Digital transformation continues to pick up pace across the financial sector. However, in spite of the potential benefits on offer, many insurance firms continue to lag behind their peers in terms of their overall digital maturity.
What's happened?
Recorded Future has reports that the British Government is proposing sweeping change in its approach to ransomware attacks.
Do you know Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev?
If you do, there's a chance that you might well on the way to receiving a reward of up to $10 million.
Law enforcement agencies across the US, UK, and Australia have named Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev as the mastermind behind the notorious LockBit ransomware group, estimated to have extorted $500 million from companies worldwide.
Although the sector as a whole has traditionally been comparatively wary of the ever-increasing pace of technology, legal services are increasingly data driven, with an abundance of AI-related discussion emerging within legal technology circles. The core Document Management Systems (DMS) and Practice Management Systems (PMS) remain the centre of focus for how and where to deploy a variety of rapidly maturing SaaS platforms, or dedicated, highly customised suites.
The Ambulance Radio Programme (ARP) delivers mission-critical communication and mobilisation technologies to ensure effective communication between Ambulance Service Trusts, the NHS, and other emergency responders across the UK.
The successful delivery of emergency services depends on critical platforms being always on and always available, ensuring citizens in the most remote areas can always make contact and receive aid as quickly as possible. With even the smallest periods of downtime potentially costing lives, ARP demands the highest standards of performance and resilience from its underlying connectivity, with rigorous SLAs in place to ensure these targets are met.
In order to further optimise the availability of emergency services across the UK, there are currently two major programmes being implemented by ARP across the UK. The Control Room Solution (CRS), which is utilised by ambulance services across England and Scotland, ensuring critical communications between the emergency control room dispatchers and operational crews are completely seamless. The Mobile Data & Vehicle Solution (MDVS) will replace legacy communications equipment for the English and Welsh Ambulance Service Trusts.
Both programmes required a secure, resilient, and highly available IT infrastructure as the underlying foundation, for which ARP selected the Exponential-e Group - encompassing Exponential-e, Vysiion, and Xpertex - as their trusted technology partner.
The programme has lots of moving parts, and a lot of key users and stakeholders - all with unique needs and ways of working. ARP needed a team, processes, and technologies which could be used to create a common service, capable of integrating with each Ambulance Trust and user organisation.
Mathew Baker, IT Service Manager, ARP
The Exponential-e Group has worked closely with ARP for a number of years, beginning with the CNAM project, which Vysiion successfully executed before its acquisition by the Group. Here, multiple critical platforms that were previously managed on a regional basis, with discrete infrastructure and applications run independently by each Trust across England and Wales, were fully centralised in ARP's data centres, including both CRS and MDVS. A whole new network was utilised as the foundation, connecting the centralised ARP control room applications to each regional Trust's control rooms. This highly resilient network infrastructure was designed to maintain the highest levels of uptime and availability across all regions, optimising the delivery of critical services.
ARP would later build on these early successes, engaging the wider Exponential-e Group as its requirements evolved. Exponential-e later delivered a fully centralised, UK-based service desk, available 24 / 7, and continues to work with ARP's own teams to identify new opportunities for service improvements and process optimisation.
Over the course of several years, the partnership between ARP and the Exponential-e Group has continued to evolve and is now in a strong position to take on further challenges. A particular focus is the digitisation of processes and onboarding of multiple new solutions to further optimise the availability and delivery of emergency services nationwide.
Secure, connected infrastructure enabling better patient outcomes and faster clinical innovation.
Discover how UK healthcare organisations are building resilient digital foundations to accelerate diagnosis, connect care, and support frontline teams. Through real-world NHS examples, see how the right infrastructure partner turns transformation into measurable impact.
The international hotel chain Omni Hotels & Resorts has confirmed that a cyberattack last month saw it shut down its systems, with hackers stealing personal information about its customers.
In the aftermath of the attack, hotel guests reported that they had been forced to check in on paper, that room keys didn't work, and all phone systems and Wi-Fi were offline.
