO9001 – Quality international standard
ISO14001 – Environmental international standard
ISO27001 – Information Security international standard
PCI-DSS – Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (Limited to a specific scope)
CHAS SSIP – Safety schemes in procurement
Greenlight Safety – Safety schemes in procurement
Safe Contractor – Safety schemes in procurement and sustainability
Hellios FSQS – Financial Services Qualification System (Sustainability)
Ecovadis – Gold certificate in sustainability
Avetta – Sustainable procurement

Learn more about our Corporate Social Responsibility policies here.

Sanctuary awards Maintel contract to deliver
SD-WAN enabled network

Sanctuary, one of the UK’s leading social housing and care providers, has appointed Maintel, to deliver a future proofed SD-WAN enabled solution for its 800+ sites.

Sanctuary chose Maintel to help them move to an SD-WAN solution to deliver a secure, flexible network with the capacity to support the Group’s business goals.

As Sanctuary’s incumbent unified communications infrastructure solutions provider, Maintel has previously helped install and maintain a Mitel Unified Communications solution across its entire estate.

The new SD-WAN solution provides for a software defined approach to managing Sanctuary’s wide area networks, offering ease of deployment, centralised orchestration, and improved visibility, helping improve connectivity to their sites, data centres and for cloud provisioning.

By ensuring greater connectivity, Sanctuary’s use of Microsoft Teams will always be available, regardless of base location, and its workforce can become more mobile. What’s more, flexible, resilient WAN infrastructure ensures always-on capabilities with no downtime.

Sanctuary is one of the UK’s leading social landlords, with over 105,000 homes in England and Scotland.

Martyn Lucking, Group Head of Technology Operations at Sanctuary commented: “As our longstanding unified communications provider, we knew Maintel would be able to help us deliver an SD-WAN solution that would help us embrace our digital transformation needs.

“Some of the key pillars of our corporate strategy are technology and innovation, and we are determined to provide our staff and tenants with the tools and technology they need. By always having access to the very best connectivity, we can ensure that we remain ‘always-on’ – our staff can remain productive and reachable, no matter where they are based, and we are always available to serve our customers.”

Simon Ward, Group Sales and Marketing Director at Maintel, added: “Social housing providers are under increasing pressure; regulation has decreased rental rates and customer expectations continue to rise. Innovation has an important part to play in almost every aspect of the social housing operating model, from improving the tenant service experience, to driving operating efficiency, and enhancing employee engagement”.

“Maintel has worked with Sanctuary for a number of years, so we understand that it wants to provide the very best experience for its tenants, while also ensuring staff can remain as productive as possible. We believe that rolling out SD-WAN solutions across its 800+ sites will enable it do exactly that.”

To learn more click here.

The big WLR switch off – it’s happening now

BT has recently announced the closure of the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) by the end of 2025. This impacts a wide range of products, especially those that use Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) as all these will be removed from sale by 2023 in preparation for next generation services. If you have these services, you need to act quickly as exchanges are being phased out from now on. Fear not there are great benefits to be gained from migration to new fibre-based solutions, that will bring improved features, speed and can also reduce operating costs.

Is your business ready?

We recommend a thorough audit of your network to understand how many connections you have and of what type. Depending on the nature of your business, these could be anything from simple voice lines to DSL broadband or even building alarm circuits. Whatever affected services you have, there are a number of easy migration paths to ensure that your business is uninterrupted.

How will it affect you?

The shutdown may affect your organisation in more ways than you think. If you have ISDN, PSTN or DSL Broadband services you will need to migrate them to new digital alternatives. The complete closure will happen in 2025, however from now on services are gradually being withdrawn, so you should start your migration planning immediately.

What are the advantages of the new digital services?

The new services are highly resilient and integrate seamlessly with other next generation products. They are faster, more upgradeable and much better value. Additionally, this new high-speed connectivity gives you seamless access to the wider Maintel product portfolio, from digital workplace tools to secure networking and customer experience solutions.

At Maintel our experts are ready to help you prepare for the PSTN switch off and reduce your risk as you move to a digital future. We have a great portfolio of communications services to help drive operating efficiency, productivity and collaboration.

To learn more, get in touch with us today.

