Due to the success of our specific Samsung telephone system buy-back scheme that ran last year we’ve decided to extend it to apply to ANY make, model of phone system!

So, what does this mean? It’s simple…if you purchase a new telephone system from Digital Exchange we will buy-back your old system, irrelevant of its make and model.

We’re offering up to £800* for your old system, which would be used to help fund the purchase of a new system from ourselves.

Please contact us to discuss your requirements and to obtain a non-obligatory quote.

* Price may vary dependant on the age of the system we’re buying back.

 Now our Technical team is at fighting force we’re on the lookout
for people who’re at the top of their game in the following roles…

Telemarketing:

Are you tenacious, professional, capable and driven? Yes, then
this might just be for you. We require people who can consistently generate new
business opportunities for IT Support from SMB’s regionally.

A competitive salary and bonus scheme will reward success, so to
be considered please email us a copy
of your CV explaining why you’re the best.

Candidates must have at least 2 years of prior telemarketing/appointment-setting
experience.

Internal Sales:

The same personality attributes apply here as they do above, but
this time we’re searching for track-recorded sales people who can join the team
with a deep desire to convert sales opportunities in to actual business. The
focus will be on IT support contracts, but our entire portfolio will be there
for you to make the most of.

Competitive salary bolstered with an un-capped commission
structure is yours for the taking, but that’s for you to convince us of. Please
send us a copy of your CV via email, and at
the same time detail why you’re most suited to this role.

Candidates must have at least 2 years of prior
phone-based sales experience.

Send your CV and supporting information to info@thedigitalgroup.co.uk

It’s been a busy few months here at Digital, and we’re pleased to say that our search for a Technical Manager has come to an end. So, congratulations to Steve Harper for his promotion from Field IT Engineer to the position of Technical Manager.

We’d also like to congratulate Dave Parsons who’s been promoted from Tech Support to Field Engineer, specialising in Microsoft-based IT Networking, Digital Dictation and Swyx IP-Telephony.

Dave’s promotion left an opening on our Tech Support Desk, which has since been filled by Nicky Mason who joins us this month to strengthen the support we provide to customers. Welcome on-board Nicky.

With an expanded Technical team we’re pushing on with our steady growth plans…onwards!

With an expanded Technical team we’re pushing on with our steady growth plans…onwards!

Unified Communocations is without doubt the future of telecoms irrelevvant of the size or nature of your business, and Digital Exchange can offer hosted or CPE (Customer Premises Equpment) solutions to help your organisation operate more effectivley.

Don’t take our word for it; read the BBC news article below that was featured on http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14825020 earlier this month:

You’re sitting in the office with a client on the phone, ready to make the deal of your career.

They are ready to invest heavily in a shipment of your new and improved flux capacitor – a sale equivalent to the GDP of a medium sized African nation.

If you can clinch this you’ll be wearing a jet pack to fly up the greasy pole.

But the client wants to know if they can be delivered in three days – and he has to know now or he will go elsewhere. You need to find out if Bob in despatch can handle it.

But Bob isn’t answering the phone and you don’t know where he is, or who else may be able to help you.

Your dreams of early retirement on your yacht in the Caribbean slip away into the ether.

Is there anything that could have avoided this?

Well, if the hype is to be believed, unified communications (UC) may have saved the day.

Tech Talk

Jargon like this can seem daunting to those uninitiated in the dark arts of IT and telephony.

But what it actually means is bringing together all of the communication tools you use on a daily basis – phone, email, messaging, even video conferencing and social media – and running them from a single platform.

This should allow you to see where your staff are, if they’re available, if a colleague can help instead – in the office and also when they’re on the move – all from one simple interface.

You can then choose how you contact staff and customers.

Dial It In

Lebara provides low-cost international telephone calls.

At their contact centre in the City of London they expect to handle around 5m calls over the next year.

UC and a niche contact centre package is crucial to their customer services says Rodney Sheriff, Lebara’s head of customer service.

