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The Alpha|Stack Blog

## Why build Alpha|Stack?

We decided to build Alpha|Stack because we believe that **existing cloud platforms are generally very narrow in scope requiring you to manage multiple subscriptions in order to provide all the necesary tools for your team to do their jobs**. Whether they're limited to only performing customer relationship management or polling your network for alerting and health reporting, or simply not flexible enough to let you do all the things you want, the cloud platforms available today inevitably end up falling short.

## What is Alpha|Stack?

So what exactly is Alpha|Stack and how is it a better solution to this problem? At first glance, Alpha|Stack looks a lot like some other sales and billing cloud platforms you might be familiar with. It can ingest data in a number of ways - adding records manually, importing bulk data, and for the network side, run a mesh network of polling apps to collect network statistics. Once you have all of this data in your system, you ultimately need to report and view on all of it and allow your team to update and manage it. Well, Alpha|Stack brings it all together in a single, cohesive cloud platform - allowing you to manage your business easier than ever before.

The end result is a cloud platform that can **be** your total business solution, rather than just another component in it. We hope to enable the full flexibility and power of a custom built solution with a tiny fraction of the required investment. There have been a few other projects aimed in this direction, but with Alpha|Stack we think we can take the ease of use and breadth of capabilities to another level.


blog_site_surevey_2.png

blog_site_survey_2

Out of beta and out to the world.

Today we're very excited to launch Alpha|Stack to the public! Alpha|Stack is a cloud platform for managing all aspects of your business - everything from sales and billing to network monitoring and issue resolution. We're constantly improving, but our goal with Alpha|Stack is to dramatically simplify the number of software subscritions you need to run and manage your business.

Introducing Alpha|Stack

<div className="row">
    <div className="col col--12 margin-bottom--sm">
        <h2>The Problem</h2>
        <p className="hero__subtitle">
        Site surveys are important for telecom companies, especially providers of fixed wireless.
This is because an accurate site survey is a crucial first step to providing excellent customer service
to prospective clients and keeping the trust of partners and resellers. Too many bad site surveys
and you can lose business, and the trust of valuable business partners. Alpha|Stack wants to make
site surveys as easy as possible for fixed wireless operators. With this in mind Alpha|Stack includes
a built-in integrated site survey PathTool.
<center>
   <figure class='figure mb-3'>
      <img src='https://sls-strapi-dev-s3staticbucket-r297c485fk2z.s3.amazonaws.com/as_ops_site_survey_search_64a44effd0.png' alt='PathTool Blog Page' class='figure-img img-fluid'>
   </figure>
</center>
        </p>
    </div>
</div>
<div className="row">
    <div className="col col--12 margin-bottom--sm">
        <h2>The Solution</h2>
        <p className="hero__subtitle">
        Alpha|Stack’s PathTool aims to provide fixed wireless providers with an easy to use integrated tool to conduct site surveys. The PathTool populates your Point of Presence (PoP) transmitter
locations and specifications from other modules. This includes the height and type transmitter on each PoP. By including the height, the tool can provide a more accurate picture of the line of sight from the PoP to the customer location. This is crucial for fixed wireless operators in order to have accurate information about the serviceability of a customer location. 
        </p>
        <p className="hero__subtitle">
        The PathTool also allows you to change the receiver position and height after entering an address into the tool. This customization allows you to get an even more accurate picture of line of
sight of a given customer location. You can also change the tree height in the surrounding area if you know there are trees close by giving you even more customization providing a more accurate survey. In addition to these options, the tool is also populated with data from the sales and operations modules to include addresses of your current customers. This is particularly useful as a guide to what areas you are currently servicing as this will give you a good idea as to whether a site is serviceable or not. Once you’ve generated your path analysis in Alpha|Stack, the results provide a .KML file of the path analysis that you can open using Google Earth to easily check your work. 
        </p>
    </div>
</div>

## Steps for Using the Path Tool

- Select one or more site structures or service vendors
- Enter the address for the wireless service destination
- Review the returned service structures, and click on the marker
- Edit the height or placement of the receiver, and make any final adjustments as necessary
- Generate the Path Analysis
- Analyze the results!