Maintel’s Three Pillars of Digital Transformation

Digital Workplace | Customer Experience | Secure Connectivity

Digital Workplace

Managed Services – there when you need them

By: Tom Gutteridge, Product Governance and Service Lead, Maintel

Cloud consumption, working from home, hybrid working, secure multicloud connectivity, and the explosion in rich IOT enabled services can see organisations feeling spoilt for choice when it comes to deciding where their focus should be around both strategic and tactical investment in information communication technology and services. For example, how do you plan and build for the future while maximising returns on past and present investments?

In all the myriad changes to working patterns that have taken place in the last eighteen months, many driven by government decree in response to the pandemic, but most actually enabled by technology, it's perhaps worth reflecting on the fact that one constant that has remained unchanged, is that your Managed Services Providers will have worked with you to facilitate many of the attendant changes to ensure your staff and your business have been able to carry on

working regardless. The relevance of this is that it highlights that Managed Services Providers (MSP) typically have to support business at every stage of the technology and service spectrum, from those perhaps sweating because their assets are well past their ideal replacement cycle, to those who may be sweating because they have invested in the very latest concepts so to speak. And this gives MSP’s critical advantage in helping customers both in building and

executing their information communication technology plans.

We can easily think of Managed Services as a traditional solution to premise based service delivery challenges, but in practice while the term may be long standing its importance in enabling business to securely connect their people to their customers, to their applications and to their colleagues, every time without fail and irrespective of where any of

them are located, has never been more relevant.

Whilst for many the pandemic has necessitated accelerating the adoption of work anywhere capabilities, the age-old challenges facing organisations haven’t changed, be it the need to avoid wrong choices and technology cul-de-sacs, ensuring regulatory compliance and governance, saving on capital expenditure, avoiding non-core operational costs, maximising ROI and

improving predictability of costs – all while delivering a customer experience that meets the organisations goals.

Maintel Managed Services continue to address these issues. We use our considerable market knowledge and design expertise to craft technology solutions utilising industry leading architecture that meets todays needs of our customers, but which we can be confident will offer adaptation and enhancement to accommodate future service models. We can deliver this technology ‘as a service’ or ‘wrapped in a service’ on the basis of concurrent availability with a full suite of support and analytic services that major on maximising uptime rather than responding to downtime.

Want to find out more? Click here

Customer Experience

How can we improve staff wellbeing?

By: John Jackson, Cloud Product Lead, Maintel

It is fair to say that life has become more difficult for everyone. COVID-19 has changed everything, and we have all had to adjust to new ways of living and working especially in a remote / distributed environment.

The pandemic means that more people are trying to get more information from organisations online or through Call Centres. Whether it is people looking for information about how COVID-19 impacts their business or personal

circumstances, trying to access insurance details or rebook their holidays. Call centre support has reached unprecedented levels. This stretches further call handling teams and will frustrate customers if response times are slow. If queues are allowed to build over a period, this will not only lead to an increase in complaints, but also potentially significant reputational and regulatory impacts for businesses or organisations.

Overcoming changing environments

On the flip side home working has increased flexibility for staff. However, although commutes are non-existent or at least less stressful, it has driven heightened stress levels in different ways. Agents are not able to be in their usual buildings with their PCs and companies struggle to support technology remotely. Also, although teams can work from home, they lack expertise to deliver remotely day-to-day.

This can also impact customers, create regulatory headaches and incomplete processes whilst the delays build-up.

This can also massively impact on the mental wellbeing of staff, with customers being more demanding as they expect greater amounts of information and support. The increased demand, sense of isolation, distractions in the home environment and large increase in abuse incidents experienced over the pandemic all affect the

mental resilience of staff, which is hard to manage remotely.

How can the employer help?

Employers are finding it difficult to detect mood changes in employees as people’s emotions are much harder to read remotely. This hinders early intervention for supervisors and managers who previously could step in much earlier when they see deteriorating performance or wellbeing.

Sadly, many companies although quick to roll out technology to support remote working, have been slower to look at technology and programs to check on staff wellbeing and offer training and advice on working remotely, as well as ways to motivate staff effectively. The upshot of this means that staff are unable to cope, and burnout is common. In a recent study 91% of Call centre staff are likely to leave their jobs * which has huge ramifications for businesses.

