May 29, 2021 | Business, Education, Tech
The digital learning and assessment specialist, eCom Scotland has become one of the first companies in the world to sign up to the Customer Excellence Pledge. Aiming to identify learning system vendors that promise to provide elite customer service and support, the Customer Excellence Pledge is a program developed by the internationally-known Craig Weiss.
Craig, the lead analyst for The Craig Weiss Group, which provides analyst, advisory and consulting services to buyers and vendors in the learning technologies industry commented, “Support in the learning system space, as a whole, is not good. There are vendors who do an exceptional job but the fact remains that the number one reason people leave one learning system vendor for another is the support and service they receive.
“Consumers rarely ask in-depth questions about support when they do their RFPs. They focus on security, functionality and case studies but they should also ask probing questions around support.
“The industry itself does a poor job of monitoring customer service,” he acknowledged. “I talk to vendors who say, publicly, they have great support but, privately, acknowledge it’s either poor or below average.
“Something has to be done to ensure that, when you buy a learning system, you know upfront the level of customer service and support – hence the Customer Excellence Pledge.”
Vendors signing the Pledge agree to a set of four statements – with two checkpoints, validated by The Craig Weiss Group, to assess the ongoing level of elite support each vendor provides for its customers. Under the terms of the Pledge, vendors promise to:
Provide exceptional customer support and service. Maintain high ethical standards in sales, service, and business. Take care of their customers’ needs and provide timely assistance – including agreeing to respond to queries within 30 minutes during the vendor’s business hours, with daily follow-ups if applicable. Provide customers with a dedicated customer support/service member or team – to be the customer’s accessible point of contact.
Learning system buyers can check whether vendors have signed up to the Pledge by visiting the ‘FindAnLMS’ website, where those adhering to the Pledge will be indicated.
Craig Weiss explained, “No vendors pay any money to sign up to the Pledge. This initiative isn’t about generating money. Rather, it’s about a vendor backing up its customer service and support claims, with tangible results – and a signed pledge agreement.”
Commenting on the Customer Excellence Pledge initiative, Wendy Edie, eCom Scotland’s Managing Director, said, “Now in its 25th year, eCom Scotland has built its business by placing a premium on high production values and high-quality customer service. So, we welcome this new commitment to customer service excellence in the learning technologies sector – and we welcome our competitors aspiring to join us in providing the best customer service and support possible, through signing up to the Pledge.”
Further details of the Customer Excellence Pledge can be found at: https://elearninfo247.com/2021/05/05/customer-excellence-pledge/
About eCom (https://www.ecomscotland.com/contact/)
eCom creates innovative learning solutions – aimed at increasing learning engagement and driving productivity – to help organisations achieve their goals. With offices in Dunfermline, Scotland, and Athens, Georgia, in the USA, but with customers from around the world, eCom focuses on the delivery, tracking and reporting of workforce learning and development through innovative technologies. Its products and services address a range of workforce management, development and training challenges, including eLearning, online assessment, blended learning, competency management and accreditation.
May 29, 2021 | Lifestyle, Tech
Why carry a separate notepad, pen, cardholder and charger, when you can carry them all in one organiser? The Pennline Superbook-Mini is a marvelously versatile quiver for everything you need to be productive, connected and organised.
The slim and compact Superbook-mini is the newest addition to the Pennline Superbook family. It is equipped with a 4000 mAh power bank capable of wireless and cable charging. An ideal companion that allows you to be on the move throughout the day while working seamlessly, it is a thoughtful and practical gift – for both corporate gifting and personal celebrations. Lighter than the original Superbook, this model is also a wonderful gift for women and can fit into larger purses and handbags with ease. The Superbook-mini can be personalised by having your name, initials or any other text inscribed on it.
This notebook power-bank organiser can charge your phone in any one of the following ways, through a wire connected to the pop-up charging port, wirelessly by placing the phone on top of the organiser and by inserting the phone into the elastic phone holder. The wireless option allows you to charge the phone even while on the move.
