South West Communications Group Ltd - Business Telephone Systems | Network Security | VoIP Telephony

South West Communications Group, designs, supplies, installs and supports award-winning, business telephone system solutions for small and medium businesses through to large corporations and public sector organisations in Exeter and Devon and the surrounding areas including Plymouth and Cornwall, and further afield to Bristol, Portsmouth, Reading and South Wales.

With more than 28 years’ experience in designing and delivering fixed and mobile phone solutions, we can improve and streamline an organisation’s day to day working experience while also cutting costs.

We have long-standing partnerships with 3 world leaders - Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco and Toshiba - in the provision of business telephone equipment and infrastructure. We have also been Premium and Premier partners to Alcatel-Lucent and Toshiba respectively for more than 20 years and have recently become a Cisco Premier Partner too.

A decision to upgrade or change a telephone system (PBX) or even an entire communications network serving multiple sites can be a worrying one, but we ensure that any changes are carried out with seamless efficiency with the need for future capacity and applications kept very much in mind.

We have built our excellent reputation on providing thousands of bespoke business telephone solutions to a wide range of business customers. Our attention to detail and customer satisfaction means 60% of our work is generated from repeat business or customer recommendations - a statistic we are proud of.

Modern day businesses and organisations need constant access to communication and a whole host of resources to ensure they stay ahead of their competitors by getting the most out of more streamlined and cost-effective working practices.

Wired and wireless data networks ensure you and your colleagues can communicate efficiently and easily via email, instant messaging, telephone and video conferencing. They also ensure you are able to share hardware and software resources as well as data storage devices.

Our highly experienced and industry-accredited engineering team based in Exeter, Devon, designs, installs and maintains a range of fixed and wireless data networks, often utilising our leading-edge data centre as the dynamic hub to converge differing network technologies, to range of customers throughout the South West region, including Plymouth, Cornwall and Bristol, and branching out as far as Portsmouth, Reading and South Wales.

Working with best-of-breed partners we design secure, robust, reliable, proven and flexible networks for a range of organisational structures covering single and multiple sites and incorporating individuals and teams that work off site.

We are specialists in both fixed and wireless local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs) and virtual private networks (VPNs). We also utilise point to point microwave connectivity as a cost-effective alternative to leased lines or wide-ranging WiMAX as the perfect solution for campus LANs or external WiFi zones. Furthermore, we can help boost your customer service or revenue generating capabilities by deploying WiFi hotspots.

We have been awarded Cisco Premier Certified status to illustrate our pursuit of excellence in the voice and data networking industry. This certification recognises and rewards business partners that have proved they have the technical competency and knowledge of routing and switching, wireless LANs (WLANs) and security technologies.

 

Building mutually satisfying long-term relationships with customers has never been more important for organisations in both the private and public sectors. One of our contact centre solutions can help you achieve exactly that and potentially increase your profit at the same time.

You can only deliver outstanding service by answering calls promptly, responding to enquiries swiftly, accurately and appropriately by knowledgeable, enthusiastic and professional employees. To facilitate this, your front-line staff need to have real-time access to a whole raft of information about your customers’ including the services you provide them and previous contact history in order for you to keep calls to a minimum length.

Our expertise in contact centre, automatic call distribution (ACD), interactive voice response (IVR) and computer telephony integration (CTI) solutions means that we can combine the most appropriate technologies to suit your specific inbound call needs and that will integrate with your existing technology, people and processes.

Call centres should be at the heart of good customer service. Organisations should be able to maximise their investment by using call centre data to predict customer behaviour and identify new business opportunities. If you are willing to make an investment to improve your customer service, you should be able to capitalise on increases in revenue and profit, market share, and customer retention.

Furthermore, call recording software can be built into any call centre solution to comply with quality control or liability purposes, as well as being used a real-life training aid.
 

Unified communications provides businesses and organisations with the opportunity to use converged IT and communications technology to enable collaboration from anywhere in the world. The same technology can be used to create new revenue streams and improve customer satisfaction by connecting people to the right resources and information, securely and cost-effectively.

The way we now work requires you and your colleagues to manage multiple devices, applications and face-to-face interactions in an attempt to stay in contact with one another at all hours of the day, from wherever you are working at the time.

Unified communications is designed to help you manage this more flexible way of working and can revolutionise the way you run your business. Users can access and respond to any message (voicemail, text or email), respond to real-time communication (eg telephone call, instant message or video conference) and utilise user presence from a single interface.

The benefits of using unified communications start with improved customer satisfaction as you will never need to miss a call, email or fax, no matter where you are and messages will be presented in a single inbox to reduce message management time by at least 50%.

Increased productivity and lower management costs mean a rapid return on investment so it is no wonder that more and more businesses are investing in unified communications.
 