Technology Challenges

Although technology has allowed so many to work from home it does have its challenges. We have all experienced poor connectivity over broadband at some point or slowness in accessing customer information to resolve their queries. Video has also been a challenge with many experiencing security breaches when interacting with customers.

Making home working better

A successful transformation to home working requires much more than technology, operations, or facilities considerations. It is a bigger employee experience challenge, where you must think more specifically about staff wellbeing. The pandemic and recent lockdowns have meant call centres are booming as they help companies deal with an unprecedented number of calls.

Maintel is here to support you with your contact centre needs quickly and efficiently. We have the solutions to improve your Call centre and drive both efficiency and cost savings, but also to discuss technology that improves the experience of Home Working, including the wellbeing of your staff.

During the pandemic, we have successfully transitioned thousands to a remote working model, and we are here to help you deliver and manage a model tailored to your needs.

*Agent wellbeing research report February 2021 by Enghouse Interactive

Want to learn more? Then please click here

Secure Connectivity

Zero Trust – who do we trust? No one!

By: Robert Smith, Product Manager, Security, Maintel

How times have changed. It seems only a few weeks ago when we had all our application safe and sound behind our corporate firewall. The castle was safe, and the moat was full. If we wanted to connect into the corporate network, we had a simple VPN service (with a simple password so we didn’t forget it).

Then along came these cloud services. They sounded great. We don’t need to manage the infrastructure anymore and we can access them from anywhere. Great. Then public

cloud started growing, Azure, Google, AWS. Move your applications to us they said. Improve productivity and availability. They sounded great! But did we consider the security implications?

We are now living in the new norm. Work anywhere, anytime and on any device. It’s what we expect. Security is the thing that someone else does. We don’t need to worry about that.

And then it went wrong. We learned that someone had been in the network, got

access to our customers information, offered it for sale on the black web (whatever that is), locked our machines and applications and demanded money to unlock them. Queue that panic call to a cyber security specialist. Help us!

Then the hours of restoring backups, trying to find out what went wrong, what customer data was lost. The phone calls to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) to notify them that there’d been a breech. The fear of fines – up to 4% of annual turnover.

The fear of our customers taking us to court in class action suites. The fear of our company going into administration.

The way we protect our data has never been more important. Data privacy is now so important that it’s created a new role on the board, the Chief Privacy Officer (CPO). And the CPO is talking about trust, zero trust and what it means. Luckily, we have guidance to help explain the basics.

A zero-trust solution is built upon five fundamental assertions:

The network is always assumed to be hostile.
External and internal threats exist on the network at all times.
Network locality is not sufficient for deciding trust in a network.
Every device, user, and network flow is authenticated and authorised.
Policies must be dynamic and calculated from as many sources of data as possible.

But with our applications scattered across multi cloud environments and our employees, contractors, customers requiring access from anywhere, implementing a zero-trust architecture is no easy feat. This is where the role of the MSP (Managed Service Provider) comes in. We are the people that research this, find the latest innovations, technologies, vendors and suppliers, and bring them together in one place. We bring the experts to the table and work with you to define your strategy, design the solution and provide the safe pair of hands to continue to manage, improve and evolve your solution, keeping you and your data secure.

If you are worried about data privacy and want to ensure your valuable data is protected, come and speak to us.

Click here to find out more

Product and Services Update

Product news in brief

Genesys Cloud

We are very excited to announce the launch of Genesys Cloud, a suite of cloud services for enterprise-grade communications, collaboration, and contact centre management.

Genesys provides a one cloud solution, giving a more seamless experience and complementing our Callmedia CX Now solution. Aimed at customers who are looking to digitise their channels but are also looking for a more comprehensive suite of features than Callmedia CX Now can provide today.

Meraki

We are pleased to announce that we have made further enhancements to our Meraki SDWAN portfolio. Providing a more comprehensive set of options as part our wider SD WAN portfolio, we can now offer this as a fully managed service with co-manage options.

Secure Homeworker

The development of the Cisco Viptela solution that underpins our Secure Homeworker product has now been completed. This service offering includes ICON Connect for SoHo’s (small office, home office) based on Cisco Viptela SD-WAN, Cyber Security tools to protect the user’s endpoint devices, and Secure Cloud to protect their internet access and securely connect them to their SaaS cloud applications.