Any organisation that has tried to recover from a ransomware attack knows that it can be time-consuming and costly. Companies hit by an attack must choose between paying a ransom or recovering encrypted data from a backup.
Unfortunately, ransomware gangs are too aware that they can leverage significantly higher ransoms from their corporate victims if they have also compromise the company's backups. For this reason, we are seeing more and more cyber attacks targeting backups because they know that organisations desperately need them to recover if they want to avoid paying a ransom to cybercriminals.
In October 2023, the British Library suffered "one of the worst cyber incidents in British history," as described by Ciaran Martin, ex-CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
The notorious Rhysida ransomware gang broke into one of the world's greatest research libraries, encrypting or destroying much of its data, and exfiltrating 600 GB of files, including personal information of British Library staff and users.
To Test or Not to Test? - When it comes to IT disaster recovery and remediation processes, regular testing is not a 'nice to have' - it's absolutely essential!
This isn't hyperbole on my part. You just have to look at the news on any given day. We've all heard the horror stories of organisations in both the public and private sectors experiencing prolonged downtime during disasters due to inadequate preparation, lack of testing, and the unsuitability of their legacy remediation processes and systems.
On the 18th March 2024, the Information Commissioner's Office issued its updated guidance around the issuing of fines when organisations have been found liable for the integrity of their customers' or end users' data being compromised. It is already well-established now that failure to ensure critical data remains secure will result in costly fines, as we have seen repeatedly in multiple high-profile cases over the years.
"When it comes to digital transformation, the personal touch is often what takes projects from 'good' to 'exceptional'. Plenty of companies can deliver technology, but it's the relationships that really drive innovation in long term."
Philip Button, Regional Business Manager – Enterprise
Bromley Healthcare is a community healthcare provider in South-east London, offering communities across Bromley, Bexley, Greenwich, and Lewisham with a range of world-class services, clinics, and health programmes, while empowering clinicians to deliver the very highest standard of care.
To optimise the availability of its services, enabling clinicians to engage with their patients through an evolving range of channels, Bromley Healthcare has continued to invest in its own network, spanning all its sites across South-east London. However, with its existing infrastructure beginning to show its age and a significant proportion of reported IT issues directly related to network performance, it became clear a new digital foundation was required.
The decision was therefore made to seek out a new strategic partner who would be able to support a full-scale modernisation project, redesigning the entire network from the ground up. Key priorities including the deployment of pervasive wireless connectivity at all sites, for both corporate and guest devices, and optimal resilience, with minimal points of failure.
Far more than just deploying the required connections, this new partnership would involve working closely with Bromley Healthcare's own network team to take full advantage of the latest advances in networking technology, both now and in the long term - to ensure these solutions could be intelligently deployed to support the highest standards of patient care. This would include providing hands-on support to staff and clinicians, ensuring they would be able to make full use of the new infrastructure's capabilities.
Having already engaged with their teams for a number of tactical services over the years, Bromley Healthcare invited Exponential-e to take part in a highly competitive tender process, where candidates were asked to showcase how they would approach solving Bromley Healthcare's unique goals for its network. Keeping an open mind about the proposed solutions, Bromley Healthcare eventually selected Exponential-e as their new strategic partner, based on the overall strength of their offering and willingness to deliver a truly bespoke, full integrated solution.
Working closely with Bromley Healthcare's own IT team, Exponential-e designed and deployed a full-stack Cisco Meraki ecosystem, incorporating SD-WAN, LAN, and Meraki wireless, combined with scalable firewalls, HSCN connectivity, and hosting in world-class data centres - all managed through a single pane of glass.
A key development for Bromley Healthcare's own networking team has been the implementation of application-level monitoring, allowing for full control and visibility of the entire network. This has enabled faster, more effective troubleshooting, ensuring key applications are always available to clinicians, whenever and wherever they are required. At the same time, a dedicated team at Exponential-e continues to maintain the underlying digital foundation, ensuring the network will always deliver the highest standards of performance and guarantee the integrity of critical data.