## Conclusion

This blog is the first in a series of blogs discussing the different modules you can take advantage of using Alpha|Stack, and how they can bring your business to the next level.

# [REQUEST A DEMO OF ALPHA|STACK TODAY!][urls.demo]

### About Alpha|Stack

Alpha|Stack is a revolutionary business management platform optimized to
suit the specific needs of a WISP. With Alpha|Stack’s integrated CRM, site
survey path tool, network management and operation software, Alpha|Stack is
optimized to enable seamless data migration between modules. Saving your
business time and money.

[urls.demo]: /contact

blog_site_survey_3.png

blog_site_survey_3

How the Path Tool helps your ISP quickly identify feasible installations

Alpha|Stack’s PathTool aims to provide fixed wireless providers with an easy to use integrated tool to conduct site surveys. 

Ryan

Site Survey: Path Tool

<div className="row">
    <div className="col col--8 margin-bottom--sm">
        <h2>OVERVIEW</h2>
        <p className="hero__subtitle">
        One Ring Networks is a large Tier 2 carrier providing various data
and voice services to Arizona, California, Georgia, Maryland and
Texas. Due to the varied nature of the telecom industry, One Ring
Networks found it nearly impossible to find a project management
platform that would encompass all of the intricacies of their
business processes.
        </p>
        <p>
            Instead of paying for many different platform providers that are
largely disjointed and don’t integrate with each other, they wanted
a software solution that could integrate every part of a telecom
company into one flexible platform solution. This would allow their
processes, and interdepartmental communication to improve to
better serve their customers. For this they turned to Alpha|Stack,
a business management platform optimized to satisfy the needs of
the telecom industry.
        </p>
        <p>
One Ring Networks uses Alpha|Stack to integrate processes into
one software solution gaining improved efficiency, and saving
money by integrating finance, operations, and sales into an all in
one customizable platform. With Alpha|Stack One Ring Networks
saves time by getting rid of separate disjointed platforms that
don’t talk to each other. This results in improved communication
between departments by sharing information through one
integrated platform.
        </p>
    </div>
    <div className="col col--4">        
        <h3>THE CHALLENGES</h3>
            <ul>
                <li>
One Ring Networks needed a business management platform that can encompass the needs of the telecom industry
                </li>
                <li>
Previously using disjointed platforms not optimized for telecom               
                </li>
            </ul>
        <h3>THE SOLUTION</h3>
            <ul>
                <li>
Alpha|Stack business management platform
                </li>
            </ul>
        <h3>THE RESULTS</h3>
            <ul>
                <li>
Automated data sharing between departments
                </li>
                <li>
Optimized Sales funnel              
                </li>
                <li>
Improved Operations functions             
                </li>
                <li>
Centralized HR and Billing processes             
                </li>
            </ul>            
    </div>
</div>

## AN INTEGRATED SALES PROCESS

By utilizing Alpha|Stack, One Ring Networks is able to take the sales process to the next level with an intuitive and easy to use CRM tool. The CRM functionality Alpha|Stack has allowed the One Ring sales team to create and track opportunities as they work them down the sales funnel. With integrated information from the operations team this allows the sales team to have a wholistic view of their sales pipeline all in one tool. 


Along with the CRM functionality, Alpha|Stack tracks each deal by agent and salesperson. This allows
senior management to keep track of the sales team’s numbers all in one place. This can help management identify top performers allowing for more insight into where One Ring’s sales team is succeeding and where improvements can be made. "Compared to our past CRM platforms Alpha|Stack gives me more insight and helps me get all of the information I need to manage my sales team effectively and efficiently," said Kris Maher One Ring Networks VP of Sales. "Alpha|Stack offers us more functionality with lower integration costs saving us time and money."