It is vital that any business broadband service provides fast and reliable access to email, the web and other Internet services. We have designed our Internet access facilities specifically to serve the high service levels demanded by our business users. We provide a high speed, reliable broadband service, accompanied by a support package that will ensure you remain online at all times.

Each of our premium broadband solutions can be delivered and installed at the same time as a new analogue (PSTN) line meaning that traditional broadband installation lead times are halved. We can also seamlessly migrate businesses from other Internet service providers with lead time for provision being just six working days.

Our broadband packages give a business class high-speed service with up to 20Mb download speeds as standard and up to 1Mb upload speeds. A high quality wireless router is also included along with up to 20Mb of shared web space and 10 email addresses, each with 50Mb capacity. Up to 13 usable static IP addresses are also available.

As well as providing you with a high speed broadband service, we ensure you avoid the frustration and cost of losing your Internet and email access. A specialist helpdesk is available 24/7/365 and our range of service level agreements offer response times from as little as 8 clock hours through to 48 hours which means that you can be assured that your connection to the Internet will be functioning again as soon as possible, protecting you against prolonged downtime.http://www.swcomms.co.uk/index.php/broadband

We can help you control your call costs with a bespoke business mobile solution that will reflect the diversity of your business needs.

Unlike many of our competitors, we have bucked the trend of signing businesses up to a one-size-fits-all package. Instead we can offer you the flexibility of a blended service which comprises bundles as well as pay-as-you-use tariffs to meet your business needs with the most cost-effective solution.

Many businesses enjoy the predictability of fixed priced bundles that cover calls to UK land lines, cross-network calls, same network calls and inclusive texts. The added benefit of our solution however, is what we provide outside of the bundle in terms of highly competitive call rates between all your company mobiles and, if your company enjoys the benefits of our Lines & Minutes service, calls between your land lines and company mobiles and vice versa. Data and text bolt-ons further enhance the offering and allow companies to protect against unforeseen charges.

We also appreciate that some businesses have members of staff who are light or occasional users for whom a bundle is simply a waste of money. Our pay-as-you-use voice and data tariffs mean that you only pay for what you actually use.

The benefits of our business mobile services also include capped call charges for a fixed term to avoid any unexpected price hikes, simple management and call analysis with our web-based billing platform, a single bill from one supplier, and the opportunity to integrate your mobile phone solution with other South West Communications Group solutions to allow you to enjoy the same functionality as your desktop handset.

We also offer helpdesk support from 8am to 6pm on weekdays and an out-of-hours support answering service should you lose your phone or to prevent unauthorised use of your SIM.

 

By definition, non geographic numbers do not correspond to a specific geographic location. The owner of the number can target the non geographic number to any existing landline or mobile telephone number.

The principal benefit of a non geographic number is that it is allocated and managed by the company receiving calls, so that calls can be routed intelligently to a location with the necessary resources to process those calls effectively helping you manage out of hours or busy periods with scheduled call routing and divert options together with call queuing facilities and optional automated attendant announcements.

Calls can be routed dynamically to different destinations according to the time of day, day of week and date. Calls may also be routed more intelligently by using features such as the caller’s location, the nature of the call or by the volume of calls received.

The fact that non geographic numbers are "virtual", and completely portable, also means that if a business needs to relocate, or for continuation of business in the event of fire, flood, etc. the published number can be transferred seamlessly from one number to another, without loss of service.

In addition, if a company advertises its products or services through various channels (e.g. press, Web, mailshots, etc), by channelling responses through a range of numbers, it can assess the effectiveness of each of its marketing campaigns by the use of call statistics.

• 0800 freephone non geographic numbers will enhance your company image and increase the response to sales and marketing campaigns.
• 0845/0844 non geographic numbers can be used to give your business a local presence giving your customers peace of mind.

It is now possible to have geographic-non geographic numbers whereby traditional geographic numbers such as 01xx/02xx numbers can also be intelligently routed to any existing landline or mobile telephone number rather than being tied to a particular exchange.

Our inbound telephony services provide online access to a range of easy-to-use call routing, monitoring and managing tools for both geographic and non-geographic numbers.

Many businesses of all sizes spend thousands of pounds on leased lines every year and for many, this is now an unnecessary outgoing due to the evolution of point to point microwave technology. Wireless connectivity provides a cost-effective, flexible, secure and extremely reliable solution compared to the limitations of traditional wide area network (WAN) connectivity. We are experts in this field and rely on this technology every day to serve our own network purposes.

Our point to point microwave networks can reliably deliver up to 1Gbps at distances of up to 10km. Our microwave communications site engineers use computer modeling to ascertain the feasibility of using a microwave link taking into consideration the topographical terrain of the location together with assessment of any assistance that can be gained using the reflective nature of surrounding buildings.

