Today, UC, Telecom and IT teams are under constant pressure to cut costs. Budgets for managing most communications environments are either flat or suffer yearly reductions with no end in sight. Organizations must continually find ways to reduce expense and 2nd Nature can play a big role in making that possible. 2nd Nature enables cost reduction by enabling you to:

• Manage and administer multiple UC, PBX and voicemail systems from one easy-to-use interface even if they are from different vendors
• Drive efficiency by easily standardizing and automating everyday processes (e.g. provisioning and de-provisioning)
• Quickly modify, add, provision, change, and delete large volumes of phones, voice mailboxes and other assets at the same time (e.g., with bulk editing tools, templates, from external files, using Active Directory and others)
• Propagate related changes from one UC, PBX or voicemail system to another
• Schedule PBX, voice mail, and Active Directory changes and MACDs for later execution during off-hours
• Automate phone number and DID management to always know what numbers are available, used, reserved and aging
• Significantly reduce the time, expense and risk of UC, telecom and voicemail system migrations
• Improve asset utilization
• Automate asset aging policies
• Manage shared distribution list membership (e.g. voicemail distribution lists)
• Easily export telecom data from single or multiple UC, PBX and voicemail systems for use with other software (e.g. E911 systems, registration software, Microsoft Excel, and others)
• Delegate simple tasks to less skilled personnel to redistribute costs

Voice systems are as much at risk of security breach as other technology assets. Unknown gaps in security, poor password management, and threats such as toll fraud and impersonation cost organizations billions of dollars every year. In addition, regulatory requirements like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act have increased corporate focus on internal controls and the need to assess and audit their effectiveness.

2nd Nature provides a single administration interface to PBX and voicemail systems and, through role-based permissions, affords UC, telecom and IT managers the ability to more precisely define and allocate administrative functions.

By streamlining the administration process, reducing the number of hands involved in processing MACDs, and minimizing the places in which sensitive user and system information is stored, UC, telecom and IT teams can greatly reduce the risk of security breaches. Together, all of these features allow an organization to easily:

• Lock down direct access to PBX and voice messaging systems
• Granular record level permissions control individual administrator access by role, system, device type, location, department, specific transaction type, etc.
• Increase accountability and auditing capability by tracking each change

You can’t manage what you can’t see. Get the visibility you need to better manage your communications environment. Whether due to mergers and acquisitions, a “best of breed” procurement strategy, migration to VoIP, or inherited legacy equipment, nearly every enterprise contends with multiple systems from the same vendor or multi-vendor UC, PBX and voice messaging environments. In an attempt to manage these challenging multi-system and multi-vendor environments, silos of administration teams have appeared, along with the all-too-common swivel-chair administration strategy. The result is little cross-system or vendor visibility.

But by unifying related UC, PBX and voice messaging systems with 2nd Nature, telecom and IT departments can benefit from a global, synchronized view of all user and system profile data. This visibility must be seen to be believed. 2nd Nature’s visibility and control makes it possible to:

• View and manage all systems and vendors globally across your entire communications environment from a single pane of glass
• Track metrics based on numerous available data combinations, such as administrator workloads and activities, mailbox and phone utilization, distribution list memberships, etc.
• Easily track all changes made to the system
• Filter, sort, compare and analyze related data across record types
• Filter and sort fields to customize and schedule reports
• Confirm policy compliance and validate data integrity (e.g., which mailboxes correspond to which phones, consistency of user names, etc.)
• View availability of resources, such as phones, mailboxes or other devices
• Group available resources into more manageable categories and ranges
• Advanced find, filter, sort, compare, and analyze features enable you to locate phone and voice mailbox information easily
• Manage assets by division, department, building, floor, etc.
• Identify and analyze information trends and data inconsistencies
• Dramatically improve visibility with accurate and comprehensive reporting capabilities
• Customize and track your data with user definable fields
• Integrate with call accounting, E911, human resources and other critical business systems
• Use 2nd Nature with Active Directory, linking phone, voice mail, and user profile data, including email

Many organizations today share the same clear corporate objectives: reduce operational costs while improving internal customer service levels. These two goals are not necessarily mutually exclusive. By using 2nd Nature, UC telecom and IT teams can remove human latency in the administration processes while positively impacting their internal customers’ experience. 2nd Nature makes it possible to:

• Track and monitor service levels
• Produce faster turn-around times and a higher rate of first-call resolution
• Provide users more accurate status updates
• Manage your communications environment with significantly fewer errors
• Very quickly create, modify, and delete phones and voice mailboxes
• Quickly reset passwords and PINs (e.g. voicemail password)
• Find, filter, sort, compare, and analyze system information easily and react to internal service issues quickly and pro-actively
• Quickly view availability of telecom resources and reserve phones or voice mailboxes for specific people and positions
• Easily identify and pro-actively fix improperly linked UC, telecom and voicemail resources