Matt Wright, Author at SCG Connected

Evaluating new service providers within education is a very difficult and time-consuming process. With that in mind, our Education Product Specialist, Alice O’Shea, has put together some valuable insights for Trusts who are looking at procurement frameworks and tenders for VoIP (hosted telephony)/IT services.

Having spent a lot of time writing and responding to tenders within educational establishments myself, I want to highlight a few points of concern that need to be addressed and shared. Often when it comes to an overhaul of technical services, so many fundamental things are missed which then cost a great deal of time and money. Budgets are tight, and for most schools if the annual budget is not spent, you may get less the next year which isn’t ideal when you need to make the switch to VoIP.

So, how should your Trust ‘Be More Prepared’ for going out to tender?

The importance of site surveys

Site surveys are vital! Imagine going through the tender process and realising that all your requirements are wrong when you have already agreed on a cost model. Pricing discounts agreed with suppliers are based on the quantities authorised. If there is a decrease, the rates per handset/extension will increase. I often see handset requirements that are wildly inaccurate; this is because the right questions haven’t been flagged internally.  Sometimes schools require less handsets or bigger quantities, so you need to consider the following:

1. Do I have a budget for additional cabling and data points to be installed?

2. What is my current solution, and how many handsets do I currently have vs how many do I actually need?

3. Do I have a senior leadership/head office team that need to be contactable at all times who require softphone capabilities?

4. Do I have a dedicated emergency plan that is linked to my communications platform? If so, how does it work, and can I enact a lockdown/invacuation externally from the playground/sports hall etc (why pay between £10,000 to £20,000 towards tannoy systems when you can receive this dedicated service through a VoIP Platform, unless there is a requirement to split it)? Can this be used in the event of a lockdown, and can it support children on EHCP care plans should there be a medical emergency?

Contract expiry dates

Make sure you are aware of when your contracts expire. I’ve seen so many commitments made via schools who are not aware they are still in contract, and as a result have hefty termination fees. Once you sign with a new supplier, you also have to adhere to their terms of service where live dates are agreed; I’ve seen a rise in double payments to two different suppliers because there was no due diligence in the first place. I have also seen a rise in company bases being acquired by bigger outfits and issuing a new contract whilst the schools remain oblivious. Don’t be afraid to have those conversations with Ofcom if your existing suppliers are playing hardball!

1. Tell your existing supplier that you will be going out to tender.

2. Find out what your termination dates are, and if all those services line up. All too often you will quickly see that if you have added additional lines or extensions over the years, this will have extended your contract term.

3. Always ask for access to your portal with a supplier when you are looking at a multisite solution. This enables you to compare your existing lines and services, and what’s being billed vs what is live. You may have extensions, services for alarms or lift lines that you have already migrated but are still being charged for.

The next steps

Once you have completed the above, it’s time to ask yourself these further questions.

1. What are your main points of focus for communication? These could include:

  • Risk reduction.
  • Policy compliance and support.
  • Emergency planning and lockdown procedures.
  • Time management and efficiency improvement.
  • Accessibility and productivity enhancement.
  • Support for the welfare of children and staff.
  • Alarms and safety measures.
  • Safeguarding children & staff.

2. What features do I need to include, and is the solution built with what matters most to my School? Potential features include:

  • Security lockdown for intruder alerts.
  • Paging alerts for emergencies and public announcements.
  • Dedicated support lines for students/welfare support line for families.
  • Automated and detailed call reporting to ensure all unreturned missed calls are picked up.
  • Night mode for optimised functionality (it’s as simple as pressing a button on your handset).
  • Conference calls with PIN codes for secure communication with children on EHCP (Education & Health Care Plans).
  • Calls recorded – do they automatically link with a parent/child’s folder so they can be downloaded immediately at the click of a button? Consider how this is linked to your MIS platform.

