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Mobile Unified Communications

Mobile Unified Communication is about extending your enterprise’s real-time communication functionality out to your mobile workforce over both the WiFi and cellular network. This means the IP-PBX functionality you currently enjoy in your office, including corporate directory, conferencing, IM and presence status, you can now enjoy on your mobile device. Think of it as a feature-rich mobile office extension offering you unified mobility and unified communications where you can be reached anytime, anywhere.

With the Enterprise Mobility Solution UC from FirstHand Technologies, you can:

• Unify your mobile devices with your communication infrastructure
• Increase your mobile workforce’s productivity levels
• Improve customer retention rates
• Control cellular/mobility expenses
• Provide Fixed-Mobile Convergence and Session Mobility
• Deliver enterprise CIO benchmarks for success

Now, when someone calls your office, your mobile device rings. All your voicemails can be quickly accessed from one easy-to-use location. When you call someone from your mobile device, the person you called only sees your work phone number, not your cell phone number. And, all the functionality you use at your office — call hold, transfer, mute, and more — you can now enjoy using on your mobile device.

Seamless call mobility, Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC), and Voice Call Continuity (VCC) are also available with Mobile Unified Communications from FirstHand Technologies. This means you’ll be able to take a conversation with you as you transfer a call from your desktop to your mobile device. Carry on the conversation using your WiFi network, and as you leave your WiFi network, have the call seamlessly and automatically switched to your cellular network without a drop in the conversation.

Empower your road warriors with the communication tools they need to get the job done. Increase job satisfaction within your own mobile workforce and make their everyday communication tasks easier.

Unify mobile devices with your communication infrastructure

One of the biggest benefits of Mobile Unified Communications is Single Number Reach and One Voice Mailbox. Now, when people call you, your mobile device rings, and all voice mails are easily accessible from one place. Other benefits include:

• Full-featured mobile extension: The telephone features you enjoy on your desktop, you can now use on your mobile device
• Leveraging your IP PBX and WiFi infrastructure investment
• Being able to enforce your mobility policies more easily
• Keeping records of all call activity as all calls records are now kept on your IP PBX for purposes of regulation and call reports
• Retaining all voice mails as they’re now kept internally on your IP PBX
• Gaining visibility into who has what mobile device and what software they’re running
• Phone numbers stay with your organization: This means that when you have turnover in your sales team, your customers will continue to call your organization’s sales line, not someone’s cell phone who’s not with you anymore

Increase your mobile workforce’s productivity levels

The FirstHand Enterprise Mobility Solution UC provides numerous productivity enhancers and other functionality that just makes everyday communication and collaboration easier, such as:

• Collaborate with colleagues to accelerate business making decisions and resolve customer issues faster using the IM tool, presence status updates, and group calls.
• Retrieve phone messages from one voice mailbox, which ensures that you never need to check for messages on several voice mailboxes using multiple passwords.
• Quickly call someone using Click-to-Call from your Outlook integration.
• Use short code (4-digit) dialing to call someone within your enterprise.
• Look up office extensions quickly and easily using your Corporate Directory and local Address Book.
• Glance at the Message Waiting Indicator to see if you have any messages: no longer will you waste time calling into your mailbox to retrieve messages that aren't there.
• Accelerate business making decisions by inviting attendees to an immediate Group Call.
• Move a call from your desktop to your mobile device using the seamless call mobility function so that you can continue important conversations as you walk away from your desk on your way to a meeting or to the airport.
• Use your WiFi infrastructure to make Voice over WiFi calls from areas within your office where your cellular network can’t penetrate. You can also use it in WiFi-enabled hotspots.

