ClearTalk with CTSI

AFA Protective Systems began its journey in making communities safer back in 1873. And while a lot's changed in the near 150 years since its inception, ASA's mission to provide innovative, reliable fire and security systems and services to their customers to protect their property and businesses will never waver. ASA's history is built on deep commitment and meaningful relationships to help ensure reliable systems and support to give its customers peace of mind. Mark LaBua, Vice President and Chief Information Officer at AFA Protective Systems, and David Kleinman, President, and General Counsel, AFA Protective Systems, joined ClearTalk to discuss ASA's history and future under its new acquisition by CTSI.LaBua noted ASA's involvement with various innovations over the years. “One significant innovation was the multiplex fire alarm system which allowed us to segregate points as opposed to just knowing that there was a fire alarm in the building, to know what device or what area that alarm was coming from,” LaBua said. “Which you can imagine in a situation with a fire department responding knowing where that fire is in the building is very important.”For Kleinman, one could say AFA is in his blood. “I started working here in summers when I was eighteen; I'm 40 now. One of AFA's legacies, to me, is AFA always tries to do right by the customer and will actually go and fight for the customer.”With its recent acquisition by CTSI, there is excitement about the future roads ahead for AFA. “The acquisition of AFA by CTSI is going to increase our ability to take the winning formula that the Kleinman family has put together and apply that to a much larger audience, and I think we're going to end up with a better world because of it,” LaBua said.

ntegrating technology in education isn’t easy. It requires a lot of expertise, as well as robust support for educators and administrators. That’s the goal of the partnership between CTSI and LG. Discussing how they work together as manufacturer and integrator, ClearTalk host Tyler Kern spoke with Kelsey Hunter, User Experience Consultant at CTSI, and Victoria Sanville, National Sales Manager, Public Sector, LG.

Internet Protocol Television, or IPTV, is fast becoming an enticing alternative to traditional RF/coaxial distribution of media in enterprise settings – and CTSI and Vitec are primed to help organizations take advantage.“IPTV provides the ability to distribute media and media services across a customer’s enterprise,” CTSI Director of Engineering Mike Wilson said. “By leveraging their network, we’re able to do this in a highly secure, managed, and scalable way.” IPTV can also be accessed by media set-top box decoders, desktop and laptop computers, and mobile devices.The benefits of switching to an IPTV solution for television, digital signage, and more are numerous, from elevated automation and flexibility to the functionality to communicate across disparate facilities and that aforementioned compatibility with a range of devices. To explore those benefits further, Wilson and Vitec Vice President, Michael Chorpash joined host Tyler Kern to share their insights about the companies’ partnership, what made it such a great fit, and how other organizations can go about selecting the right platform partner.The trio also dove into use cases in mission-critical, federal applications, healthcare success stories, IPTV’s role in catering to the new, hybrid workforces of the post-COVID world, and more. To learn more, visit ctsi-usa.com.

Healthcare has been in the spotlight for months due to the spread of the novel coronavirus and the ensuing COVID-19 pandemic. Many industry leaders are searching for ways to improve patient outcomes, boost efficiency, and meet the challenge of a global pandemic. Effectively leveraging technology and robust healthcare data helps that vision become a reality. On this episode of ClearTalk, presented by CTSI, host Tyler Kern was joined by CTSI Director of Training and User Experience, Jennifer Gehringer and Heather Downey, CareSight Director of Clinical Data Science Services, to explore the relationship between data and technology for better results. Highlights: Healthcare, particularly in the midst of COVID-19, is focused on methods for improving both efficiency and patient outcomes. Cutting-edge technology solutions and robust data can provide a way forward. CTSI and CareSight have partnered to help customers access those tools. CTSI and CareSight have been partnered for the past three years to work toward a common goal – guiding customers through advanced reporting and analytics solutions that help identify needs, then ultimately delivering the technology to answer those needs. “We’re looking at data from all different types of care areas … we always end up with this common response from our customers across the board. Often, it’s this shared reaction of, when we light up the data, they say, ‘Oh my gosh, what is that?’ We can fix that pretty quickly,” Downey said. Actionable data comes from many locations, including the massive amount of equipment it takes to engage in effective patient monitoring, overhead communications, and much more that produces the bustling “noise” often seen in busy hospital operations. All of that data is collected, analyzed, and presented to the customers in terms of goals the healthcare provider is looking to achieve – and it’s often more obvious than one might think to assess where they’re at and how to move forward.