3. What policies should I align this with for compliancy? These could include:

  • The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.
  • The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.
  • DfE (2018) ‘Health and safety: responsibilities and duties for schools’.
  • DfE (2015) ‘Emergency planning and response’.
  • DfE (2019) ‘School and college security’.
  • National Counter Terrorism Security Office (2015) ‘Developing Dynamic Lockdown Procedures’, soon to be supported by ‘Martyn’s Law’.

The final element

The last part is establishing what you want the training to look like. This could include a basic overview for how to make and receive calls, through to transferring, and larger elements such as live broadcasting of announcements and lockdown training. Ask all your staff questions on things they enjoy vs improvements that need to be made.

Knowledge is power, and as I get frequent requests and see the same mistakes made, I know how important it is to ensure consistency, particularly when your Trust is paying a company to write the tender and consider all the above.

If you need help and are unsure of what to include for your Trust, please do not hesitate to reach out on 0800 652 5612.

Technology is constantly evolving, and nowhere is this more evident than within the telecommunications industry.

Traditional analogue copper cable services are outdated and no longer efficient to the point where they have reached the end of their serviceable life. They are to be switched off by the end of 2027, being replaced with a digital solution known as internet telephony.

As the deadline draws ever closer, it is crucially important for businesses to understand what internet telephony is, how to utilise it, and the clear benefits it brings.

What is internet telephony?

Internet telephony is a communications technology where all types of telephony services, calls and data, are sent digitally over the internet using the Internet Protocol (IP), rather than being transmitted over traditional analogue landlines.

This includes voice calls, fax, voicemail, video calls and other forms of communication exchange.

How does it work?

Audio streams (your voice) transmitted through a microphone and video streams transmitted through a camera, are converted into digital format data, compressed, and split into small packetswhich are transmitted to the recipient over the internet.

These packets are then re-assembled when they reach their destination and converted back into audio / video streams on the other party’s device.

What is VoIP?

VoIP is an acronym for Voice over Internet Protocol and sits as an element within internet telephony. Whereas internet telephony is a broader term for the transmission of any kind of information over the internet, VoIP is an open standards technology purely for the transfer of voice calls.

What hardware do you need for internet telephony?

At the most basic level, you will need a suitable internet connection with associated modem and router (generally a single combined device these days), plus a device to make and receive calls with.

This device could be a laptop, PC, Mac, tablet or mobile running a softphone client with an optional headset or earpiece, or many users still prefer a desktop phone. These look visually like ordinary traditional phones but have many more features and greater functionality.

Why do you need to switch?

There are several obvious benefits of switching to internet telephony, such as cost savings, improved reliability, advanced functionality, greater flexibility, and scalability. However, the most pressing reason is that the telecoms industry has announced that it will retire the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) by January 2027. This is referred to as The Big Switch Off.

Don’t leave it until the last minute; start exploring the options and alternatives today. The sooner you switch, the sooner your business can start enjoying the benefits of internet telephony.

What are the advantages of internet telephony?

As it is no longer shackled to the limitations of traditional phone lines, internet telephony offers many advantages over analogue telephony.

Flexibility – Internet telephony gives you the ability to make and receive calls on multiple devices such as smartphones and desk phones, without any impact to customer experience. Although you can divert calls on traditional phonelines, it’s often a much more cumbersome process where you need to contact your telephony provider and wait for them to activate these changes.

Scalability – Whether it’s to cope with the growth of your business, or seasonal spikes in call volumes, internet telephony can easily adjust to meet your needs. Not only is the purchase of additional telecoms hardware unnecessary, but you can also add or remove devices and numbers with ease, much faster than on a traditional phone system.

Cost-efficiency – Far cheaper than landline and mobile telephony, internet telephony enables you to save money through VoIP calls, and it requires no capital outlay. Inclusive features such as voicemail, call-forwarding, conferencingand auto-attendants remove the need for previously expensive bolt-ons. 

Voice quality – With a stable and fast internet connection, sound is usually clearer using internet telephony than through analogue phonelines. There will be fewer dropped calls and less chance for delays or interruptions.