With 3 card slots, a business card holder, a utility pouch, an ID window, a handy slip-in pocket that can hold your passport/boarding pass on the inner panels, and a pen holder on the spine designed into the organiser cover, you will never have to flip through your pockets or bag to search for things. The utilitarian back-pouch on the outside can be used to carry folded documents, a newspaper or an additional slim notebook.
This versatile organiser comes with a nylon 3-in-1 charging cable (Apple, Android and C-Type). The cable can be used for both – charging the organiser and charging your phone. It contains two replaceable Quikfills and comes in a stylish gift box that can be used to archive and store the Quikfills and other slim notebooks of a similar size.
The organiser comes in one piece which fits perfectly in your hand and closes neatly when not in use with its magnetic auto-closure mechanism feature. That means no more fumbling at airport security, no more scampering for things you’ve forgotten, and no more messy bags to mine for what you need. This BIS-certified model is flight safe and its slim silhouettes make it easy to carry wherever you go.
The Pennline Superbook-Mini organiser from William Penn is available in Black and Coffee Brown for Rs.4995/-
May 29, 2021 | Tech
Adaptiva, a leading, global provider of endpoint management and security solutions for enterprise customers, today announced the release of a new version of Endpoint Health, the fastest, most scalable solution to assess and remediate endpoint health. With this launch, Adaptiva not only adds new capabilities and health checks to its popular Endpoint Health product, but it also extends health checks and remediation capabilities to remote endpoints that are disconnected from the corporate network. This ensures that all endpoints remain compliant and properly configured at all times, addressing the hybrid “work from anywhere” environments that are the new post-COVID-19 norm. The latest version of Endpoint Health is now available as a free upgrade to existing customers.
“The pandemic has fundamentally altered how enterprise employees work, and endpoint management has suffered as a result, which puts corporate networks at risk,” said Deepak Kumar, founder and CEO of Adaptiva. “We fixed this problem by ensuring that any machine or device an employee uses can stay compliant and secure regardless of their environment. Adaptiva provides health checks and remediations at massive speed and scale without impacting the network, ensuring that business traffic is unaffected and endpoints continue to run at peak performance. All that’s needed is an internet connection.”
The latest version of Endpoint Health arrives as leading enterprises increasingly shift to cloud-based services due to benefits like greater flexibility, lower costs, and the ability to modernize their endpoint management systems. Endpoint Health uniquely offers complete visibility into all endpoints in real time while continuing to leverage Adaptiva’s peer-to-peer architecture for the industry’s fastest and most effective remediation experience. Endpoint Health proactively detects and fixes issues as they arise to ensure an enterprise’s estate always stays healthy, and it lets IT teams achieve extraordinary results with unlimited custom health checks and remediation capabilities. Endpoint Health’s functionality is vital today, with many organizations lacking insight into what’s really going on with all of their endpoints.
According to Gartner, “Gartner is seeing a resurgence in the desire to automatically identify and remedy endpoint problems.” Additionally, Gartner considers a strategic assumption in this report that “By 2024, endpoint analytics and automation will help digital workplace service staff shift 30% of time spent on endpoint support and repair to continuous engineering.”[i]
In fact, in a recent case study with one of the world’s largest retailers, Adaptiva found that 55% of devices failed Endpoint Health checks. Among these, 89% had issues that were successfully resolved automatically using Adaptiva’s product.
The new version of Endpoint Health is even more impressive, with a number of new features and capabilities. These include:
Support for Work From Home:
At a time when employees all over the globe are working remotely, Adaptiva’s innovative technology ensures that health checks are securely delivered to each endpoint, no matter how users connect, whether they’re on a VPN or not, or where they are. Health checks are deployed at massive speed and scale without impacting network performance so that enterprises can keep their machines and devices well maintained at all times.
New User Interface
: With this release, Adaptiva completely overhauled its user experience. The highly intuitive and user-friendly design also makes it remarkably simple and efficient for IT administrators to run dynamic health checks all within the same editor and without the need to manually create policies.
