While a healthcare facility’s chief concern is in providing medical care, a patient’s guest experience extends beyond purely medical concerns. Both patient satisfaction and efficiency of patient care can impact the reputation of your healthcare facility, which affects your bottom line.
A visit to a healthcare facility can be a very stressful experience for your patients and their families, so anything you can do to make their experience easier will speak volumes. Approaching healthcare from a hospitality perspective as well as a medical one can help improve your patient satisfaction.
One area where healthcare facilities are learning from the hospitality industry is in implementing communications applications that can enhance efficiency and delivery of care. Here are three types of healthcare communications applications, adapted from the hospitality industry, that can improve your guest experience, and drive the efficiency of your teams.
1. Mobile applications With the right mobile a..

In May 2017, we published our North American UCaaS Scorecard, where we evaluated the top ten UC as a service (UCaaS) providers. The purpose of the Scorecard is to determine which service providers currently lead the market for UCaaS and are best positioned to succeed in the long term based on a set of criteria.
The UCaaS market in North America is marked by a large and dynamic provider landscape. Mergers and acquisitions continue as providers look to gain scale, new capabilities, and long-term survivability. Despite the consolidation, there is still a large number of VoIP service providers in the region, including traditional premises-based PBX and UC vendors, pure-plays, incumbent operators, cable MSOs, CLECs, ISPs and system integrators.
Mitel, one of the top ten providers highlighted in the 2017 report, is the one traditional enterprise telephony and UC vendor that also shows up as a leading provider of UCaaS services. The company has steadily grown its installed base of users ove..

With any communications investment, attention to detail is important. Thinking through what problem your company is trying to solve and fully understanding how to deploy a solution to get the most for your money can be a complicated undertaking.
In many circumstances, as a Mitel customer, you'll be working closely with a communications partner to implement your new Mitel system. Occasionally, however, your installation may include experts from the Mitel Professional Services team.
What are Mitel Professional Services, and how can they help me? Mitel Professional Services are experts who help customers maximize their investment in Mitel communications systems. These services fall under three basic umbrellas, unified communications and collaboration, contact center, and cloud. The Professional Services team has a deep understanding of not only how Mitel systems operate, but also how they can be leveraged in a variety of industry and company-specific settings.
When would I need to..

Harris County, Texas, is home to more than 4.5 million people and employs about 4,500 people at the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.
In addition to those sheriff’s employees, several other law enforcement and first responder agencies in and around Houston help protect the people of Harris County.
Because Houston hosted Super Bowl LI® in February 2017, 10 of those agencies were on duty near NRG Stadium during the game and during events surrounding the game. They were tasked with protecting 1.3 million people — 150,000 of whom came from out of town — who participated Super Bowl-related events.
But in its planning for the Super Bowl, Harris County Technology Services personnel were still using radio communications for most of their needs. Radios can lead to several issues, such as important messages blending in because of sheer volume and sensitive information being communicated over open airwaves, not to mention that it’s not a very discrete medium.
Officials noted that they did not h..

At Mitel, we’re fortunate to work with an incredible partner community full of deep, diverse expertise. So, each month, we’re going to share some of that expertise by highlighting partner blog posts about the business communications topics relevant to modern IT pros.
A Business Continuity Plan is Not Simply Arranging for Data Backup By IPro
Having an established data backup is a great asset for your company. When things go wrong, it’s a relief to know that there is a backup of your critical files.
Read the post. >
Securing Digital Transformation to Deliver More Value By CDW
As organizations plan to take advantage of innovative technologies, they must consider the need to protect the data handled by these systems.
Read the post. >
5 Tools Your Contact Center Needs By Co-nexus
Contact centers are a bustling environment of sales, customer service and hotlines. The are filled with software, computers, technology, hardware, and phone systems. Each day supervisors manage agents to en..

This post originally appeared on IPro Media.
The world is changing quickly. With the many technological advances of video conferencing (combined with the rapid adoption rate), we must ask ourselves: why bother with in-person conferencing anymore?
The truth is that we really shouldn’t.
Here are 8 compelling reasons to go with video conferencing instead.
1. Saving travel dollars There are big costs associated with employee travel. These typically include plane tickets, lodging, per diem food allowances, and transportation fees. Depending on the number of employees traveling, those fees will often be multiplied – possibly to a large degree.
With video conferencing, people can join forces in a meeting with the tap of a button and with little to no cost whatsoever.
2. Conferencing from anywhere It’s not just the costs from travel that limit people. Factors such as travel fatigue and time zone differences can largely hinder employees from attending the conference at their best.
Instea..

To truly capture the benefits of digital transformation, businesses need to integrate previously siloed applications and communications channels. Integrating systems can be a major headache, and no business is immune to the challenges of combining previously disparate communications channels into one.
Facing the challenges of integrating systems in healthcare Digital transformation presents its own set of unique challenges for the healthcare industry. Data security and continuity of patient care are more critical for this industry than many others. There are gains to be made, however, in building software ecosystems that promote the integration of applications without sacrificing patient privacy or critical care. What challenges affect the healthcare industry specifically?
The most common communications challenge facing many healthcare facilities today are outdated communications systems that have fallen behind the market. Outdated systems can cause more hiccups than healthcare facil..

Cloud communications platforms have predictable monthly costs, the ability to scale, instant technology updates, disaster recovery and a degree of future-proofing to protect your communications investment.
But you already know that – it’s why you’re here. Now it’s time to investigate what cloud solution is the best for your business.
Your choice could have a real effect on your business’s bottom line. So how do you convert that knowledge into the purchase of a system that will fit your business and help you grow?
Mitel has cloud offerings that can fit any size business and any need, whether you need integrations or a mobile-first solution. Mitel has different options to fit the business needs of different segments and industries.
A mobile-first system By 2018, 70 percent to 80 percent of new applications will be designed for the mobile screen first. Millennials grew up with the Internet. They’ve almost always had a mobile device in their hands and there’s an expectation for how the..

For the hospitality industry, ensuring an exceptional guest experience has never been more important. The prevalence of online review sites and willingness of guests to voice their opinions with photos and ratings means each guest experience is an opportunity, and a challenge. Further, online ratings can actually have an impact on the average daily rate your hotel can charge. A Cornell study found that a single star increase on online review sites can increase your average daily rate (ADR) by 11.2 percent.1
Better guest satisfaction means better reviews, and a higher ADR. How can your hotel give your guests a truly exceptional guest experience? Here are 6 surprising ways to increase your average daily rate.
1. Be consistent From the moment your guests first reach out to schedule a stay, to the second they walk into the lobby, your guests are forming an opinion of your property. Make sure your online reputation and your in-person guest experience are consistent, to give your guests th..

If your idea of contact center technology involves rows of agents auto-dialing customers, think again. The truth is any business with customers (i.e., every business) can use contact center technology to better handle its customer engagements and serve its internal customers. The result? A seamless, omni-channel customer experience and increased internal productivity. Watch the video below to learn more about how your current strategy for customer engagement may be costing you time and money.

From the video:
My name is Christian Szpilfogel and I'm VP of strategy here at Mitel. When most people think of a contact center, they think of a room full of agents, tied to headsets, auto-dialing costumers or fielding an endless stream of inbound calls. The truth is any business with customers has a contact center requirement, whether it's for the early part of sales engagement, whether it's fulfillment, support, service, billing, or other matters through the entire customer j..