This blend of centralised control and visibility, expert support, and a fully integrated solution wrap meant that time spent on routine network management was reduced by around 75%, saving an average of 35 internal man hours per week. As a result, Bromley Healthcare's own teams have been able to refocus their attention and prioritise resources to broaden the quality, range, and availability of healthcare services across South-east London.
With the new infrastructure firmly established, Bromley Healthcare are now planning the deployment of a next-gen VPN solution, providing staff and clinicians with additional layers of flexibility in the way they work. Plans are also in place to utilise the system's inherent flexibility to make interpreting services available to clinicians via a range of channels, reducing the need for an interpreter to be physically present when required.
You have to have a good network; everything else is built on it. So, it was really important to us to develop a real strategic partnership - not just supplying the lines, but providing suggestions, solutions, and best practice to drive something new and open up opportunities to make our clinicians more efficient and effective.
Patrick Montgomery
Chief Technology Officer, Bromley Healthcare
What I liked, and still like - most about working with the team at Exponential-e was that it was a genuinely two-way conversation. At the outset of this project, we were open to anything, and, put simply, their proposal was the best fit for our networking goals.
Patrick Montgomery
Chief Technology Officer, Bromley Healthcare
Secure, connected infrastructure enabling better patient outcomes and faster clinical innovation.
Discover how UK healthcare organisations are building resilient digital foundations to accelerate diagnosis, connect care, and support frontline teams. Through real-world NHS examples, see how the right infrastructure partner turns transformation into measurable impact.
The retail landscape has fundamentally changed in recent years, partly driven by the necessities of COVID lockdowns, and partly by ongoing shifts in customer preferences and behaviour. As we have previously explored on this blog, the familiar high street shopping experience is increasingly converging with online and click-and-collect shopping, offering a new breed of data-driven shopping experience.
The Sovini Group delivers a growing range of world-class construction, property, and facilities services across the UK's public and private sectors, including a number of social and not-for-profit enterprises, employing more than 800 staff. One Vision Housing, part of the Sovini Group, manages more than 14,000 homes across the north-west of England, with more being built each year, and actively works to make a positive difference to the communities it is involved in.
Working with social housing residents across the north-west, One Vision Housing, part of the Sovini Group, rely on seamless communication with their tenants, whether that's for routine administration, scheduling maintenance, or ensuring emergencies are dealt with quickly and effectively. The need for a secure, resilient, and highly intuitive platform that would support close collaboration between advisors and communication with residents was further driven home during the COVID-19 lockdowns, when face-to-face meetings became impossible.
As a result, once lockdowns ended, the decision was made to seek out a next-gen unified communications platform that would transform the way Sovini supports their residents, replacing the legacy PBX system. Having already successfully adopted Microsoft Teams, gaining buy-in from employees across the company, the resulting RFP sought to build on this success. This meant exploring how processes could be further optimised by tools like call recording and analytics, with ample scope for future development. The employee experience was also critically important - the new system needed to be as user-friendly as possible, allowing advisors to focus on the needs of residents, especially those considered vulnerable.
Exponential-e's well-established contact centre and unified communications pedigree, comprehensive service wrap, and consultative approach that focused on Sovini's operational strategy made a strong impression throughout the tender process. As a result, they were awarded the contract, with a dedicated account team immediately beginning work to establish themselves as Sovini's key communications partner.
Working closely with Sovini's own IT team and customer service team leaders, Exponential-e began scoping out the new customer service platform. Service continuity was a critical priority, with measures established to ensure advisors would be able to continue working in the way they were accustomed to, while enjoying a range of additional tools to support successful resolutions. To this end, as the project specifications evolved, in-depth training was provided for staff via Microsoft Teams. Based on these conversations, comprehensive user guides were created and distributed.
Key to the success of the project was ongoing consultation around potential opportunities for improvement, which strong partnership between both organisations and the inherent flexibility and scalability of Exponential-e's contact centre has continued to support following the go-live date. In particular, the solution's ability to deliver bespoke, real-time reporting, drawing on data generated across multiple channels.