On this episode of ClearTalk, a CTSI podcast, CTSI Director of Engineering Michael Wilson and Audiovisual Engineering Manager Greg Gustafson joined host Tyler Kern to touch on a hot topic in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the accelerated adoption of Hands-Free workplace technology. With social distancing measures and other safety initiatives likely to continue as operations around the globe attempt to get back to business as usual, the conversation around touchless collaboration and technology solutions that can facilitate a hands-free workplace has accelerated. “One of the things that CTSI, specifically, is doing in this post-COVID time is having what we call our ‘Clear Innovation Workshops,’” Wilson said. “It’s like a roundtable discussion where a lot of the thought-leaders within CTSI … join the conversation with our customers.” These discussions have centered on a variety of topics, but hands-free collaboration, digital signage, people counting, and occupancy management have been points of emphasis related to customers’ desire to reduce touchpoints and help enforce social distancing. CTSI helps those customers find solutions that make adoption and integration simpler, bringing end users the benefits of hands-free workplaces without adding undue stress and implementation challenges. Hands-free workplaces are driven by a wide range of solutions, including automatic doors, reduced touchpoints in elevators, controlled lighting and HVAC, AV collaboration and communication solutions that leverage bring-your-own-device capability, and more. While this touch-free movement will certainly boost safety and reduce operational touchpoints, it’s also going to require navigation of significant challenges related to the lack of tactile options for end users and how to provide adequate feedback without it, delivering holistic solutions, matching those solutions to how end users already interact with their devices, and other key considerations.

On this episode of ClearTalk, a CTSI podcast, host Tyler Kern was joined by CTSI Vice President Ron Pusey and Health Care Account Executive Mark Thompson for a look at the reopening of the world’s businesses – and what that means for security, surveillance and access control. The most critical thing leaders can do for their operation, Pusey said, is to ensure that they’ve thoroughly reviewed their plans and policies surrounding these initiatives to ensure that employee buy-in and understanding is high and that they aren’t just purchasing technology for technology’s sake. “Realistically, without a plan, without a process, without workflow and without policy, it’s very difficult to deploy a technology to solve something when you haven’t planned on how you’re going to use it,” he said. Key items that need to be determined include which entrances will be open to employees and guest, how the flow of traffic will be managed and monitored, which solutions will assist in that process and, if an organization is planning on solutions that alarm when out-of-range conditions are present, how those alarm conditions will be handled. In other words, it’s not enough to just have the data – it all has to go somewhere, be analyzed, and be acted upon. All of these efforts are aimed toward avoiding the one cardinal sin of security and access control – providing a false sense of security for occupants that isn’t backed by thorough technology, integrations and policy. Throughout the episode, Kern, Pusey and Thompson dove into different applications for different industries, which technologies might suit different plans of action, key questions that operations should be asking when it comes to selecting appropriate technology, and how CTSI can help guide operations to the perfect custom solution.

Customer care – it’s often thought of as a no-brainer. Of course you take care of your customers. That’s how business is done.But are you looking deeply enough at how customer care initiatives can be elevated to play an even greater role in enterprise communications? On this episode of ClearTalk, a CTSI podcast, host Tyler Kern was joined by CTSI Vice President of Operations Will Seifert and Director of Customer Care Becky Arthur to help you answer that question. Seifert said customer care can be the difference between a solution that surpasses expectations and one that loses the thread in lack of communication and added complexity, especially in systems integration. “Customer care is important, because it really is how the end users get the most out of their system,” he said. “It ensures that the system is functioning in a way that it really needs to function and that they’re getting the return on investment that they thought they would get at the very beginning of the project.” While customer care if often thought of as how a business relates to and serves its clients, that definition is limiting. In fact, Arthur said, it’s a partnership. “We have to work with our customers to make sure they understand the technology they’re getting,” she said. “Then, as they’re using the technology, we help make sure that it’s meeting their business needs. Really, it’s a partnership to make sure that we’re helping support them.” The essence of customer care, then, is translating all of the conceptual and technical planning of a unique system into a tangible, practical, useful, and reliable solution. Effective customer care brings along with it a variety of benefits, including better outcomes and overall usage, the ability to be flexible in adapting to changing business needs and goals, and more.