Embedded Dashboards
: Through sleek new dashboards, Endpoint Health offers a substantially improved reporting system and provides complete and instant visibility into the health, security and compliance of all endpoints across enterprises of any size. In addition to monitoring the overall environment, users gain the ability to monitor machines by categories, such as by group or location. Providing these highly specific, easily readable views enables IT admins to closely monitor tasks. The dashboards also save time by delivering a clear, up-to-date picture of the environment and when or where they should take action.
Additional Health Checks
: Adaptiva is known for taking customer feedback into account with each product development cycle. With this release, many new health checks with pre-remediation have been introduced to help enterprises address specific needs. For example, Adaptiva added health checks to user account running services, data execution prevention (DEP) policy, ConfigMgr client actions, and more.
“Endpoint health is essential in today’s climate, where IT teams face increasing workloads and pressing challenges each day,” added Kumar. “We are committed to creating the world’s most trusted endpoint management and security products to make the job of IT professionals easier and corporate networks safer and more efficient. Endpoint Health and all of the product’s new capabilities certainly advance this directive.”
During the recent RSA Conference 2021, Endpoint Health was named a Global InfoSec Awards winner in the Endpoint Security Next-Gen category.
To learn more about Endpoint Health, please visit https://adaptiva.com/products/endpoint-health/.
About Adaptiva
Adaptiva is a leading, global provider of endpoint management and security solutions. The company’s products, including OneSite Cloud, Endpoint Health and Evolve VM, empower enterprises to manage and secure endpoints at unparalleled speed and massive scale using the power of peer-to-peer technology. Leading global Fortune 1000 organizations, including T-Mobile, Nokia, HSBC, Walgreens, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, use Adaptiva products to eliminate the need for a vast IT infrastructure and automate countless endpoint management and security tasks. Learn more at https://adaptiva.com/, and follow the company at LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
May 29, 2021 | Business, Tech
Precision Ethernet & IP test solutions provider introduces new hardware platform supporting 25G Ethernet.
Aukua Systems, Inc. (https://www.aukua.com), a leading provider of precision Ethernet & IP Test and Monitoring solutions, today announced the release of the new XGA4250 hardware platform. This new platform complements Aukua’s popular MGA2510 by extending its unique 3-in-1 testing solution to support higher speeds of 25G and beyond.
The rapid proliferation of advanced cloud-based applications in enterprise data center networks is driving the need for faster connectivity speeds than 10G which has been the dominant rate for the last few years. Since 802.3by was ratified and approved by IEEE as a standard in 2016, more organizations are adopting 25G Ethernet instead of 40G as their preferred server to top-of-rack interconnect speed as it is a newer technology with a smaller footprint and provides a clear upgrade path to 50G, 200G and beyond. In addition to data centers, 25G Ethernet is also emerging as the preferred connection technology for fronthaul and midhaul applications being deployed in mobile 5G networks replacing legacy technologies like CPRI.
“As our customers have increased the speed of their networks and products, they are demanding that we augment their test capabilities with a higher speed version of the much loved MGA2510,” said Suds Rajagopal, Aukua’s Co-Founder and Vice President.
Like the MGA2510, the new XGA4250 is uniquely capable of being used as a Traffic Generator & Analyzer, Inline Packet Capture, or a Network Impairment Emulator system. “This flexibility is critical in enabling our customers to develop and deploy new, groundbreaking technologies like Open RAN used in 5G Wireless, Automotive Ethernet and other new high-speed interconnects,” Rajagopal added.
Beta versions of the XGA4250 started shipping to select customers earlier this quarter and the product is generally available starting this week.
May 29, 2021 | Business, Tech
Melissa, a leading provider of global data quality and address management solutions, today announced strategies for marketers to eliminate the knowledge gap in customer data, enabling personalization at scale. With aggregated data from disparate resources, Melissa’s tools and services resolve customer identity and enhance profiles by connecting to and between marketing channels such as email, social, direct, and in-store options. Marketers gain access to a single view of the customer, allowing clear, comprehensive insight into customer behavior and preferences.