<blockquote class='blockquote blockquote-primary'>
Compared to our past CRM platforms Alpha|Stack gives me more insight and helps me get all of the information I need to manage my sales team effectively and efficiently.
<br /><br />
<div className="font-italic"> - Kris Maher, VP of Sales - One Ring Networks</div>
</blockquote>



One Ring’s previous experience with CRM platforms was one of expensive platforms that required an even more expensive integration. They had to work with outside companies to integrate their sales data into the platform. This took a lot of time, was expensive, and even after all that time and money spent, they could never customize it to fit their specific needs as a telecom company. The Alpha|Stack team handled all of the integration in-house cutting out the middleman, saving One Ring a lot of time and money.

Fixed Wireless offers unique challenges in the world of telecom. Due to the line of sight requirements of fixed wireless a crucial part of the sales process is an accurate site survey. Without an accurate site survey deals can fall through causing trust between a provider and their partners and prospective customers to be broken. When this trust is broken it becomes increasingly hard to win it back making accurate site surveys a must for a wireless internet service provider (WISP). With the site survey tool, Alpha|Stack allows the One Ring sales team to take the first step in getting accurate information to keep them from making promises that their services can’t back up.

<blockquote class='blockquote blockquote-primary'>
Alpha|Stack offers us more functionality with lower integration costs saving us time and money.
<br /><br />
<div className="font-italic"> - Kris Maher, VP of Sales - One Ring Networks</div>
</blockquote>

 ## SMOOTHER OPERATIONS

By using Alpha|Stack, One Ring is now able to consolidate all operations taking customers through
sales, provisioning, and billing all on one platform. With Alpha|Stack’s data sharing though modules One Ring is able to sustain full lifecycle management with their customers streamlining company workflow. "Alpha|Stack has allowed us to combine multiple systems into one single pane of glass for operations." said Sotheara Leang One Ring Networks VP of Operations. "This enables us to take a customer from signing and provisioning, all the way though install and billing within one platform."

<blockquote class='blockquote blockquote-primary'>
Alpha|Stack has allowed us to combine multiple systems into one single pane of glass for operations. This enables us to take a customer from signing and provisioning, all the way through install and billing within one platform.
<br /><br />
<div class="font-italic"> - Sotheara Leang, VP Operations - One Ring Networks</div>
</blockquote>


Alpha|Stack allows for a seamless purchase order process for employees and managers. One Ring
operations executives can manage purchase requests from all departments of their business in one
place. From promotional materials, to fixed wireless equipment, and office supplies One Ring operations executives track all company purchases all in Alpha|Stack.


One Ring also takes advantage of the inventory management system that Alpha|Stack offers. This allows One Ring operations managers to track all of the equipment that is out in the field in use and what is held in reserve ready for use. This gives the operations team a good idea of what needs to be ordered, and what equipment that they have in reserve. "Alpha|Stack drives our daily workflow and has made it simple to keep all my different teams working together," said Leang.


In addition to the purchase order and inventory management, One Ring also uses the Network Monitoring System to manage their equipment out in the field. By utilizing Alpha|Stack’s Network Monitoring System Tool One Ring can monitor their network so fast that they can fix problems as they arise, often before their customers even notice there was a problem. As a telecom company this is absolutely crucial in ensuring their end customers are connected and satisfied. 

## INTEGRATED BILLING & HUMAN RESOURCES

One Ring also utilizes the billing functionality within Alpha|Stack to proactively keep track of their accounting. With tools for invoice tracking, transaction history, customer statements and aging reports Alpha|Stack helps to keep One Ring’s accounting team organized and integrated with the other departments. "Alpha|Stack helps our accounting team to keep track of invoices and customer statements seamlessly in one platform" said Kelli Bedel Finance Manager for One Ring Networks.

