27/06/05: Even in
this world of email, online transactions and instant
messaging, voice communication underpins every aspect
of business – from receiving customer orders
to chasing unpaid bills. Yet companies are failing
to consider the value of their telephony system within
their Business Continuity planning process.
Telecoms protection is almost
a blind spot in the planning of many businesses
- as was highlighted by the 2005 Annual Business
Continuity Survey - and with only 2% of businesses
considering telecommunication protection in their
strategies, a blind reliance on telephones will
no longer suffice. Yet, addressing this problem
is not a formidable task; launching its business
continuity solutions BCM/BCMLITE, GemaTech offers
an instantaneous and seamless recovery of incoming
telephone calls should a disaster strike.
Graham Chick, Chief Executive,
GemaTech, explains, “In an increasingly edgy
economy, no organisation can afford a glitch in
service – whatever the cause. “Business
as Usual” is essential if customers are to
retain faith in an organisation’s ability
to deliver, on time and to contract; without continual
access to a telephone, businesses are unlikely
to survive.”
GemaTech provides a robust and
resilient solution that offers continual communication;
if a problem occurs with the telephone connection,
calls are automatically directed from the sanctity
of the local exchange, at which point powerful
rerouting software is used to forward calls on
an individual DDI basis to individuals in any location.
Chick continues, “The lack
of focus on telecoms is perhaps understandable – the
phone service is highly reliable; indeed the carriers’ exchanges
are, by Ofcom Regulation, 99.999% reliable. But
not so the connection between the local exchange
and the customer’s premises running underneath
the pavement these cables are now fighting for
space with a multiplicity of other services, and
increasingly prone to accidental fracture. Furthermore,
with every component of the telephony system dependent
upon power, an outage will not only bring down
the IT systems but the telephony network too.”
While the carriers can only offer
call recovery to the caller for the more expensive
non-geographic numbers, gematech provides businesses
with a totally unique but cost effective business
continuity solution that delivers a seamless transfer
of geographic DDI numbers to a range of pre-programmed,
event dependent locations, from home to branch
offices to mobiles.
In any situation, it is essential
that the personalisation associated with DDI numbers
is not lost if customer confidence and quality
of service is to be retained. While it is often
expedient to transfer multiple DDI numbers from
incoming callers to replacement members of staff
or out-sourced call handing facilities following
an invocation, an organisation can keep the personalisation
by playing one of up to a hundred recorded messages
and flagging up the name associated with the DDI
to all appointed recipients of the re-routed calls.
Chick concludes, “The phone’s
reliability has become its Achilles heel. It is
an invaluable yet invisible business tool and,
as a result, few businesses even take the time
to consider the implications of lost voice communications.
And yet the cost to business is severe. Several
thousands of pounds and a loss of customer reputation
later, a business continuity strategy and solution
for the telephony network is suddenly top priority,
so why pay for it twice?”
About
GemaTech:
GemaTech designs and develops products and solutions which deliver
telephony business continuity and secure voice recording by obviating
telecommunication failure and aiding dispute resolution respectively.
GemaTech
has over 10 years expertise in developing niche
applications for the telecommunications industry.
Founded in 1995, and headquartered in Guernsey,
GemaTech also has operations in Basingstoke,
and San Diego.
GemaTech
specialise in delivering cost effective, scaleable
solutions ensuring that organisations, large
or small, can benefit from the deployment of
GemaTech’s innovative technology delivering
measurable and quantifiable returns on investment.
GemaTech’s
unique business continuity products and services
are capable of ensuring the instantaneous, seamless
and total recovery of 100% of an organisation’s
incoming calls, the lifeblood of any company,
by intelligently re-directing any number of individual
DDIs to any number of alternative destinations – and
activated in seconds after an invocation.
GemaTech’s
secure voice recording product, available as
an additional module to enhance the business
continuity products, enables all re-routed calls
to be call recorded, as well as a stand alone
product delivering a number of unique features
including dual channel or “stereo” recording
of all calls, ideal for dispute resolution.
GemaTech
has customers across many vertical sectors, including
financial services, banking and insurance and
the travel industry. Some of GemaTech’s
key customers include, Travel Councellors, Regency
Mortgage Brokers, Kudos Research, Access Accounting,
Message Labs, Ultimate Insurance and Richmond
Corporate Services.
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