“Consider the spectrum of distinct channels for customer interaction, such as your website, mobile app, blogs, gated content, social apps like Messenger or Twitter, live chat, phone, email, in-store, and more. When mapped effectively, marketers can analyze past behavior to better understand customer needs at each touchpoint and personalize future interactions,” said Greg Brown, vice president of global marketing, Melissa. “It’s smart, but not simple, which is why so many marketers have blind spots that ultimately drive irrelevant messaging and annoying disruptions to the buyer’s journey. Marketers of course care but often just don’t understand what their customers are saying on social media, what they’re buying or how they’re engaging in stores, on mobile devices, and online.”
Industry research indicates only 35% of customer experience officers believe they understand their customers well, and just 23% of customers say businesses understand them as individuals and cater to their preferences. Melissa’s strategy for becoming a customer champion is based on three key considerations, addressing the knowledge gap between customer expectations and the realities of their experience with a brand:
Get and keep data clean by verifying data at the point of entry; standardizing, linking and de-duping the data is key. Build stronger customer profiles by linking a full spectrum of external data. Fill in gaps in customer records with third party data such as email addresses, postal addresses, geocodes, demographics, mobile IDs, and more. Leverage data across channels to initiate a single customer view, choosing a unique, consistent, and static customer identifier such as a personal email address.
‘Knowing your customer’ imparts true insight that improves the customer experience and extends customer centricity. For example, marketers can uncover new customers with ‘lookalike’ attributes, such as demographics, psychographics, buying habits, preferences, even firmographics. Creating a ‘best customer’ profile can power campaigns designed to reach new prospects in specific channels. Adding a postal or email address allows multi-channel outreach, such as targeting an online customer with a direct mail campaign using a store coupon.
Click here for more insight on Melissa’s tools and services for identity matching and full contact intelligence. To connect with members of Melissa’s global intelligence team, visit www.Melissa.com or call 1-800-MELISSA.
About Melissa
Since 1985, Melissa has specialized in global intelligence solutions to help organizations unlock accurate data for a more compelling customer view. More than 10,000 clients worldwide in arenas such as retail, education, healthcare, insurance, finance, and government, rely on Melissa for full spectrum data quality and ID verification software, including data matching, validation, and enhancement services to gain critical insight and drive meaningful customer relationships. For more information or free product trials, visit www.Melissa.com or call 1-800-MELISSA (635-4772).
May 29, 2021 | Business, Regional, Tech
Nokia today announced that AirFiber Networks , an Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Bangalore and Tamil Nadu in South India, will use its broadband solution to launch high speed data services and expand its network to better serve its subscribers. Nokia’s Gigabit Passive Optical Networking (GPON) solution will enable AirFiber Networks to provide high-speed broadband services in Bangalore and underpenetrated areas across the state of Tamil Nadu, aiming to reach over 100,000 subscribers in a year. The deployment will start in April and will be completed over the next few months.
Once deployed, AirFiber Networks’ subscribers will be able to access network for remote working, and other services over broadband connection such as remote education and healthcare .
Nokia’s GPON solution includes both network and customer premise equipment. Nokia will also provide Network Management Services to ensure timely and efficient execution of the project. Nokia’s fiber access network will help Airfiber Networks establish a strong foundation to easily upgrade to next-generation PON technologies, which allow service providers to rapidly boost capacity and provide superior speeds.
Sasidev MG, Director, AirFiber Networks, said: “Robust and fast broadband has become our lifeline as learning and businesses have moved online. We are committed to providing resilient and world-class broadband services to our subscribers. Nokia is a global technology leader, and we are confident that its solution and expertise will help us address the growing and evolving needs of our subscribers.”
Vinish Bawa, Head of Emerging Business, Nokia India, said: “We are excited to work with AirFiber Networks in helping them set up a best-in-class fiber network to provide the latest and innovative services to their subscribers. Our industry-leading GPON solution will allow AirFiber Networks to launch new premium and innovative services and enhance its services’ overall quality, thereby helping them attract new subscribers.”