On this episode of ClearTalk, host Tyler Kern was joined by CTSI President and CEO Gino Ruta, and Vice President Ron Pusey, to discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic highlights a need for rapid deployment of communications technology that extends well beyond the confines of this period of uncertainty. CTSI is a mission-critical communications service provider, making the company uniquely qualified to help assess the lasting impact of this pandemic and the need for communication solutions in industries like government, healthcare, education, corporate, houses of worship, and other verticals. Rapid deployment is key in these industries. To highlight the concept of rapid deployment as it relates to critical communications technology, Pusey outlined a recent situation that came about as a result of the novel coronavirus. “Obviously, this crisis has required a lot of folks to have to respond quickly to their clients’ needs,” he said. “We do a fair amount of business with VCU Health Systems, and they had a critical need to convert 180 of their honor residences back into hospital-ready rooms for their lower-acuity cases. … They called us on a Wednesday, said they needed 72 rooms up the following Monday and another 108 the following Friday. So, we had roughly 10 days to convert 180 rooms. “We were able to do that through the depth of our resources.” This kind of rapid deployment has been thrust into the spotlight due to the pressures of the collective response to COVID-19, but, moving forward, it will be even more critical to ensure the world’s industries are prepped not only for the resumption of normal operation, but future disruption. Still, there’s a balance to be struck between agility and the standards of quality CTSI adheres to, and Ruta said the company is always ready to walk that line. “What we can do is build on what we’re doing each day to be prepared for rapid deployment,” he said. “And we do that with standards. It can be something as simple as standard drawings for all the technologies that we deploy, standard cables, standard connections … Whenever something comes out and needs to be done very quickly, we’re just accelerating the time frame.”

On this episode of ClearTalk, Director of Engineering at CTSI Mike Wilson explained the company’s ClearDesign Rooms, Engineering and User Experience methodology. Facilities across many industries, including healthcare, education, corporate and government, all have various technology and business requirements. CTSI helps customers meet those needs in a manner that provides consistent and effective performance with ease of use and high availability. Wilson said ClearDesign Rooms are designed around four guiding principles: standardization, scalability, manageability and security. “What we strive for at CTSI is to deliver positive business outcomes through technology solutions, and our ClearDesign approach is one of the ways that we do that,” Wilson said. ClearDesign standardizes the approach to designing technological solutions for businesses, relying on expert engineers and a team dedicated to user experience. “Our user experience team is a unique group of people from various backgrounds ... that can help us to capture and better understand our customers and their business requirements,” Wilson said. He also highlighted how the initial conversation between the client and these teams is crucial to the future success of the project.

With the rapid innovations in technology today, it’s hard to keep up; especially in the business world where we rely on these different systems to profit and grow. Alan Rosenkoff, Director of Business Development & Corporate Marketing at CTSI, joins host Tyler Kern to talk about how CTSI has changed the way organizations consume or upgrade to new technologies by offering a subscription service. The subscription service idea came to CTSI about 3 years ago in a meeting about what customers needs they were having trouble satisfying. Alan said that the difference between a subscription service and maintenance management contracts are: management contracts allow them to “maintain, manage, and improve availability of their systems” and subscription services “bundles the design, engineering, installation, the hardware, the software, and the CTSI managed services into one monthly subscription service fee.” Alan said that the benefits of the subscription service will in the long run outweigh the extra cost by providing your organization upgraded technologies. One of the largest benefits to the subscription service over a regular management contract is the ability to customize the subscription based on the needs of your organization over time. Alan said that organizations can decide, for example, to have their security systems upgrade every 3 years, have their conferencing and collaboration systems upgrade every 5 years, and so on. Another benefit is not having a large upfront financial cost when completely overhauling these systems because they are built into the cost of the subscription.