In addition, Meraki provides additional Secure Homeworker options. As well as MX series we have the Z3, which provides a lower-cost entry Teleworker solution. Coupled with a basic Umbrella license, the Z3 offers a simple yet effective solution to help customers who are looking to better manage the risk, performance, management and visibility of employees working remotely, but who don’t have the budget or advanced requirements to justify a Viptela based option.

Contact for us here for further details

Product news in brief (continued)

ICON Teams Connector enhancements

We have recently delivered a new iteration of ICON Teams Connector, offering customers the ability to have a single dial plan and shared carrier SIP Trunks that integrate across our different platforms. This includes Microsoft Teams, ICON private cloud services, Callmedia CX now, and other on-site PBX’s systems, using a shared carrier SIP solution that utilises the investment made in our central ICON session border controllers, which will also provide short dialing. We will also be looking at adding call recording to our next update.

ICON Now – Call recording

The new recording module for our ICON Now product, our cloud communications service providing cloud telephony, unified communications, conferencing, and collaboration tool, will now use ASC omnichannel call recording software.

This completes the product to give us an enterprise cloud-based solution for our customers. This simplifies the offering and makes it easier to use. ASC also provides for e-learning, coaching and emotion detection. In addition, this release offers a further enhancement to the ICON Analytics module with a refresh of the user interface and administration tools. Finally, the commercial module has also been updated to a more consumption-based model.

Contact for us here for further details

Product news in brief (continued)

Callmedia CX Now

We are very delighted to announce several new features to Callmedia CX Now, our Contact Centre Solution. These include:

Agent on-screen task alerting
Email management functionality within the Web Desktop browser-based client
Integration with Red Box Call recording, to provide a more feature-rich call recording option than the usual ‘out of the box’ native call recording
SIP/Dial Plan Integration, with several back office Unified Communications Platforms including, amongst others, our own ICON Now and ICON Teams Connector services, legacy on prem PBX estates.

As we continue to develop our capability, we will also build up a comprehensive set of alternative bolt-on options and features, so please watch this space for further updates.

To learn more why not come and visit us at the virtual Call and Contact Centre Summit, 30th June - 1st July register here.

Call and Contact Centre Summit

Contact us here to learn more

Customer Spotlight: JD Sports

Find out how Maintel supported JD Sports

JD Sports Fashion plc, more commonly known as JD Sports, has partnered with Maintel, to deliver a future proofed SD-WAN enabled solution for its European wide store network.

Read the case study in full by clicking here

Maintel in Social Housing

Vertical: Social Housing

Is technology Social Housing organisation’s silver bullet?

The strain on the UK social housing sector continues to grow, fuelled by rising homelessness. In England, the latest figures showed 68,680 households approached councils for support between July and September 2020. Providers find themselves under growing pressure from all sides, as regulation has also decreased rental rates and customer expectations continue to rise.

The pandemic has also caused a shake-up in the social housing sector. Providers have been forced to move to a remote working model, creating agility with technology solutions to allow employees to work from home. There has also been an increased focus on Improving tenant engagement via digital service delivery, using innovative and emerging technologies. Gartner predict this will be an ongoing trend, as demand for digital products and services is expected to grow by 7% in 2021.

While some in the industry are further along in their digital transformation journey, across the board organisations are beginning to realise the value technology can add. It now has an important part to play in almost every aspect of the social housing operating model, from improving the tenant service experience, to driving operating efficiency, and enhancing employee engagement.

In particular, there are four keyways in which technology can help add value to housing organisations:

1. Everyone’s a winner: Improving the tenant experience

Tenants now expect as keen a focus on customer experience and value from their social housing experience, as they would from other common commercial transactions. From enquiries to service provision, expectations are increasing.

The experience must be easy, informative, and available through a range of contact channels, as failure to quickly handle enquiries can result in dissatisfaction. Tenants expect both quality accommodation services and the ability to easily contact their provider.

Ensuring digital inclusion must be central to social housing providers’ customer service transformation plans. However, this mustn’t come at the expense of social inclusion. While it is important that providers implement the digital products and services which will drive greater customer service. They must at the same time issues around the opportunity, access, knowledge and skill in relation to using technology. This not only improves their experience, but it also helps tenants with employment and educational opportunities.