<blockquote class='blockquote blockquote-primary'>
With the changing taxes and rate codes for voice services, billing was a nightmare on our previous platform, Alpha|Stack’s billing module simplified it for us.
<br /><br />
<div class="font-italic"> - Kelli Bedel, Finance Manager - One Ring Networks</div>
</blockquote>

One of the biggest struggles One Ring had with previous billing software was an inability to accurately bill voice telecom services. "With the changing taxes and rate codes for voice services, billing was a nightmare on our previous platform, Alpha|Stack’s billing module simplified it for us" said Bedel.
<br /><br />
Alpha|Stack helps One Ring’s HR department by keeping track of PTO and time off requests. One Ring employees are able to track their PTO hours and can request time off all through the Alpha|Stack platform. When time off is approved these are marked in the calendar for the operations team allowing for management to plan work schedules around employee’s time off without mistakes. 
<br /><br />

<blockquote class='blockquote blockquote-primary'>
By using Alpha|Stack our HR team can keep track of our employee’s time off and hours easily in one platform making my life much easier.
<br /><br />
<div class="font-italic"> - Rhea Topolski, Director of Human Resources - One Ring Networks</div>
</blockquote>

In addition to these features they can also track hourly employee’s hours with a clock in and out feature. This keeps all data pertaining to employee’s hours in one easy to access location. "By using Alpha|Stack our HR team can keep track of our employee’s time off and hours easily in one platform making my life much easier," said Rhea Topolski Director of Human Resources for One Ring Networks. 

## IN CLOSING

Before Alpha|Stack, One Ring Networks was using many different platforms to manage their business.
These platforms were disjointed and expensive causing high monthly operating costs. One Ring Networks has saved a significant amount of money on a monthly basis by consolidating business management into one subscription.
<br />
By using Alpha|Stack One Ring Networks connects its whole business within one business management
platform. By doing this, One Ring Networks has full internal and external lifecycle management of their business. This allows them to track their customers, employees, and resources all within one platform that shares data across modules. This facilitates greater connection between departments with seamless integration of valuable information and business processes between departments saving their business time and money.

# [REQUEST A DEMO OF ALPHA|STACK TODAY!][urls.demo]


### About Alpha|Stack

Alpha|Stack is a revolutionary business management platform optimized to
suit the specific needs of a WISP. With Alpha|Stack’s integrated CRM, site
survey path tool, network management and operation software, Alpha|Stack is
optimized to enable seamless data migration between modules. Saving your
business time and money.

### About One Ring Networks

One Ring Networks is an industry-leading provider of voice and data services
across Arizona, California, Georgia, Maryland and Texas. We offer hosted
PBX, fixed wireless, fiber and unified communications solutions to businesses
of all sizes. To find out more about our customizable options please contact
1-855-ONE-RING or email our team at sales@oneringnetworks.com

[urls.demo]: /contact


blog_case_orn_01.jpg

blog_case_orn_01

How One Ring Networks Transformed and Improved their Business Processes with Alpha|Stack.

One Ring Networks uses Alpha|Stack to integrate processes into one software solution gaining improved efficiency and saving money by integrating finance, operations, and sales into an all-in-one customizable platform.

Case Study: One Ring Networks

# Overview

Managing the health of your network is absolutely crucial in ensuring customer satisfaction and smooth business operation. To help communications providers like fixed wireless providers, fiber providers and managed services providers achieve this, Alpha|Stack has created a comprehensive Network Monitoring System (NMS). 

The Alpha|Stack NMS helps your customer service and operations team to identify potential outages in your network in a timely manner. With this real-time monitoring, Alpha|Stack helps you respond to issues quickly keeping your customers live and happy.
<center>
   <figure class='figure mb-3'>
      <img src='https://sls-strapi-dev-s3staticbucket-r297c485fk2z.s3.amazonaws.com/nms_overview_b9c8f34f40.jpg' alt='NMS Landing Page' class='figure-img img-fluid'>
   </figure>
</center>

## Managing Your Network

Alpha|Stack works with your team to connect your Point of Presence (PoP) devices, customer premise equipment (CPE) and any routers or other relevant devices to our NMS. Once the devices are all connected the NMS shows the down status at any devices that you input into your network. These data are organized by market, and customer levels. This ensures a non-cluttered seamless user experience. When you go into the customer or PoP level, the NMS system shows all of the devices at that location telling you which devices are up and running and which are down.