Once near line of site has been established, a point to point microwave link can be installed in a matter of days rather than waiting the numerous weeks or months that the installation of a traditional leased line can take. No recurring rental costs will be payable following installation and therefore return on investment is rapid.

A microwave link can deliver significantly more capacity than a leased line and can be reliably used for both data and voice traffic. A microwave link can provide the high bandwidth, low latency networks and true quality of service required for data use and IP telephony therefore offering a true alternative to a leased line.

Wide area networks (WANs) can span large geographical areas to link multiple offices together to help your business become more cohesive and efficient while also saving you money.

If businesses created a communications infrastructure for every individual office, the costs would be huge with hardware, software and human resources duplicated at each site.

A wide area network (WAN) is a communications network that spans a wide geographical area such as between different cities, counties or even countries. WANs are typically used by organisations to facilitate the exchange of voice and data between their dispersed offices helping them to become more cohesive and efficient while also saving money.

The benefits of WAN solutions are unlimited. When you sit in your office, the office 200 miles away feels just like a room next door. You can share information, documents, reports, query databases, search through thousands of records in just seconds. You can share resources such as servers, printers, applications and telephone systems to reduce costs and streamline capabilities. You can share human resources, such as receptionists or IT personnel. The advantages are infinite.

Our WAN services experts can design and deploy the most efficient, secure and cost-effective WAN solution for your business using a range of modern technologies. We can span large geographical areas and link many local area networks (LANs) using a reliable, efficient and secure network.

Our network engineers build WANs using traditional leased lines, more flexible technologies, such as point to point microwave, virtual private networks (VPN) and multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), or a mix of these technologies to ensure your network matches your business requirements as well as your budget.

We advise all of our customers to build failover into every WAN to ensure continuity of service. Failover should be automatic and operationally transparent to our customers.

We also provide a platinum 24/7/365 support service for total peace of mind.

A server is the main communications tool used to stay in touch with suppliers and customers. A few hours, days or even longer without access to your data or email will all too clearly illustrate how important servers are; work can simply grind to a halt.

Servers need to be kept clean and at the right temperature, maintained regularly, protected from unauthorised access, connected to an uninterruptable power supply and linked to your network with efficient connectivity. Delivering these elements can be time consuming and costly. Businesses across the UK entrust us to look after their data on servers in our data centre, releasing internal IT personnel from mundane infrastructure-related tasks to supporting the business more effectively.

As well as enjoying a world class infrastructure, the servers in our data centre are linked to our clients via resilient connectivity and are safe from physical threat and online attack.

We offer the ability for our customers to host their own server equipment within our data centre, whereby we install the equipment into the racks, connect the appropriate amount of power, Internet bandwidth and cooling and maintain a clean and safe computer environment.

Alternatively, for a large number of customers, we provide managed server hosting services whereby we rent the server equipment and are responsible for all hardware and Microsoft operating system faults. We have partnerships with Cisco, Dell, IBM and HP enabling us to provide managed server solutions from best of breed vendors.

Pairs of firewalls are available to restrict unwanted access to servers and to ensure that if one firewall fails, the other is still active. Alternatively, a raw Internet connection can be provided allowing you to provide your own network security.

A dedicated workshop area is available for customers to use for upgrades, administration and housekeeping.

We provide 24 hour proactive monitoring of the electrical power, network connections and Internet bandwidth.

Our service eliminates the need to buy, change, transport, catalogue and store tapes by providing automated online data backup and off-site storage, as well as rapid recovery of critical server, desktop or laptop data. Being a remote solution, it also overcomes any environmental issues local to the customer’s site.

Companies can now eliminate the burden and the risk associated with manual tape-based procedures, saving time and money in the process. In today’s business environment, even a few minutes of irrecoverable data can lead to loss of revenue, customers and reputation.

storeiP protects your data every step of the way. By incorporating the leading 448bit security encryption technology available, storeiP safeguards your data using off-site storage at our industry leading data centre. In fact, storeiP is the most secure product of its class. Our data centre facility features stringent physical security along with emergency backup generators and fire protection systems.

storeiP uses industry-leading encryption and top quality security authentication to ensure that any sensitive data stored, transmitted or accessed online is given the highest standard of business-level protection.

After the initial data capture, storeiP backs up your critical data which copies only the changes in your files and databases at bit level meaning it is highly efficient and available on low bandwidth connections (e.g. ADSL). As a result, your backup is always up to date, and this highly efficient process minimises both local and remote server bandwidth usage.

The storeiP data backup solution includes an administration tool which lets you manage and monitor the entire backup and storage process. While storeiP automates all backup functions, you retain complete control of your backup operation by creating business rules and backup policies, checking status and initiating restore requests.

storeiP retrieval technology permits you to selectively restore data from a catalogue of all archived file versions. In the event of a complete server, PC or laptop failure, we can provide the encrypted data on a USB hard drive, ready for you to collect and restore.