SOFTEL Communications: Experts in Disruption Management

Disruption (acting in a way that almost surprises the market) is a term that elicits both fear and excitement. Among businesses trying to differentiate or adapt, disruption requires making significant, rather than incremental, changes. These changes often require fundamental shifts—structural, environmental, and cultural changes—and vision. Disruption results from a willingness to take a risk, and it successfully enhances business when creative thinkers partner with experts who can bring those disruptive innovations to business fruition.

Enter SOFTEL. As our partners develop products or design service offerings, they come to us for our business communications expertise. We employ communications technologies to enhance what our partners and/orclients build—to manage their journey through the disruptions in their business (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

What’s the SOFTEL story?
John Cognata, Co-Founder and Business Development executive at SOFTEL Communications, Inc. SOFTEL, explains why SOFTEL is a proven choice for enterprises and organizations looking to manage the disruptions. In doing so, results are formed, providing new ways for consumers to use communications technologies to conduct their business. John’s passion is finding ways to combine innovation with technological solutions that solve business problems, creating distinctive (sometimes disruptive) value-driven solutions for network service providers and/or their customer base.

For more than 20 years, SOFTEL has been helping businesses think in creative, progressive ways about their technology investments. In 1993, our founders began the business in response to evolving enterprise communications modalities. Business-to-consumer and business-to-business interactions were, and continue to be, progressively disrupted—think voicemail, call centers, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), cellular phones, Internet, email, VoIP, smart phones, SMS, social media, web and video collaboration, etc. So SOFTEL stepped onto the scene aiming to facilitate how people communicate in the midst of changing modalities. Our customers capitalize on this disruption because we help them align new communication norms with their existing business strategies.

Effective communication is the foundation for all business transactions. SOFTEL is an expert at adapting the tools (systems and modalities) businesses use to communicate internally—and externally. As new technologies evolve, consumers compel businesses to adapt to ever-changing methods of transacting business. SOFTEL helps those same businesses optimize their processes and/or create revenue opportunities. We do this by creating innovative or disruptive approaches to the way businesses use communications technologies, and the results are measurable business gains.

Who are SOFTEL’s clients?
As a communications expert, SOFTEL partners with clients in all industries. We have experience working with enterprises in healthcare, insurance, government, finance, and utilities. But the great thing about being an expert in disruption is that we recognize what we do isn’t specific to or limited by industry type. What’s most important is not what our clients do, but how they do it. Although most of our customers are large organizations or multi-national enterprises, we’ve also worked with start-ups. Overall, we work with clients who have recognized that a disruption in communications or collaboration technology would help them differentiate themselves in their own market.

What do SOFTEL clients think of our work?
Our customers pay us a great compliment by seeing us as true partners in their business. Our projects are successful for two reasons:

• We offer proven solutions that focus on the business strategy of each individual client. We treat each project as if it were the only and most important project, and with each client we strive to build a lasting relationship.
• We work as an extension of the client’s business. SOFTEL almost becomes a department or internal team within the company’s structure, and they trust us to help them innovate in beneficial ways.

Our clients recognize that, in a world of continually developing disruptions, our expertise sets us apart:

“We chose expertise and experience over a big name. We appreciated the SOFTEL hands-on approach and their capacity to assimilate our complex business processes and propose appropriate solutions.” —Utilities customer

“The SOFTEL solution has been invaluable to our organization and has resulted in a reduction of about 70% of our security resets on the network side, and there is no telling what the translation is in productivity gains to the organization. This has helped us become among the pioneers in the journey towards true self-service and user empowerment.”
—Healthcare customer

So what’s next for SOFTEL?
We see the Internet of Things (IOT) within Unified Communications to be the next disruption of business enterprises. Whereas today a caller, consumer, or customer may make contact on an ad-hoc basis, IoT devices will require continual, 24/7 monitoring. In a perpetually connected world, humans and machines are becoming linked through constant, two-way communication. We are most concerned with the data this generates, its security, and its use. And, we have to rethink contact center operations so we can provide services, interactions, interventions, and actions to counter those data demands. Figure 2 gives an insight into the processes and innovations required to achieve these goals.

Over the years, disruptions in communication technology have transformed call centers into contact centers. Now, through innovative use of IoT technology, SOFTEL is turning contact centers into virtual command centers. These command centers are staffed by highly educated data analysts who, when teamed with operations management, can allow enterprises to take proactive, rather than reactive, measures. We help them anticipate issues or needs so that they may better serve their customers, moving toward pre-emptive actions. As a result, this new command center becomes the nerve center for the enterprise, ensuring capitalization on the disruptions and creating new opportunities for their business.

Because of this burgeoning evolution, we have developed innovative communications solutions—for example,in the areas of preventive medicine and preventive maintenance—that are helping our customers develop and deliver new services. By working together, we help our clients create additional revenue streams and even greater productivity.

Figure 2: Combining IOT within existing infrastructure and architecture requires meticulous planning and development.  SOFTEL walks with our partners, taking the journey with them toward combining the people, processes, and technologies, and ensuring disruption is a calculated and beneficial risk.

For more information about how SOFTEL is facilitating enterprises through communications disruptions, please visit our blog and our LinkedIn page.