Business continuity – With communication services moved offsite, running from secure and resilient datacentres, you will not be impacted by local power outages. You can make and receive calls from other branch offices, remote / home workers, and in fact anywhere with an internet connection.

How does SCG offer internet telephony?

SCG offers internet telephony through Evonex, its own unique Cloud-based telephony solution.

SCG can also equip your business premises and home workers with high-speed internet connections.

How does Evonex differ from other internet telephony or VoIP solutions?

We understood very early on that internet telephony would become the communications solution for the future, and we needed to be at the forefront of the sector. We recognised that if we wanted to deliver industry-leading hosted telephony, we had to be the ones in full control of the products and services we offered.

From owning the intellectual property and patented technology, to highly scalable and resilient infrastructure architecture, to the in-house development, operations, and support teams, Evonex is our answer.

Evonex enables you to connect with staff, customers, and prospects, by giving you the power to Be More in Control of your business communications. We have the capability and resources to continually develop and evolve it, being both pro-active and responsive to the needs of our customers, and industry trends and regulations.

Customer experience and business performance are often intrinsically linked to call handling; Evonex enables you to improve this whole process, starting with a simple cost per user per month for a single telephone number which can be across multiple devices simultaneously.

With cross-platform compatibility and feature synchronisation, plus a common user interface across web browsers, Windows and Mac clients, and iOS and Android mobile apps, it gives you greater colleague visibility, so you can see who’s available to take calls, who answers and when.

Easy administration empowers you to adjust personal and group call routing, queuing, messaging, and announcements on the fly, allowing you to adapt in real time to match changes in business circumstances.

With basic call recording storage and Insights Reporting included as standard, Evonex enables you to monitor and improve productivity through comprehensive statistical reports with a choice of formats, frequency, and automated email delivery options.

MS Teams compatibility, voicemail transcription, Click-to-Dial, integration with leading CRM systems, and local breakout in multiple international locations are just some of the other benefits available.

In addition to great functionality, Evonex also stands out from the crowd with its exceptional reputation for stability, and long history of unsurpassed reliability in the UK Cloud telephony market.This is all supplemented with Anti DDoS protection / mitigation and MFA protected account logins.

What advantages does SCG offer as an internet telephony provider?

At SCG, we understand that there’s no such thing as off-the-shelf business communications. We don’t just sell products; we take the time to understand the current and future needs of our customers, delivering bespoke solutions designed to solve the issues that they face in the evolving world of business; our goal is to develop long-term relationships where we are a trusted partner.

SCG gives you More. Not only can you come to us for all your communications needs, providing just one easy point of contact for all your requirements, but all our core solutions have the option of our comprehensive Service Assured wrapper. This provides that extra level of peace of mind and business continuity, avoiding issues such as customers ever receiving the busy or unavailable tone, and averting the potentially crippling costs of call fraud.

Customer experience is at the heart of everything we do, backed up by our outstanding service record. Not only do we have over 50 years’ experience, but we believe in the human approach; our customers know they can reach us within five seconds of calling. This is why we maintain an industry-leading 4.9-star Trustpilot rating after receiving more than 2,500 customer reviews.

The future of telephony

In addition to internet telephony being a cost-effective and futureproof solution to the retirement of traditional copper-based services, it also offers a much-improved business communications experience. Don’t get left behind by the progression of technology. Contact us today on 0800 090 1965 or sales@scgconnected.co.uk to see how easy it is to deploy Evonex across your business so you can Be More Connected.

The Samsung Galaxy S24 releases on 31st January 2024. With the new Samsung range available through SCG’s Mobile offering, we’re excited to bring this new device to your business. But what makes this phone so different to its predecessors? Why will it enhance your business mobile operations and allow you to Be More Connected? We will run through some of the new, ground-breaking features of the S24 and its model variations to assist your decision-making when it comes to upgrading your mobile devices.

The S24 is available in three models: the Samsung S24, Samsung S24 Plus & Samsung S24 Ultra.

