As awards season 2021 continues, we are excited to be finalists for another three awards at the Computing Magazine Cloud Excellence Awards 2021.
As a company, Crises Control are finalists in the Unified Communications Product of the Year category, and the Best Use of Cloud in the Pandemic category, while our CEO Shalen Sehgal is nominated for Cloud Professional of the Year.
Keeping people connected – unified communications
At Crises Control our aim is to support organisations to keep the lines of communication open at all times. This includes everyday communications with team members both locally and around the world, and more crucially, in emergency situations when every second counts for getting the message out there.
Crises Control is packed full of features to make keeping in touch with colleagues clear and simple. These include:
Multiple channels: Keep in touch with employees through five channels – SMS, email, push notifications, IVR calls, and desktop alerts.
Crises Control app: Mobile and desktop apps provide both admin and control centre functionality, and on-the-go communications. Users can do everything with both apps.
Video conference calls: Pull groups of up to 150 people together in secure conference calls. Participants can join from wherever they are through the mobile app, and additional participants can be added to the call at any time.
User groups: Groups on Crises Control can contain unlimited numbers of users, they are quick and easy to add and remove members, can have clear titles and descriptions, and can have media and other assets attached to provide additional information for group members.
Interactive messaging options: Users can carry out two way conversations, or admins can request responses from users to key messages with predefined responses in checklists, one or two options of answer, or free text.
Reporting: Every notification, alert, or message sent through Crises Control is recorded in real time so that senders can track the responses to the notification. The data is then compiled into logs that can be analysed at a later point.
Integration with other systems: Connect Crises Control to other crucial systems. For example, connect Crises Control to HR systems to automatically add or remove users as they join or leave the organisation, and send out a message to every employee notifying them of their new colleague. The options are endless.
SSO: Make Crises Control a core part of your technology by integrating it with single sign on. This way Crises Control will always be on while your employees are at work.
How we helped during the Covid-19 pandemic
Crises Control is fully hosted in the cloud, meaning it functions independently of an organisation’s IT, which has become more important than ever before in the pandemic. The Covid-19 pandemic caused disruption to operations for organisations around the world, testing business continuity plans in ways that most organisations had never considered.
At Crises Control, we were quick to see the benefits that our cloud-based, globally available tool could have for organisations. We added several new features to Crises Control to support customers through the pandemic.
Remote health and wellness checks:
We added a new survey feature on Crises Control to enable our customers to carry out daily health and wellbeing checks of all employees working remotely. The platform tracks who has read or responded to the survey, and gives crucial information about any employees who need a follow up message.
Back to work health checks:
Back to work health checks enable an employee to register their health status before they set off for the office, following the predefined set of health requirements, such as no temperature, no symptoms, no contact with a person with symptoms or who has returned a positive test result within the last 14 days, and more. Getting this information before the employee comes to the office enables organisations to protect the safety of all their employees.
Pandemic response toolkits:
We added special pandemic related toolkits to our incident planning and incident management modules. The aim of these toolkits was to help our customers to create the plans for managing a major Covid-19 outbreak, and the mitigation responses to any pandemic related disruptions.
The toolkits are packed full of resources including template messages for stakeholders, advice and protocols for this specific scenario, mitigations, tasks and actions, and more. These pandemic toolkits have supported organisations and helped them keep employees and customers informed of issues or disruptions to the supply of products or services, created a united incident response, and ultimately keep business running as close to normal as possible during the pandemic.
Cloud professional of the year – Shalen Sehgal
Cloud professional of the year finalist Shalen is the driving force behind Crises Control. He is responsible for Crises Control’s cloud strategy, a vital component of our continued success.
Shalen has taken his vision for Crises Control a step further by brokering several key cloud deals for Crises Control this year, including a new partnership with Americana Computer Systems in the United Arab Emirates providing local IT support services; a new cloud computing data centre region in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with our partners Sahara Net; and most excitingly, a deal to host Crises Control on Microsoft Azure in their data centres around the world.
Shalen has been Managing Director of Crises Control since 2018, overseeing our progress as we have grown into a world leading cloud-based crisis communications and incident management platform.
Aiming high at the Cloud Excellence Awards 2021
The Cloud Excellence Awards 2021 held by Computing Magazine recognise the best of the UK’s cloud industry, including products, vendors, and individuals who work in the cloud. For us at Crises Control, these awards are an opportunity for us to celebrate our achievements, and demonstrate our excellence.
Good luck to all of us at Crises Control, and particularly Shalen at the Cloud Excellence Awards 2021 which will be held on Thursday 23rd September.
