For K-12 teachers, part of welcoming students to the new school year involves laying the groundwork for productive working relationships with parents.
Educators understand the value of a building a tight partnership with families and recognize the significant benefits it yields. When parents are involved in their education, students are more likely to attend classes, become more engaged and perform better on exams and other schoolwork. So, cultivating strong relationships and collaborative environments are top priorities for everyone on a school’s staff.
And parents do want to be more involved, according to a survey by Learning Heroes. The organization found that two in five parents worry their child won’t be prepared for college, for example. More than half say they want more information and resources so they can help their children succeed.
Although educators face numerous obstacles to increasing parental involvement, schools can take advantage of several opportunities to impro..

We’re hearing about big data for a reason: Many organizations believe it will be transformative for their business. In a survey last year, IDG found that 78 percent of IT decision-makers “agree or strongly agree that the collection and analysis of big data has the potential to fundamentally change the way their company does business in the next one to three years.”
The stakes are high. The ability—or inability—to provide digital insights easily to all employees could mean the difference between tremendous growth or stagnation. That’s why digital integration is quickly becoming a top priority for many businesses.
This means IT leaders have to make integration work. For many, cloud communications could be the best way to easily deploy a solution that simplifies access to data while making administration easy. So, let’s take a closer look at why businesses should integrate and how cloud communications can help get them there.
The mobile workforce If researcher IDC’s estimates hold true..

In this four-part series, Matthew Clare discusses four technical mistakes companies make when building their customer experience strategies, and how your business can avoid them. In Part 3 Matthew addresses some of the technology touchpoint mistakes and oversights that businesses make.

From the Video Hi, I'm Matt Clare, Product Manager for Mitel's Contact Center Portfolio, and today, I'm going talk to you a little bit about some of the technical mistakes that business often make when mapping out a new contact center implementation or developing their customer experience strategy. In our last videos, we looked at common mistakes around your customer and internal touchpoints. So now it's time to look at, specifically, some of the technology touchpoints and mistakes and oversights that businesses often make.
Ask any contact center or customer experience professional how many tools it takes for them to run a successful practice, and you'll hear, it's a lot. ..

In this four-part series, Matthew Clare discusses four technical mistakes companies make when building their customer experience strategies, and how your business can avoid them. In Part 2 Matthew Clare addresses some common mistakes around internal touchpoints in your business.

From the Video Hi, I'm Matt Clare, Product Manager for Mitel's Contact Center portfolio. Today I want to talk to you about some of the technical mistakes that people often make when mapping in the new contact center implementation or building up their customer experience strategy.
In our last video we looked at some of the common mistakes around your customer touchpoints. And today we wanted to look a little bit more at some of the internal touchpoints and things you don't want to overlook there.
All too often your customer care activities are isolated from other departments, but businesses need to evolve from a siloed call center or contact center approach to a modern, more holistic customer ..

The increased demand for big data, coupled with the decreasing cost of gathering and processing information, is causing the C-suite to carefully examine the role that artificial intelligence might play in the future of their business. There are plenty of signs they like what they see. In fact, almost 85 percent of global executives view AI as essential to remaining competitive, according to a recent survey by Tata Consultancy. Half of them see it as “transformative.”
Investment in AI is accelerating rapidly as major tech companies race to develop and improve the technology. As a result, advancements are coming faster than most organizations can implement them.
This raises several practical questions about the future workforce. How will humans work with robots? How will AI transform today’s job roles? What are its benefits for business? While we don’t know the full extent of the answers yet, the future is becoming clearer. Here’s what we know so far.
Humans and robots will work hand ..

Most network monitoring tools have lots of data about your network’s performance. To benefit from this big data, you need to be pointed towards the things that matter most – the problems that can cause service disruptions and downtime. Well-designed visualizations will put you on the path to identifying and resolving network problems faster. We take a look at some visualization strategies in Mitel Performance Analytics that will help you zero in on the most important problems brewing on your network.
We know that 65% of the world’s population are visual learners, and that visuals are processed by the brain faster than text. So it’s no surprise that a well-designed visual can shorten our time to understanding the problem considerably. Take a look at some clever new visualization strategies in the latest release of the Mitel Performance Analytics network performance management tool.
Want to learn more now? Check out What’s New in Mitel Performance Analytics 2.2. > Network Diagrams Netw..

In this four-part series, Matthew Clare discusses four technical mistakes companies make when building their customer experience strategies, and how your business can avoid them. Part 1 focuses on certain customer touchpoints that businesses often overlook when mapping out their customer experience strategy, and what your business should do instead.

From the Video Hi, I'm Matt Clare, product manager from Mitel's Contact Center Portfolio, and today I wanted to talk to you about some of the technical mistakes that businesses make when they're mapping out a new contact center implementation or building out their customer experience strategy.

We'll start by talking about some of the customer touchpoint mistakes that businesses often make. A lot of companies have been focused on the right things. Things like voice of the customer, understanding their customer journey, so they can really ensure they're providing services how, when and where their customers are loo..

Anyone who’s ever worked in IT will tell you that technology careers are all about staying relevant. If we’ve learned anything over the past 40 years, it’s that technology constantly changes, with new types of devices being developed, new programming languages being created and new types of hardware being installed to run everything from corporate data networks to digital media products.
New technologies create opportunities and challenges, and IT professionals must constantly educate themselves to keep pace and stay competitive. As the next generation of IT managers takes its place, what are the must-have skills necessary for their success? Let’s take a look at five of them.
Cloud Communications Technology Cloud technology is already dominating the IT world. As more businesses move their communications systems to the cloud, IT managers must have a firm understanding not only of how cloud communications technologies work, but how their company can get the most from them.
Big Data An..

This post originally appeared on IPro Media.
Early Prototypes In the 1840s, Samuel F.B. Morse announced an invention that would forever change how humans communicated: the telegraph. Using a series of electromagnetic impulses over a single wire, Morse developed a code that could be used to relay messages over vast physical spaces.
While this invention was critical, it was only a matter of time before it became fundamentally improved upon. In the 1870s, Alexander Graham Bell took an interest to Morse’s invention. He took note of the drawback to his system; with a telegraph, each message had to be hand-delivered and parsed through specialized stations (and only one message could go through at a time).
Bell worked together closely a machinist named Thomas A. Watson. Together, they developed a prototype for an archaic telephone that delivered sound waves over a distance through vibrating magnetic plates. This marked the beginning of advanced communications for all of mankind.
In a litt..

Digital transformation applies the cloud and other technologies to key business processes, delivering a fast, convenient, and personalized user experience. As you might expect, unified communications (UC) vendors are uniquely positioned to drive digital transformation from a platform that integrates voice, video, collaboration, and contact center.
How will organizations apply digital transformation to their business communications?
Move to the cloud Well, moving to the cloud is a key first step, allowing businesses to scale up and layer on new technologies more easily. We know that omni-channel communications is becoming important, as consumers increasingly expect to move seamlessly between smartphones, tablets, and laptops and be served via chat, voice, or video. The Internet of Things (IoT) will connect everything in our lives to the Internet, making it possible for devices to communicate with other devices, and for people to communicate with other people, all over a UC network.
M..