As of June 2022, 59% of all British households have a pet of some kind! That’s a whopping 34 million domestic animals across 17 million households which creates a whole lot of natural demand on the UK’s veterinary surgeries. And then you add Summer into the mix. Just as GPs surgeries see surges in demand during the balmy Summer months as humans…
We’ve nearly made it to the end of another school year – hear the sighs of relief up and down the country as students and teachers get ready to enjoy some well-earned rest and relaxation over the holidays! But school life doesn’t stop for everyone as Summer hits: in fact with a little space to breathe, now is the perfect time…
It’s no secret that the UKs healthcare system is under immense pressure in 2022 – the pandemic hit an already stretched service and the last few years have taken their toll on staff across the NHS. With doctors and nurses leaving faster than the health service can replace them, significant funding issues and a growing population, patients are drawing the short…
2022 is looking like an increasingly tough year for businesses. With inflation predicted to top 11%, energy bills soaring and people spending less and less to weather the cost of living storm, it’s easy to feel quite despondent about the outlook. BUT there are always small ways to adapt, adjust and maybe save a few pounds along the way and this year…
Whether you’ve been prompted by the 2025 conventional analogue and ISDN lines switching off date creeping ever closer or have been pushed into considering new ways of working as a result of the last couple of years, now might be a great time to switch your traditional phone system over to something new, agile, flexible. But where to begin? Installing a…
How often do you upgrade your mobile phone? Every six months? Once a year? The chances are that if you reach into your pocket right now, you can wrap your fingers around the very latest digital tech. Where we can we’re all fairly committed to getting our hands on cutting edge communications devices just as soon as they’re released. The same…
FluBot first burst onto the malware scene in Summer 2021, flooding our SMS with fake ‘failed parcel’ delivery messages in an unscrupulous bid to install data stealing Trojans onto Android phones. The fake message contains a link, which when clicked on downloads malware onto your device. Once installed, the FluBot Trojan can access your credit and debit card details to clear you…
It’s been a while since Webinars have been the coolest kid on the business block but the last couple of years have given the humble webinar a new lease of life. Done right, webinars are an incredibly effective way of growing your customer base, anywhere in the world. Between 2019 and 2021 some 62% of online businesses were using webinars to…
Hybrid working is going nowhere, it’s here to stay. For businesses looking to save money and for staff wanting a more balanced life, it’s the perfect solution. So how do you build a communications system to match? On-site phone systems were built for another time: an age when business was conducted exclusively from an office and predominantly by phone. Whilst many businesses…
As the adage goes, when times are tough, we tighten our belts. But is that always the right approach for a business? We believe that effective decision making is largely about spending your money in the right way, rather than not investing at all. With inflation now rising above 8% and bills across all utilities heading skywards, business owners across…
Schools up and down the country had to work unbelievably hard during the pandemic to educate the nations kids and keep mums and dads in the loop as they tried to home school – it’s been relentless! One of the key learning points from the last few years has been the absolute pivotal importance of having a robust, agile and…
The last couple of years have asked a lot of business communications. Systems have had to quickly get smoother, slicker, more streamlined and with infinite remote capabilities to deal with both dispersed staff and remote customers. Comms systems have been shifting into the cloud for around 7 years. The shift gathered speed of course during the pandemic. More staff working from home…
It’s something of an understatement to say that the last few years have been hard going for GP surgeries! If we’ve learnt anything from the challenges surgeries have faced throughout the pandemic, it’s that having a robust, agile, up to date communications system is essential not just for day to day operations but in the face of crises too. In fact,…
According to Action Fraud, the annual cost of telephone fraud in the UK is around £17 BILLION, it’s almost unfathomable. Scammers are of course getting more and more sophisticated and ruthless but as we see unprecedented cost of living rises coupled with astronomical growth in energy bills in the UK, scammers are also getting more opportunistic and desperate. So how do you…
We don’t have to journey back far to a time when ‘hybrid working’ was a lofty fantasy for office staff across the UK. Before 2020, employers simply weren’t as invested in enabling staff to work remotely. Not due to an absence of technology – the infrastructure for home working isn’t new – rather a fear that employees working out of the office…