“We like to think of ourselves as best in class from a customer service perspective. ”

Having an integrated service means that the customer service centre is integrated with the back office operation.

“We can route customers calls to the best person to deal with their enquiries.

“We can leave messages for common-place queries so people can get fast access to that information, and if there is a problem it becomes very visible to us.

“The suite gives us instantaneous reporting so we can easily see that marketing, for example, have sent a message that’s been misunderstood by our callers, we can see a spike in calls in literally seconds, and we can respond right away.”

When agents aren’t busy, they can be redirected to customer courtesy calls, through a sophisticated “blended dialer” system. Customers can give feedback on the experience, and Lebara are able to analyse call data to make sure they have enough agents serving each country they operate in.

Matt Kemp is head of operations for customer services and he says that contrary to expectations, the system is easy to use.

“One of the beauties of the system is that I can probably train anyone to record a message and put it on in 10 minutes.”

“If we have a major issue we can get a message on there immediately.”

An industry specialist says this niche use of UC is just one of many.

“If you think about the different elements of UC, and you apply it to a business scenario here at Lebara, you have a front office and back office operation that need to be tightly integrated.

“If you have elements of the business that aren’t integrated, you end up with an ineffective way of dealing with customers, and perhaps a cultural set-up within the company that doesn’t allow you to be as flexible as you would like.”

Mr Moulton believes that the principles of UC can be applied to most businesses.

“If you think about the average day for the knowledge worker in any organisation – the things they have to process on an average day – email, voicemail, team meetings, collaboration, messaging, all of these things are now pretty prevalent on every employees desktop and they also by and large exist on mobile phones.

“If you want teams to be as productive and collaborative as they can be then you need to give them a common set of tools and applications to use on a daily basis, and these should integrate as seamlessly as possible with their telephony systems and messaging systems.”

Choices, Choices

There are no shortage of UC options – Microsoft, Cisco and Swyx are just some of the big names to choose from.

BT offers its own service, and also works with a range of UC providers.

“We think of ourselves as the great integrators,” says Steve Masters, head of global unified communications.

For him, collaboration is the key benefit of a UC system.

“It’s really about bringing your organisation far closer together, the ability to then extend that externally and have greater communications and collaboration with your partners.”

He acknowledges that cost can be a big consideration for smaller businesses.

“That market and the corporate markets are very different.

“They’re diametrically opposed almost. The corporate world views UC as a way of saving money, because there will be so much cost involved in running all these disparate systems.”

For a big multinational one factor is being able to move away from using the different technologies provided in different countries by telecoms providers.

“It’s not unknown for organisations to have voicemail systems in the hundreds across their organisations.

“So there there’s a need to move to a UC one to get better collaboration in the organisation but also to drive cost down in the business.

Mr Masters says that for a small single office operation however, the costs could be prohibitive with limited return on that investment.

He sees video as the next big growth area for the market.

“The analysts are all predicting great things for video over the next three years.

“When people are working remotely you can really enrich the dynamics of a remote meeting through having video.”

Changing Minds

Duncan Clark is UC specialist with analysts Canalys. He says although UC is nothing new, consumerisation – the drive from people inside companies to have technology that mirrors what they use at home – is changing perspectives.

“I guess people think of consumerisation in terms of people bringing in their own devices or going on the internet and using their own tools, I think it runs much deeper than that it’s actually the whole experience that people expect from their workplace that

“I think that’s what’s changed, and what’s really changing the focus, making UC more marketable to a wider audience.”

For companies considering adopting the technology, he says that cost doesn’t have to be a barrier.

“The beauty of UC is that it’s not necessary that you take the whole package, and I think that’s the thing that gets misunderstood.

“You don’t have to implement everything, it’s about saying what tools do I need to make the business work.”

“The reality is UC can make a huge difference but it’s something that’s difficult to measure in real terms.”

But he does have a few words of warning.

“The key thing for businesses is to really get the background information. I think there’s a severe lack of understanding about what the different aspects of UC will actually bring to your business.