The S24 range comes with an array of native AI-powered tools, all of which run on Google’s Gemini foundational models. These AI capabilities will be deployed to the S23 lineup, Z Flip 5, and Z Fold 5 by summer 2024. New features include the Circle to Search feature, which enables you to search on Google by searching for anything you circle without changing apps. This has been extensively tested to the point where it can differentiate between real and fake plants.

Samsung also showcased several new communication-related tools, including Live Translate, which translates texts and even two-way phone calls in real-time into 13 different languages, allowing you to Be More Connected than ever!

The S24 range promises users seven generations of OS upgrades and seven years of security updates. That matches the support period of Google and its Pixel 8 range, nearly doubling the S23’s offering of four generations of Android version updates and five years of security updates.

Let’s look at the technical specifications of this new range of Samsung phones and how they differ from the S23 Models.

Display:

The S24 will sport a 6.2-inch OLED display, which is 0.1 inches larger than the S23 model of the Galaxy range. Similarly, the S24 Plus is also 0.1 inches larger than the S23 Plus, whereas the S24 Ultra and the S23 Ultra share the same screen size at 6.8 Inches.

The S24 matches the resolution of its predecessor at 2340 x 1080. The S24 Plus, on the other hand, features an enhanced resolution of up to 3120 x 1440 over the S23 Plus’s 2340 x 1080 resolution. Similarly, the S24 Ultra has an increased resolution of 3120 x 1440 compared to the S23 Ultra’s 3088 x 1440. All these resolutions utilise a 120Hz refresh rate, to ensure seamless viewing.

Camera:

The camera on the S24 and the S24 Plus have stayed the same as their predecessor. The only difference is with the S24 Ultra model, which introduces a 50MP telephoto lens to replace the S23 Ultra’s 10MP telephoto lens.

SCG gives customers the power of choice, with the ability to pick the devices, airtime providers and plans which best suit their business and budget. If you’d like to empower your workforce with the very latest from the Samsung S24 range, contact us now on 0800 090 1965 or sales@scgconnected.co.uk.

Get your Samsung S24 Today!

Whether you are a small company without any IT resources, or a larger business that just needs some additional support, a Managed IT Services solution is the perfect answer: an outsourced, fully managed IT department with the ability to scale with your requirements.

This form of IT support offers many benefits, including an increased level of security and assurance. As the festive season always brings with it a rise in cyberattacks, this peace of mind is even more valuable at this time of year.

SMEs might consider themselves safe from cybercrime, thinking that they aren’t a big enough target, but this is a common misconception. In fact, since they often lack sufficient security, they are both very popular and often very easy prey. Recent figures in Vodafone’s ‘The Business of Cyber Security’ report show that more than half of UK SMEs were the subject of a cyberattack in 2022, up from 39% in 2020. Considering that almost one in five still admit to having no cybersecurity whatsoever, this isn’t surprising.

The financial ramifications of such an attack hit smaller businesses harder too; the Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2023, published by gov.uk, estimates the average cost to businesses of a non-phishing cyberattack at over £15,000. Some SMEs would certainly struggle to recover from losing such an amount, especially during the cost-of-living crisis. Managed IT Services represent a cost-efficient yet highly effective cybersecurity solution.

Proactive cybersecurity

As cybercriminals have become increasingly skilled, so have the methods to detect and repel their attacks. It’s no longer enough to rely on passive anti-virus software to protect your valuable business data. Our Managed IT Services solution comes with 24/7/365 proactive monitoring from a live threat team of humans. Advanced techniques such as ransomware canaries (decoy files which sit on your system purely to detect any attempt to encrypt them as part of ransomware attacks) pick up intrusions before they reach truly valuable data.

We also utilise persistent foothold detection. A persistent foothold occurs when a cybercriminal has initially evaded your security methods and established a virtual presence on your system. From here, they can launch further malicious activities which will continue to run even after you log off or reboot your PC. This form of cyberattack can be especially difficult to counter, as it’s like trying to protect your house from a burglar when you don’t realise that they have your front door key. We will detect and eliminate these threats, keeping your business safe.