All social housing interactions, whether searching for new accommodation, paying the rent, or getting the plumber to fix a leaky tap, must be easily accessible and effectively handled. Innovative technology can help transform the tenant service experience and enable a greater number of enquiries to be resolved. Leveraging call centre technology enables tenant interactions to be managed seamlessly and efficiently via multiple channels and ensures that the most appropriate person responds to that enquiry. This is a win-win for providers as it also drives down their cost to serve.

2. Enhance employee engagement

Social housing providers typically collaborate with many different agencies and are dependent on good communications to operate efficiently and provide a quality public service. Making sure your employees are engaged, flexible, and digitally enabled is key to maximising their satisfaction.

Attracting the right staff is also becoming increasingly difficult. Therefore, providers also need to be mindful that they are selling themselves to prospective employees. By providing easy access to information and collaboration tools, they can significantly improve the workplace experience to achieve this.

The latest technology can help to improve staff morale, increase motivation, and enhance productivity by relieving employees from repetitive tasks and automating processes. Paperless systems, automated reminders and online payments all give social housing staff more time to focus on the important parts of their job. Resolving basic enquiries using AI chatbots and prioritising urgent calls, also ensures that non-urgent customer requests can be handled without human intervention. Scale communications with large numbers of tenants can also be handled efficiently by automated systems, meaning that the employees are not overwhelmed by a high number of enquiries.

Engaged, productive, and digitally enabled employees are key to delivery of a quality service and therefore enhancing employee engagement is essential.

3. Balancing information security and availability

Social housing providers capture and store a lot of personal information, so any loss of data is more than just bad news – it can have serious reputational consequences. Prioritising protection for your organisation from today’s vulnerabilities and against tomorrow’s cyber-threats is vital. Consequently, network security, intrusion protection, and virus threat management are important considerations for all organisations.

There is a balance to be struck between locking-down sensitive data and making information available to provide quality tenant services. Technology has a critical role to play in permitting legitimate use, whilst preventing malicious access. Embracing cloud technology and the power of data should be a top priority for social housing providers who want to strike the balance between data availability and security.

4. Drive operational productivity

Rent regulation has reduced operational income in real terms. Consequently, organisations need to maximise efficiency in order to provide a quality service whilst optimising costs. Ensuring the optimal blend of innovative and cost-effective technology can help drive operational efficiency.

Technological innovation can add value to all aspects of service provision, from keeping operational costs low by automating interactions, to providing omni-channel customer service, and consolidating communication infrastructure. Technology solutions can help providers continue to provide excellent tenant services whilst delivering maximum operational productivity and optimising costs.

There is no let off for the social housing sector. Tightening budgets and the potential of a pandemic related recession could heighten the pressure on providers further. Consequently, to remain efficient, engaging, and competitive, housing authorities should be looking to digital technologies such as the cloud.

To learn more about the benefits of Cloud Technology for the Social Housing sector, view our on demand webinar here

To find out more about how Maintel can help you with your digital transformation click here.

How do we best equip hybrid workers with the right skills, tools and training?

There are some jobs you can’t do from home. Yet for the last year or so, many of us have been doing jobs that once would have been seen as impossible from the comfort of a house, flat or cafe. One year on from the UK’s first national lockdown, businesses are preparing for a potentially freer future and a general return to the office. For many, however, it won’t be business as was usual.

Many organisations will pursue a model of hybrid working – comprised of a group of employees working from home collaborating with each other and employees in the office or on the factory floor, with many of these users frequently changing their location of work on a weekly or even daily basis. Of course, making this new system work in the long term will require additional technology and physical infrastructure in the workplace, not just to uphold worker productivity but to ensure their safety and security as well.

Reach for the Cloud

It’s clear now that businesses stuck in the past – in terms of technology and perspective – will struggle in this new hybrid working environment. Indeed, 30% of employees say they will likely change jobs if their employer can’t provide a flexible working environment. What’s more, 64% of customers are willing to leave the businesses they work with if they fail to keep up with their needs. A business, therefore, has to be more forward-looking, able to see disruption coming and anticipate how customer and business needs will change. Yet, they also then need the flexibility and agility to adapt their business to what’s coming down the line.

To achieve this foresight and agility, businesses need to digitalise across a range of business processes. But what does ‘digitalisation’ mean in this context? It means leveraging the latest digital technologies to drive clear business benefits. In the current climate, the most important things for businesses to improve across all processes are speed and efficiency – particularly when it comes to accessing information.

