Skype for Business (formally Microsoft Lync) to PSTN Service Provider

 

Rather than deploying Skype for Business on-site and then connecting it to existing telephone systems, organisations can now have the choice to have the service totally hosted off-site and delivered as a service.

The platform is enterprise grade, scalable and is hosted in ISO27001 accredited UK-only Tier 3 Datacentre environments with built in redundancy for failover.

The service provides all the Skype for Business capabilities you get from an on-site deployment Voice-over-IP (VoIP), Inbound/Outbound Telephone and Web conferencing services plus provides additional features such as FSA-compliant mobile and Skype secure call recording - without having to have any procure, setup and manage hardware on-site.

You can work with the confidence that your Voice and Video calls are 100% encrypted.

Everything that is transmitted in and out for Skype for Business (Voice, Video, Web conferencing, Instant Messaging, presence, Skype/conference call recording) is 100% encrypted. This includes all SIP channels/lines which are over Transport Layer Security (TLS) and every single Voice Stream is encrypted with at least 2048 bit encryption.

We can port your existing DDI numbers to our platform and/or provide new DDIs and numbering if required (subject to additional charges):

• Non-geographic numbering
• Port numbers from existing carrier
• New numbers available from over 110 countries worldwide

We can also setup call handling (Interactive Voice Response - IVR) for your business to provide call flows based on time of day, user types and location (scroll down for more details)

1. Reduced costs - customers have achieved >60% reduction in costs compared to previous ways of working
   • NO on-site Telephone PBX hardware, software and annual maintenance required - which can be a massive saving to a business.
     • No need to evaluate/purchase hardware or software solutions
       • No need to worry about upgrading in the future.
     • Easy integration of tele-workers and remote sites
     • SIP Trunking via Cloud
     • Fastest way to future-proof your company
     • More resilient and cheaper calls
     • No requirement for VPN
   • Reduced Telephone Line monthly rental costs
   • 40% off BT's line 12 month committed reduced rental price of £10.75 per line/month
   • Reduced per minute charge rates for local, national, international and mobile calls
     
   • Replaces corporate Web/phone conferencing 'point' solutions
     • e.g. Citrix GoToMeeting or CISCO WebEx or equivalent
   • Reduced business travel costs as more meetings can happen online - wherever you are
   • also reduces the carbon footprint of your business
   • Free end user to end user (Skype to Skype) calls
     • for your intra-company communications as well as calls to your customers, partners and suppliers who also use Skype for Business
   • Simple and rapid deployment plus simplified on-going technical support
   • Deploy along-side existing system and then phase out as required
   • Operating Expenditure vs. Capital Expenditure model
   • Flexibility: Scale up or down in line with your business requirements
   • Supporting Skype for Business is no different to supporting Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Office
2. Increased Staff Productivity

• Staff have the ability and flexibility to manage their daily business 'Anytime, Anywhere' without being restricted to certain fixed office locations
  • Staff can download the Skype client to their mobile devices (as well as desktop PCs) to access the service on the go
  • Connections follow staff wherever they are so you can become a more flexible organisation
  • Staff can federate (Skype to Skype) outside of their immediate organisation with other external customers, partners and suppliers to reduce costs further
  • Any missed calls are emailed to you via Microsoft Outlook with the Calling Line Identification (CLI) of who called
  • The service can take voicemail messages for you
    • and email you the voicemail message so you can listen to them via your PC / Skype client
• Increased responsiveness to customers to increase revenues

• This is brought about by better collaboration – turning non real-time communication (email) into real-time conversation (IM and Voice) 
  • Also, better collaboration and tools means more productivity
    • More productivity means faster responses to customers

1. Single communication system across PC, Mobile and Tablet saving time and making it easier to communicate:
   • Skype for Business
     • stimulates productivity and helps grow your business
     • simplifies the user experience for your remote & in-house workforce
     • provides simplified IT management
     • encourages growth and allows you to attract the best workforce by providing flexible working
     • is deeply integrated with Microsoft Office
       • which is familiar to end users
         • reducing training costs and
         • speeding up the time to receive the benefits
     • The Skype for Business client is available for Windows and Mac

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) / Auto Attendant:

Create unlimited menu's so your customers can reach the staff they need immediately.

For example:

"Welcome to YourCompany, Please press 1 for sales, 2 for support or 3 for accounts"

Unlimited sub menus can be created to route calls anywhere in the world. The call does not even have to be routed to a user in Skype; it can go to a mobile or any other landline number. 

Hunt Groups / Response Groups:

Create unlimited amounts of hunt groups for your customer to ensure someone from the right team answers the call timely. Users do not have to be at their desks to answer calls from hunt groups, they can have their calls forwarded to their mobiles or to a colleague if they are on holiday.

Hunt groups can time out 5 to 300 seconds after ringing and be diverted to any other hunt group, to a mobile or to a group voicemail box. Once the voicemail has been left, every member of the group will receive an email with the voicemail attached.

On-Hold Music:

Unlimited amounts of on-hold music can be played to the user with promotional material or with music. On-hold music can be changed as often or as little as you like.

On Hold music must be at PCM 8Hz to comply with industry standards.

Time of Day Routing:

Calls can be automatically routed to a voicemail or an out-of-hours message in the evenings, weekends and local public holidays.

Time of day routing can be set on a daily basis to also route to our out-of-hours engineer hunt service.

Out-of-Hours Engineer Routing:

Calls can automatically route to engineer's mobiles outside of working hours.

Calls can flow to engineer A for 30 seconds, engineer A and B for a further 30 seconds and engineer A, B and C for the next 30 seconds to ensure one engineer picks up the phone.

If the call is then not answered, the caller can be diverted to voicemail.

Call Forwarding:

Calls to any DDI can be forwarded to any number in the world. Call forwarding charges apply.

Call Barring:

Calls from any DDI can be barred inbound to a Skype User. A message can be played to the caller or the line can just hang-up.

High Cost and International Barring:

Users can be restricted from calling high cost numbers (E.g. directory enquiries, 09 numbers) and banned from dialling internationally.

Fax to Email:- Route your fax numbers to Smart Hosted and receive all your faxes in an email attachment.

Follow the Sun Routing:

If you have a global business, we can forward your calls out of office hours in the UK to your overseas businesses. This logic also applies to any country you have local numbers in, your inbound callers will always get answered wherever there is daylight. 

Mobile & Skype call Financial Services Authority (FSA) compliant call recording facility

• 100% FSA Compliant & Fully Resilient
• Per User, On Demand hosted service
• Secure HTTPS web replay from anywhere
• Selective retention of recordings
• Litigation hold for on-going cases
• Multiple Geographic Backup

The Recording solution is a fully embedded mobile voice recording using a mobile phone application that automatically initiates three-way calling for Inbound and Outbound calls, from the mobile device, in order to connect the call to the Recorder where the call is recorded.

Designed for compliance recording of mobile phones to meet FSA requirements, this end to end solution meets compliance needs and ensures management of the system is easy.

Fully hosted solution for Mobile Call Recording, built upon an extremely secure and reliable recording platform.

The recorders are hosted within a state of the art Tier 3 Data Centre near London Docklands which is on the first responders list.

This data centre is already used by many major city institutions and encompasses quad redundant fibre links to Telehouse and Goswell Road in London, multiple power feeds with a fully redundant recorder and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) routing Hardware configuration.