Within each CPE node you can see the health of the node, and graphs of your latency and packet loss. This data can help your team identify any issues a customer or one of your PoP locations might have allowing you to rectify any issues as soon as they come up. The Alpha|Stack NMS pings the device every 5 seconds and Alpha|Stack aggregates every 5 minutes. This system gives you real time data to fix any issues before your customers even know something is wrong.

## Organizing by Market

Alpha|Stack works with your team to connect your PoP and customer equipment to our Network monitoring system and organizes it by market and customer location. In addition to reducing clutter with the tool, this also has an added benefit in organizing your workflows. By organizing devices by market, you can keep team members organized within their own territory they are responsible for monitoring. No matter how complicated the network Alpha|Stack’s NMS has the sophistication to keep your network monitoring organized seamlessly.

This blog is the third in a series of blogs discussing the different modules you can take advantage of using Alpha|Stack, and how they can bring your business to the next level.

## [REQUEST A DEMO OF ALPHA|STACK TODAY!][urls.demo]


### About Alpha|Stack

Alpha|Stack is a revolutionary business management platform. With Alpha|Stack’s integrated CRM, site
survey path tool, network management and operation software, Alpha|Stack is optimized to enable seamless
data migration between modules. Saving your business time and money.

[urls.demo]: /contact

blog_network_monitoring_02.jpg

blog_network_monitoring_02

The Alpha|Stack Network Monitoring System allows you to monitor the health and performance of your entire network infrastructure in one secure platform. Deployable in minutes!

Network Monitoring System

# Overview

Alpha|Stack collects all of the information your sales executives need to judge the progress of their sales teams. Alpha|Stack collects and aggregates data from the customer relationship management (CRM) and billing functionalities of the platform and allows you to filter and query the data for generating a wide array of sales reports that help you gain insight into your sales performance.This makes Alpha|Stack’s sales reports easy to understand and gives your sales executives the information they need to manage their team and meet sales goals. Alpha|Stack has several modules that can give you real time reporting of your team’s progress and the sales funnel.

## Agent Dashboard

With the Agent Dashboard module, you can look at an individual salesperson in a snapshot from monthly recurring revenue, how many deals they have, their monthly average their win/loss ratio of deals, closed opportunities, average time to close, and more. This allows you to evaluate individual members of your sales team to understand their progress with data. 

With the individual team member view, you can see which salespeople need help, and which salespeople are leading the way in your organization. This is extremely important to ensure you are managing your team the right way and recognizing good work from your lead sales team members. This feature will allow you to effectively manage your sales team with real-time data that Alpha|Stack collects for you. This makes evaluating your salespeople much easier for your sales managers.

## Sales Dashboard

Alpha|Stack’s Sales Dashboard can show your sales team’s sales production in relationship to the organizational goals that your sales executives set. With various charts made automatically with data from the CRM and billing modules the sales dashboard can give you a snapshot look at your team’s production. 

Inside the Sales Dashboard you can set monthly revenue goals and track the progress of your sales team throughout the month to see if these goals are being met. You can see the direct sales production by agent, total opportunities by agent, and an overall look at your sales funnel in one module. This is extremely helpful as a way to measure the health of your sales funnel and can help you identify any gaps in your sales process.

## Revenue Statistics

The Revenue Statistics module gives management a detailed snapshot on how your organization’s sales team is progressing in terms of recurring and non-recurring revenue. Through this module you can get charts of your monthly recurring revenue by salesperson, monthly non-recurring revenue by salesperson, and your annual revenue broken down by month. These charts can give you a granular look at how much revenue each salesperson is bringing your organization per month. This is extremely helpful because you don’t get just new sales data, you get how much revenue they are responsible for each month. This gives you a good idea of each salesperson’s value to your organization overtime.