In a pivotal moment for the telecommunications industry, BTs planned switch off of the old ISDN network in 2025 is fast approaching. In fact, the move away from this outdated tech is already well underway with many areas now not selling new copper lines at all and the existing lines quickly becoming defunct. This shift is creating incredible opportunities for the…
Inflation in the UK is soaring. Rising at the fastest rate since the 2008 financial crash, businesses in every sector are feeling the pinch with the price of everything from raw materials to transportation to staffing going up. Throw a hefty hike in energy prices into the mix – increases of almost 30% for gas and 20% for electricity during…
With some fundamental differences to domestic energy contracts and without the consumer protections offered to private customers, navigating the world of business energy contracts can be confusing at best, downright baffling at worst. With over three decades of business experience, let us try to demystify the world of commercial energy supply contracts for you. It’s all in the small print…
The annual cost of telephone fraud in the UK runs into the billions – £17 billion to be precise – each and every year according to Action Fraud. As scammers get more and more sophisticated, ruthless and cunning and consumers drop their guard and up their spending around Christmas, you and your customers could well be at risk of getting…
We’ve been wasting time travelling to and from meetings for too long, we’ve been putting up with difficult online signups, technical problems with audio, and tolerated bad picture quality. So now is the time to change all of that! Let us explain how your meetings just started looking a little more efficient, effortless, and productive… Are you currently handling some…
It’s a simple enough question, but did you know? If you didn’t, then we’re pretty sure that you’re not in the minority, but the truth is, it’s happening a little sooner than you may think! BT’s current plan is to cease the installation of ISDN lines nationally in 2023, but many areas are now “stop sell” where new copper lines can’t…
As a business you’ll want to be as productive as possible. A large part of that will be making sure that your staff members have the processes, procedures and systems in place in order to make that goal a reality. When it comes to communication your phone system is at the heart of it all; it allows you to communicate…
Challenges Keeping in touch with customers with a highly mobile workforce makes estate agencies one of the more challenging industries for business communications. Operations Director James Tiller explains, “Our clients expect to get hold of us quickly regardless of our location. Our previous hosted system simply wasn’t flexible enough and we were diverting calls to our mobiles when we were…
If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember watching films on VHS. You’ll know the feeling of having a car stacked full of cassette tapes of your favourite music. A time when those tapes were most likely to be found inside a Golf GTI (for something small and sporty) and the Vauxhall Vectra (the saloon car of choice for the…
Peaking at 5.1 million in January 2021, there are still millions of staff across the UK that find themselves on the Government’s Furlough scheme. Currently being phased out, the system is set to come to an end in September 2021, at which point millions of workers will have to pick up where they left off. Office spaces are likely to…
Whether you call it flexible, remote, or hybrid working, there’s no denying that before 2020, it just wasn’t a realistic option for so many office staff across the UK. Not due to an absence of technology – the infrastructure for home working isn’t new – rather a workplace culture that didn’t believe teams were able to communicate effectively over distance,…
Having navigated an entire year of home schooling, zoom classes and self-isolation, it’s safe to say that schools are by now becoming well versed in dealing with change. However, as we approach the end of the summer holidays and schools from across the country prepare to welcome pupils back to classrooms once more, the ever-changing nature of a global pandemic…
Trying to compare the cost of your home telephone system or mobile phone deal is a minefield all on its own. Throw in the complexities of a business communications system and the extended playing field of providers at commercial level and it can be almost impossible to ascertain whether you’re paying too much for your business calls. In most cases,…
With the full easing of COVID-19 restrictions on 19th July came an official end to the governments’ ‘work from home’ directive. With a vast swathe of office staff working predominantly from home since the start of the first lockdown in March 2020, many businesses have seen the benefits of flexibility first-hand: happier, more engaged staff, healthier work life balances and…
Pretty much all businesses take their telephone communications systems for granted. Sometimes seen as a necessary evil, the office phone system doesn’t have the same sex appeal as the constantly evolving tech bubble of mobile phones, other devices and shiny new computers. Consequently, upgrading a phone system at regular intervals or even properly evaluating the current set up tends to…