Aurora’s New Telecoms Hub

After the successful launch of our Solutions Hub at our Hertford HQ, we thought we’d continue the trend and launch Aurora’s new Telecoms and IT Solutions Hub to start off 2023, especially with the ‘Big Switch off’ fast approaching. Here, our customers will see first-hand a range of telecoms and IT products aimed at businesses big and small, which will help them transition to IP telephony, when the switch off arrives, in December 2025
On display, will be an array of products from our partners Gamma, with their Horizon and Collaborate services, as well as a range of Gamma hardware, and on our screens, you will be able to see the Akixi wallboard (hosted telephony analytics service for business) At Aurora’s new Telecoms and IT Solutions Hub, we will also be showcasing a range of our mobile devices, demonstrating the capabilities of Gamma and Akixi services through their mobile apps, and how companies can use them to better their call centre management and workforce productivity.

Why is it important for businesses to consider IP services now?

As mentioned above, soon all businesses will have to switch from legacy phone lines to SIP or VoIP telephony – telephony services over IP networks, such as the internet. This means that companies need to start thinking about Unified Communication (UC) providers to make the switch over before the big day arrives in 2025, when legacy PSTN, ISDN2, and ISDN30 services will no longer be provisioned by BT. This will have a major impact on businesses that have not considered their IP solutions in advance and would potentially disrupt their communications.

Telecoms solutions to boost productivity and efficiency.

Akixi

Akixi is a Gamma Solution Partner, who can be trusted to provide flexible, scalable, and transparent call management solutions. Whether you’re a small team or running several contact centres in multiple locations, Akixi helps supervisors manage their workforce for the better, enabling them to boost morale and productivity with product offerings such as the Akixi wallboard. This provides your organisation with a highly visual real-time overview of your team’s performance against business KPIs. These are displayed in large individual tiles where each statistic can have a specifically configured alarm, tailored to your organisation’s particular metrics, which can also be made available through any internet enabled device via a browser or the Akixi mobile app, to motivate teams.

Akixi also works alongside call recording software provider, dubber – a call recording plug-in that allows businesses to seamlessly search and retrieve a recording from any specific part of a call, with over 50 search metrics. Being cloud based, this software is easily deployed and completely scalable to every business’ needs to provide a real-time call recording solution, that is instantly available from the completion of a call segment.

With this revolutionary business software, you will be able to recover abandoned calls that you’re missing every day, as well as ensure your team are sufficiently resourced to cover the peak of your inbound communications, among many other benefits to help improve the efficiency and consistency of your company’s communications strategy.

Horizon

Horizon encompasses all your businesses modern communication needs in a single platform, which includes voice, video, chat, and screen-sharing. This all-encompassing telephony service can be accessed from any device, including desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone – to handle calls, routing to voicemail and call analytics, which seamlessly integrate into your existing IT infrastructure and with its scalability capabilities, it can grow with you, and accommodate the ever-changing needs of your business.

Horizon  for Teams and direct routing.

If your business already utilises Microsoft Teams, Horizon can offer a simple and seamless fully integrated solution, inclusive of telephony features, calling plans and devices, making it easy to deploy and manage, and with Teams direct routing via SIP, there is no need for additional hardware or licensing costs to take full advantage of your existing Microsoft infrastructure. This provides a cost-effective alternative to Microsoft Calling Plans, with the added benefits of feature rich solutions, such as, Business Call Recording, Hunt Groups, and Auto Attendant.

Collaborate

Aurora also offers an alternative end-to-end unified communication solution – Collaborate, which has all the benefits of Horizon’s telephony and features. This can be easily utilised as an alternative to Teams, especially if your business is using the Horizon hosted PBX system. Just like Microsoft Teams, you can quickly and easily begin online meetings with colleagues and customers, with the same capabilities, such as audio, video & web conferencing, IM, Presence & Screen sharing, and it can be easily integrated with Microsoft Outlook.

By working with a single supplier for all your communication needs, you can reduce your IT and purchasing overheads, maximise user uptime, and save your business time, effort, and costs.

Horizon Hardware

Gamma can also provide your organisation with a full range of audio equipment; Portable headsets perfect for workers on the move, desk phones perfect for office workers and those permanently home based, and audio-conferencing units perfect for meeting rooms and anyone who requires uncompromised audio quality.

Ubiquitous with any modern office, their IP desk phones are easy to set up, easy to use, and optimised to run on most emerging IP and UC Cloud platforms.

They offer a range of desk phones from Polycom, Cisco , and Yealink to ensure that you get the equipment your workforce needs.

In addition, and to complement our UC solutions Aurora can provide and install Audio Visual equipment ensuring your meetings rooms are designed to fulfil your unique requirements, specializing in Huddle, Meeting and Board rooms we provide Video Conferencing hardware spring boarding your Horizon, Teams or Collaborate meetings onto another level.

What next?

There are multiple telephony solutions on offer in the marketplace, however choosing the right one for your business may feel like a bit of a minefield – whether you want to upgrade your existing Microsoft infrastructure or use a single supplier to service all your modern communication needs, such as, voice, video, chat, screen-sharing and much more.

It might be easier to assess the benefits that each UC provider can offer, in terms of time, effort and cost savings. Is the UC service easy to deploy and integrate into existing IT and Microsoft infrastructures or do you require something completely new? Whatever your requirements, we can help you take your business forward, post the ‘Big Switch off’.

Come and visit Aurora’s new Telecoms and IT Solutions Hub in Hertford,  and trial the various products on offer as well as have the assistance of a dedicated account manager to go through the various specifications against your business needs. To arrange a visit or for more information on our telecom services, call us on 0207 503 3020 or e-mail at ICTsales@aurora.co.uk