This blog is the second in a series of blogs discussing the different modules you can take advantage of using Alpha|Stack, and how they can bring your business to the next level.

# [REQUEST A DEMO OF ALPHA|STACK TODAY!][urls.demo]

### About Alpha|Stack

Alpha|Stack is a revolutionary business management platform. With Alpha|Stack’s integrated CRM, site
survey path tool, network management and operation software, Alpha|Stack is optimized to enable seamless
data migration between modules. Saving your business time and money.

[urls.demo]: /contact

blog_analytics.png

blog_analytics

Alpha|Stack provides dashboards and detailed report views to help you gain useful insights into sales performance.

The Alpha|Stack report options give your sales and billing teams the information they need to review and meet their targets.

Business Analytics and Sales Reporting

Network monitoring is a core requirement for the day-to-day operations of any ISP. It is important to have excellent performance monitoring in order to catch issues before they happen, respond to outages, and to provide historical time series data for tracking changes over time.

There are a myriad network monitoring solutions on the market, from open source platforms like [Zabbix](https://www.zabbix.com/), to commercial offerings like [SolarWinds](https://www.solarwinds.com/), and many, many more in between.

With Alpha|Stack, Network Monitoring comes integrated out of the box, keeping with our core philosophy that everything your business needs to run smoothly is available in one place, with information shared to all relevant parties seamlessly. Customer support representatives have access to charts, graphs, alerts, and customer statuses without having to file support requests with the network team, and the Alpha|Stack network monitoring system contains everything your core network team has come to expect with a whole lot more than what they thought was possible!

<center>
  <figure class='figure mb-3'>
    <img
      src="https://sls-strapi-dev-s3staticbucket-r297c485fk2z.s3.amazonaws.com/nms_overview_b9c8f34f40.jpg"
      alt="Monitoring overview post image"
      class="figure-img img-fluid w-100"
    />
      <figcaption class='figure-caption text-center'>
        Alpha|Stack Network Monitoring
      </figcaption>
  </figure>
</center>

Letting support staff view statistics on devices from the same platform they’re doing all their other work saves time, shortens calls, and improves customer satisfaction, but we’re here to talk about the technical parts. How does it work?

### Meet the Alpha|Stack Poller: *GoPoll!*

Alpha|Stack *GoPoll!* is a small application that can run on most appliances. It is written in  [Go](https://golang.org/), and can be installed on any local network device capable of running [Docker](https://docker.com)

The majority of network monitoring performed today relies on two protocols — [SNMP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Network_Management_Protocol) and [ICMP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Control_Message_Protocol) — to collect data about network performance. While there are other options out there like [TR-069](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-069) and [IPFIX,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Flow_Information_Export) SNMP and ICMP have been the default options for a very, very long time.

### ICMP

ICMP allows us to collect data about packet loss and latency of devices. While there are a variety of data points that can be collected using ICMP, measuring latency and calculating packet loss tend to be the main ones. The  Alpha|Stack poller uses ICMP (specifically [fping](https://fping.org/)) to collect these metrics. This allows us to track the history of a device’s performance.

The other metric we can calculate by collecting this data is jitter. Jitter is the difference in delay between packets, and variable jitter can cause issues with real time communications — voice being the most noticeable one, but it can also be very impactful to online gamers, or other people engaging in real time applications that are heavily reliant on a consistent flow of data.

<center>
  <figure class='figure mb-3'>
    <img
      src="https://sls-strapi-dev-s3staticbucket-r297c485fk2z.s3.amazonaws.com/nms_latency_f88915de41.PNG"
      alt="Network monitoring image for blog post"
      class="figure-img img-fluid w-100"
    />
      <figcaption class='figure-caption text-center'>
        Latency graph
      </figcaption>
  </figure>
</center>

In the  Alpha|Stack graph shown above, the grey portions show the jitter over time, whereas the colored line shows the median latency. As you can see, by only looking at the colored line, the connection looks very stable, but by including the range of response times, we can see there is significant variation at some points.