Complete peace of mind

Our Managed IT Services solution brings the reassurance that whatever happens, you have unlimited access to our IT help desk. If you have any issues or questions, we are always just a phone call away and in the worst-case scenario, we provide disaster recovery and rapid restore. Every minute your critical systems and data are unavailable will financially impact your business, and we give you that additional safety net.

We also increase the visibility of your networked devices through reporting, so you can get an easy overview of their security status, and even their patch update progress. Ensuring your devices have the latest software installed is another way to defend against cyberattacks.

Whereas traditional IT resources can be costly and inflexible, our Managed IT Services solution comes with cost scalability, so it can adapt to both your business size and requirements. With a competitive per-user model, it often works out as a far more cost-effective alternative than having to increase any existing IT resource.

If you’d like complete peace of mind this Winter with a safe and reliable fully managed IT solution, contact us now on 0800 090 1965 or sales@scgconnected.co.uk to discuss your requirements.

Our SMT event is a microcosm of our organisation. As the Group continues to grow, it has expanded to two events a year, with the November event growing into a two-day learning and networking extravaganza. SCG’s rapid rate of evolution has created the need for more collaboration across the business than ever, and this was hugely present at our latest SMT instalment.

Our May SMT focused on empowerment, highlighting its importance in the process of further improving both customer and employee experience. For this latest event, the theme of Targeting Empowerment took us to the next stage. This was achieved by listening to our people at the May SMT, and then targeting each of the key areas they highlighted for change that would have the greatest impact. In the November SMT, we also focused on harnessing the capabilities of the Group so that we can become empowered together. We heard reports on multiple projects, all fostering cooperation to bring us closer as an organisation to achieving high level outcomes.

This is one of SCG’s core strengths. As we acquire business units, their own key strengths and identities are maintained, whilst they gain the support and resources of a larger business. Meanwhile, this new injection of acumen is shared widely across the Group.

Perhaps our biggest Group project focuses on customer experience. Following an engaging session in our previous SMT, we knew that we wanted to increase our efforts, even with our existing 4.9 Trustpilot rating. This led to a multi-disciplinary group of stakeholders in five business units evaluating all elements of the customer journey, resulting in an enhanced Customer Experience Maturity Model. This ongoing project has already led to improvements in customer communication, and even higher volumes of Trustpilot reviews.

The evolution of our CRM system is a similarly transformative project. By again utilising multiple stakeholders across the Group, this is enabling us to refine processes in all departments, from our customer experience account management teams through to provisioning, support and accounts. All of this translates into further tangible improvements for our customers.

Through the guidance of our seven stream leaders, SCG’s CSR and ESG programme, Ours, also continues to develop. Impacting the whole organisation, the programme supports our simple three step commitment to our People, Environment and Reach throughout our supply chain. Some of the most recent initiatives include creating a new centralised induction process, and empowerment training such as the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which is rolling out to all business units.

With the SMT acting as a cultural touchpoint for the wider organisation, highlighting the results of these Group-wide projects at the event demonstrates the value of this approach to the whole business. It illustrates that this collaboration produces high level outcomes which drive us further into elevated customer experience; the first successes of many for Targeting Empowerment.

Have you enabled Two-Factor authentication (2FA) on your LinkedIn account yet?

A rising trend has seen malicious hackers enabling 2FA on accounts they have breached, which is completely avoidable by simply turning on the 2FA feature in LinkedIn.

Some key LinkedIn user security tips:

  • Create a strong, unique password for your LinkedIn account i.e., don’t skimp on the numbers and symbols.
  • Enable the 2FA security feature:
    • Go to Me > Settings and Privacy.
    • Select Sign in and Security.
    • Find Two-step Verification and click Turn on.

LinkedIn appears to offer both app-based 2FA and SMS-based 2FA.

Check your LinkedIn account’s settings to ensure that it is associated with an email address that you check on a regular basis. If you don’t do this you might miss a vital communication telling you that someone else has added their email to your LinkedIn profile.