Improve customer retention rates

In the eye of the customer, your products might appear to be similar in functionality and quality when compared to your competition. You need to differentiate your organization by providing superior customer service. And you can achieve this goal using Enterprise Mobility Solution UC to:

• Greatly reduce the number of missed phone calls and eliminate phone tag. Customers will now be able to reach you anytime, anywhere because when they call your office phone number, your mobile device will ring using either your cellular or WiFi network. Customers will soon learn that all calls are answered swiftly and issues are resolved promptly. And, if you answer the call away from your desk but you’re still in your office, carry on the conversation and when you reach your desk, hand off the call to your desktop phone to multi-task easily.
• Respond to voicemails easily and quickly because if a customer does leave a message, you’ll be notified that there is a message waiting for you and you only have to dial into one voice mailbox, your office phone number's voicemail, to listen to it and respond.
• Quickly include your knowledge and support experts into ad-hoc conference calls using your mobile device to ensure issues are resolved quickly. Your customers will enjoy the fast results and will continue to use your services and purchase your products. In fact, customers notice excellent service and will recommend your organization to others.

Control cellular/mobility expenses

Within your organization, cellular costs are only going in one direction: up. You need to gain visibility into your mobility costs to make informed decisions and reduce cellular costs at the same time.

Using the FirstHand Enterprise Mobility Solution UC, you can reduce cellular costs by making calls using your WiFi infrastructure. Also known as Least Cost Call Routing, this reduces your enterprise’s overall use of cellular minutes by routing the call over your WiFi hotspot through to your IP-PBX and out to the intended person you’re calling.

In addition, using your WiFi infrastructure, you can continue conversations on your mobile device in areas within your building that your cellular network doesn’t cover.

FirstHand Technologies supports many different devices and operating systems and is constantly adding to the supported list as new devices become available. This ensures your investment in Mobile Unified Communications is always relevant and up-to-date and that as you add new devices to your enterprise, that they are supported by FirstHand Technologies.

And, using the FirstHand Enterprise Mobility Gateway, your IT department gains insight into who is using your authorized mobile devices. Double-check this list against your authorized list of users to ensure it is accurate. In addition, your mobile workforce will stop submitting cellular costs buried within expense claims. IT will be able to properly budget cellular costs, giving your enterprise a much more realistic and true report of cellular its costs.

Provide Fixed-Mobile Convergence and Session Mobility

Some of the biggest changes to how your enterprise will work will be apparent with the Fixed-Mobile Convergence and Session Mobility functionality from the FirstHand Enterprise Mobility Solution UC.

Fixed-Mobile Convergence is about being able to move a call seamlessly from either your WiFi network to your cellular network and back. Also known as Voice Call Continuity (VCC), this means you don’t have to disconnect your call as you leave your WiFi coverage and phone the person back over your cellular network. Instead, using the Fixed-Mobile Convergence solution from FirstHand Technologies, you can start a call in either cellular or WiFi and seamlessly move it to the other network with no drop in the connection.

And, using the Session Mobility feature, you’re able to move a call from your mobile device to your desktop. So if you’re on an important phone call but you have to leave your office, simply move the phone call to your mobile to continue on the conversation. And of course, you can move a call from your mobile device to your desktop. Imagine then that as you enter the office, you are engaged in an important phone call. When you reach your desktop phone, simply move the call from your mobile device to the desktop and carry on the conversation.

Deliver Enterprise CIO Benchmarks for Success

FirstHand Technologies encrypts all cellular and WiFi communications to prevent anyone from listening in. WiFi communications is further secured using a seamless VPN connection. Your enterprise will never have to worry about conversations being breached.

Your Chief Intelligence Officer (CIO) will be pleased that the FirstHand Enterprise Mobility Solution UC:

• Provides secure communications
• Captures mobile call records and call activity through PBX
• Leverages PBX infrastructure
• Improves visibility into mobility budget
• Enforces mobility policy
• Provides extensible, scalable solution
• Increases productivity of mobile workforce
• Improves customer retention levels

Deliver single number reach, one voicemail box, fixed-mobile convergence, voice call continuity, and session mobility on a variety of smartphones and dual-mode devices to your mobile workforce. Provide this service securely and capture all call records and call activity on your own PBX communications infrastructure.