It is no doubt that digitalisation is a rewarding exercise for organisations in many sectors, especially today as they seek to adapt and remain resilient amidst uncertainties. Apart from keeping businesses running, it also introduces new opportunities for innovation, helps drive better business outcomes and improves operational efficiencies.
However, deploying and upgrading IT infrastructure and solutions are just the beginning of the entire digital transformation journey. The more crucial steps come next, which involves ensuring the underlying network and supporting systems are optimized so that both employees and even customers can enjoy the best experience possible. This is usually the most tedious and time-consuming part of the job as it requires constant monitoring and review.
This is a greater challenge for many SMEs and organisations that do not have a dedicated IT team to run this part of the show. They end up having an administrator to plan for their infrastructure spends. Besides not having the expertise needed, there is also a lack of transparent information on actual network utility and network diagrams for decision making. With the absence of information added to the lack of knowledge and expertise, these personnel are not able to make informed decisions and may risk overcommitting or oversizing their network unnecessarily.
As we optimise towards a leaner and more efficient workforce, having staff spending time to manually manage and review the network is becoming increasingly ineffective, especially with the unpredictability of network requirements in the new digital age. Managing your business network can be simple and efficient without investing in a larger IT team. All you need is the right tools to stay up to date with proactive network alerts and transparent reporting.
Doing things differently: Delivering greater control and visibility via a customer portal
That is why SPTel offers customers a full transparency and control over their network solutions through a front-end customer portal that is provided as a default when they subscribe with SPTel. It is essentially a single transparent platform that houses all the information including any trouble tickets raised, alerts and updates enabled via push notifications. IT managers can use this to:
- Check network utility to reduce wastage
- Receive alerts and take appropriate action with on demand ICT services
- Mitigate risks with just in time cyber security
- Plan for ways to optimize spends
- Track and receive updates for provisioning status
With this web-based platform, business owners can monitor their network and IT solutions, be alerted of any potential issues or cyber-attacks, as well as provision bandwidth and computing resources, on demand. Everything needed to supercharge a companies’ business network can be managed in a single platform.
Here are some of the features in the SPTel’s customer portal that you may find useful, and how you can best leverage it for increased efficiency.
1) Bandwidth on demand
With more business activities and operations taking place online, companies would require greater network capacity to ensure seamless operations and customer experience, especially during surges. However, it does not make financial sense to invest heavily in network capacity only to utilise it fully for a fraction of the time, especially in today’s economic climate.
Through Bandwidth on Demand (BoD) that’s available on the customer portal, you have the flexibility to increase subscribed bandwidth as and when needed to cater for additional business requirements without needing to oversize networks. Additional bandwidth can be provisioned within minutes, or scheduled for a planned date and time where increased traffic is expected, such as to support an online sale. This is certainly more efficient for businesses as it reduces the need for manual coordination while improving total cost of ownerships.
2) Bandwidth alerts
If you would like greater service assurance, there is an in-built functionality on the customer portal that alerts businesses or users when insufficient bandwidth is detected. Customers will receive proactive alerts, either via SMS or email, so that businesses can address the issue swiftly and ensure their business and customer experience are not severely impacted.
3) Network diagrams at your finger tips
SPTel’s customer portal provides customer network diagram as a default the moment you sign up for a service, instead of customers having to request for and wait for a copy to be provided. This will make it easier for IT teams to access and review the network architecture.
4) Tedious Admin Work Be Gone
The customer portal also comes with an instant quotation and ordering functionality for SPTel’s wide range of solutions. Business owners can browse our catalogue and select their required service. We will automatically check for resource availability and generate a quotation for customers to confirm their order instantaneously. This feature cuts down on turn-around time when acquiring new solutions, and business owners can expect greater clarity and transparency on pricing.
Starting December 2021, businesses can also enjoy the split billing department function on the portal that will help reduce paperwork for internal billing. Instead of having to manually send invoices or bills, business owners can pre-set billing departments so that each service can be assigned to the correct party beforehand, making the process more efficient.
5) Help is just a click a away
The dashboard comes equipped with an intuitive chat bot to address any service queries, or simply to provide help to navigate around the portal. The chat bot is also complemented by a live chat agent who will be able to step in should customers need further assistance.
These are just a few of the functions and features customers can find our customer portal. To find out more, set up your account here or request an Innovation hub visit to see a demo first hand.