Whether they are on-site or working from home, getting hold of company data has long been a major bugbear for employees. Pervasive silos

disrupt workflow and make all parts of an organisation run slower. But if hybrid working is to succeed, it’s crucial that all employees have immediate access to the same pool of high quality, centralised company data.

Over the past year, businesses have made massive strides in ensuring remote workers have greater access to company data, but many on-site personnel have sadly been left behind. Only 38% of frontline workers think they use existing applications and software effectively, and that 86 per cent of employers think they need better tech-enabled insight. These workers can’t effectively work together if they don’t have access to the same information.

Working in a streamlined, integrated environment will reduce complexity and improve staff productivity. The Cloud, therefore, is an ideal location to store company data. Unburdened by on-premise infrastructure, businesses can seamlessly move data across their business and share with employees, customers and partners regardless of time or location. Furthermore, storing data in the cloud also helps prepare a company for the future. Emerging technologies like AI and machine learning require an immense amount of information and compute power, but integrated data helps a company adopt and feed new technologies more quickly.

There’s security in simplicity

Improving access to data for remote and on-site workers will do much to bolster collaboration and productivity in the hybrid enterprise. But what about security? A hybrid workforce can be difficult to monitor and protect when they only spend a limited amount of time on the secure corporate network. An attack can come from anywhere – customer data can easily go amiss whenever its saved to an employee’s machine that they only occasionally bring into the office. Similarly, once malware gains a foothold in one part of the business (say, an employee’s work laptop), it’s much easier for it to move adjacently into other parts of the company network.

To combat this lack of data visibility, strong data management policies need to be put in place and enforced for everyone. This means staff know exactly what is available to them, and where it sits within the business. Extra precautions – such as multi-factor authentication, secure web gateways and zero-trust systems – should also be utilised to ensure only those who really need it have access to highly sensitive company data.

Alongside these policies, companies should also leverage cloud technologies that provide visibility across many different environments. It may seem counterintuitive to have all data accessible from a single system, but if implemented correctly the Cloud is a very secure platform. What’s more, the visibility it provides can give precious information on an attack in progress. Businesses may also want to invest in automation tools that help staff locate the data they need faster, alongside more traditional end-point defence tools, such as anti-virus and device posture.

A large-scale return to the office may be attractive for many businesses, but a hybrid model of working can be just as safe and successful. Companies should chart their own path out of lockdown, but it’s important not to forget the digital lessons of the pandemic. The Cloud when planned, implemented and managed correctly provides a secure but easily accessible environment that can augment operations and capitalise on recent productivity gains far into the future. People are a business’s most precious asset, so it’s crucial they can work on a platform that’s able to scale with their ideas and ambitions.

Events

Catch up with the latest industry insights

Key Considerations for Multicloud Connectivity
30th June | Webinar

Moving from traditional data centres to cloud services can significantly reduce capital expenditures and ensure that operating expenses are aligned with evolving business needs. Find out how in this exclusive webinar.

Call and Contact Centre Summit
30th June - 1st July | Virtual event

We’re proud to announce that we will be sponsors of the Virtual/ Work From Anywhere Technologies Theatre at the Call and Contact Centre Summit. This event showcases the latest and most effective technologies, strategies and advancements to call and contact centre professionals and those in IT, general management, HR, marketing and operations who are looking to excel in customer engagement.

The Healthcare Innovation and Technology show
Wednesday 7th July | Virtual event

Maintel is pleased to announce that we will be sponsoring the Healthcare Innovation and Technology Show. A virtual event that will explore the transition to preventative and personalised medicine to find innovative ways of managing growing demand from an ageing population and an increased prevalence of chronic diseases, against a backdrop of an unheralded pandemic.

Powering the future home office for Lawyers
Duration: 45 minutes

Join us for a 45-minute session where we delve into a variety of ideas and solutions which are crucial to get right, in order to transform the way legal professionals are able to provide a greater service to their clients.

Watch now

That's a Wrap!

We hope you have enjoyed reading our mid year edition of Maintel Matters.

Should you have any questions regarding any of the content covered here please do not hesitate to reach out to us.

You can contact us here.