Utilising the high volumes of data generated throughout interactions with residents to optimise service quality and ensure advisors are properly supported has become a key element of Sovini's day-to-day operations. This has proven especially beneficial during interactions with vulnerable residents, as team leaders are able to monitor the quality of interactions - both live and through analytics - to ensure appropriate training is provided for advisors, and that residents are always properly supported.
This is very much an evolving process, as Sovini's teams continue to explore the full range of the contact centre solution's capabilities and how they can complement and enhance their strategies for optimising service quality across existing channels, and those in the process of being deployed (social media, for example). This includes automating routine processes (where possible and appropriate) and integration with other systems, to achieve a holistic view of the entire operation.
In this way, Sovini continue to utilise leading-edge technology as a means of enhancing the expert support and personal attention their residents have come to expect from their advisors, rather than as a substitute for it. As their teams work with their Exponential-e account team to identify and execute further improvements in the years ahead, the full potential of this new model for customer service excellence will continue to reveal itself, helping establish new standards of best practice across the entire housing sector.
As an agile organisation it is essential that our systems enable us to support our staff working remotely. This solution very much supports that as well as providing all the necessary functionality we require for a busy, customer-focused contact centre environment.
Jan Conroy
Head of Customer Services, One Vision Housing
The actual migration from one system to the other was seamless for both the customer and the team using it. Our advisors adapted with ease and much prefer the functionality of the new system. There's much more information available to them, and it's very user friendly. When you're handling calls it is important to have all the information you need at your fingertips to provide excellent customer service and this system supports that.
Jan Conroy
Head of Customer Services, One Vision Housing
If I was to sum it up, I think it's a really great partnership. It doesn't feel like a contractor and a client relationship, it feels like a partnership relationship and that works very, very well.
Jan Conroy
Head of Customer Services, One Vision Housing
Exponential-e is recognised for enabling and delivering success in helping organisations reimagine their customer experiences in 2023.
February 8, 2024 – Exponential-e has been named Global Partner by Five9, the provider of the Intelligent CX Platform. The Five9 2023 Global Partner Awards recognise the achievements of the Five9 global ecosystem of channel partners, systems integrators, strategic alliance partners, and Independent Software Vendors (ISV's).
Exponential-e partners with Five9 to deliver an industry-leading, omnichannel Contact Centre as-a-Service (CCaaS) platform, suitable for the modern customer journey.
"Our partnership with Five9 has always been built around our shared values and passion for exceptional CX at a time when the Contact Centre has become many organisations' primary point of contact with their customers. We firmly believe that the intelligent application of the right technologies has the potential to transform the way customer service excellence is achieved across a range of channels, so working with Five9 to bring our CCaaS solution to life was simply a natural fit. This award is a testament to both what's already been achieved, and what we will achieve together in the years ahead."
Gareth Hayes, Head of UC and CX, Exponential-e
"Our partners consistently provide a high level of value to Five9 and our joint customers. The continued growth we have experienced over the last several years would not have been possible without the global reach and stellar performance of our partners", said Jake Butterbaugh, Senior Vice President, Global Partners. "These partner award winners represent the best of the best. We are so happy to recognise them and are humbled and inspired by their commitment to Five9 and to delivering outstanding CX. Congratulations, Exponential-e, on your well-deserved recognition."
Five9 is on a mission to Bring Joy to CX™. The Five9 Global Partner Program and its 1,400+ members deliver excellence, integrity, and solutions that enable our joint customers to deliver exceptional customer experiences. The Five9 Intelligent CX Platform is a leading AI-powered CCaaS solution that elevates contact centre performance by empowering managers with actionable insights and intelligence, personalise customer experiences with self-service and their choice of channel to communicate, elevating businesses to deliver results ensuring the delivery of joyful agent and customer experiences.
To learn more about the Five9 2023 Global Partner Award winners, click here.
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