“For example, you may think that video conferencing will bring benefits, but when you actually deploy it you find people aren’t using it.

“You need to look at what specific solution you choose, and how you implement it and use it in the business.”

Contact Digital Exchange to see how Unified Communications can benefit your business.

We’re pleased to announce the launch of our buy-back scheme relating to new Samsung telephone system purchases.

If your organisation has an existing Samsung phone system, and you’re considering its replacement or upgrade to a current-generation Samsung solution, we will buy back the old system for up to £800*, which would be used to help fund the purchase of a new system from ourselves.

Please contact us to discuss your requirements and to obtain a non-obligatory quote.

* Price may vary dependant on the model of the existing Samsung system we are buying back.

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Digital Exchange welcomes on board Gemma Jeffries who joined the team last week in the role of Sales Support.

Gemma has a strong background in technology, in particular telecommunications having spent a number of years managing customers throughout the region.

Primarily Gemma will be responsible for day-to-day customer service and on-going supported client requirements.

Digital’s never knowingly under sold policy extends itself to voice & data network cable installations, so contact us on 0800 073 1701 or email info@thedigitalgroup.co.uk to discuss your requirements.

Our in-house team of installation engineers are qualified in the design, implementation, termination & test of Category-6, Category-5e, Optical Fibre and Copper-based networks, and what’s more all our structured cabling come with operational guarantees of up to 25 years.

We’d be delighted to survey your building free of charge; either for additions to an existing network, a new network altogether, or even dilapidations relating to cabling removal.

Using sophisticated testing equipment we’re able to retrospectively trouble-shoot and fix issues with cable networks that have been installed previously by a 3rd-party.

So, to take advantage of our Price Promise, and for an unrivalled installation process, please call 0800 073 1701 or email info@thedigitalgroup.co.uk.

For more information about our cabling products & service visit www.thedigitalgroup.co.uk/it/network-cabling.

Digital Exchange is pleased to extend an offer we ran during 2010, plus announce a new one. Both are shown below and will be available whilst ever this notice is visible.

• IT Support. 12 months support for the price of 9. Let Digital Exchange become your own IT Department. On-site and remote IT support of your IT network.*
• Free Telephone System Installation. Offer applies to all new telephone systems purchased from Digital Exchange Ltd. **

Interested? Call us on 0800 073 1701, or email sales@thedigitalgroup.co.uk for more information.

* Offer relates to new IT support contracts only. The client pays nothing for the first 3 months of a 12 month contract. The remaining 9 months are payable monthly, or upfront on account (subject to credit check). Offer excludes IT hardware & software replacement (hardware & software that can’t be fixed, and instead requires replacement).

** Offer relates to all new telephone systems purchased from Digital Exchange Ltd. Offer excludes i) moves & changes to existing telephone systems, ii) new network cabling & cabling accessories, and iii) travel and accommodation required per project. 

If you’re registered on www.linkedin.com please join our group, Superfast Broadband, by clicking here.

This group is focused on Digital Region internet connectivity, which will deliver the following benefits to users throughout South Yorkshire:

In technical terms Digital Region is geared around the development of a Next Generation Access Broadband network, ubiquitously across South Yorkshire.

The key differences from today’s technology are :

Optical fibre will carry broadband and telephone traffic from the telephone exchange to the end of your street instead of copper wire.

The latest technology in telephone exchanges designed to carry data (e.g. internet traffic, etc) rather than purely voice traffic.

This allows much greater bandwidth to premises. It enables a guaranteed bandwidth, rather than an ‘up to….’, which is critical for the multiple applications now used across connectivity in general. It enables more symmetry (i.e. download speeds can be closer matched to upload speeds) – this is critical for the enhanced video/teleconferencing applications which are to become more standard.

The Digital region network can also provide advanced applications, such as –

Remote data storage
Online GP surgery
IP-CCTV
Working from home
Enhanced video conferencing
Virtual shopping
Virtual classroom
Interactive customer service