### SNMP

SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) has been around for a very long time, and the overwhelming majority of ISP level network devices support SNMP. From a monitoring perspective, SNMP is typically used to collect data from devices (SNMP polling) or to be alerted of events (via SNMP traps.)  Alpha|Stack relies on SNMP polling to collect data about devices, and we allow  Alpha|Stack users to define any type of polling they like. With SNMP polling, it’s up to the device manufacturer to expose different metrics, and some will give access to a very large array of data, whereas others will limit the information that can be collected.

Typically, a device will expose some standard parameters (for example, the throughput and error rate of physical interfaces, CPU usage, or uptime) and a variety of proprietary information that is relevant to the device in question. For example, a UPS may expose the remaining battery life, or whether or not it’s currently receiving power from the grid.  Alpha|Stack allows users to both collect this data, and alert on it.

### Powering *GoPoll!*

*GoPoll!* runs inside an event loop powered by [Go](https://godoc.org/). This [EventLoop](https://godoc.org/github.com/dop251/goja_nodejs/eventloop) makes it easy for us to execute non-blocking, asynchronous work to fetch data from devices using ICMP, SNMP, or other methods.


*GoPoll!* also collects a number of other metrics automatically to drive things like network discovery or re-discovery. Our goal when collecting data is to make as few requests as possible, as the most time intensive part of network monitoring is requesting and receiving data back from the network. This means, for example, using things like [SNMPBULKWALK](http://www.net-snmp.org/docs/man/snmpbulkwalk.html) when we can, or performing multiple [SNMPGET](https://linux.die.net/man/1/snmpget) requests at once, rather than running them sequentially.

When performing SNMP queries, the poller will also query a number of other parameters up front. One of the things we query is the [SysObjectID](http://oid-info.com/get/1.3.6.1.2.1.1.2). This is described in the [appropriate RFC](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3418) as follows:

> __The vendor’s authoritative identification of the network management subsystem contained in the entity.__

> __This value is allocated within the SMI enterprises subtree (1.3.6.1.4.1) and provides an easy and unambiguous means for determining "what kind of box" is being managed. For example, if vendor "ACME, Inc." was assigned the subtree 1.3.6.1.4.1.424242, it could assign the identifier 1.3.6.1.4.1.424242.1.1 to its "ACME-1000 Router".__

Once we’ve determined the type of device, we can then collect more specific data from it to aid in providing more detailed information within  Alpha|Stack. 

### Back into  Alpha|Stack

Once  Alpha|Stack receives the data from the poller, it has to process it before displaying it. The basic metrics that are being collected via SNMP and ICMP are aggregated and stored in an auto-scaling [PostgreSQL DB](https://www.postgresql.org) to be presented in the user interface.

blog_insight.png

blog_insights

The Alpha|Stack polling utility is an essential part of the Network Monitoring System. Learn how it was put together, and how it stands apart from the rest!

Network Monitoring is integrated directly into Alpha|Stack, keeping with our core philosophy that everything your business needs to run smoothly is available in one place, with information shared to all relevant parties seamlessly!

NMS Polling

# Overview

Businesses are always using different software tools to run their business processes. Many of these software tools make doing business more efficient and help get the best out of their employees. Most businesses utilize a variety of tools and platforms depending on the department. Sales teams typically use a CRM tool, billing teams typically use a billing software or rely on spreadsheets alone, and operations typically have their own platform, and on and on it goes.

While these platforms are great and make departments run smoother within an organization, these platforms rarely share data with each other because they’re different companies. Even if these companies offer the ability to cross connect, the process is usually clunky at best, and will cost an arm and a leg to get integrated. This lack of seamless integration leaves many organizations struggling to share data accurately across departments. This data sharing problem requires team members to communicate accurately via phone or email which can be subject to human error or interdepartmental disagreements that cause your team to have different understandings of the facts in your organization’s position.

## Why is Accurate Data Sharing Important?

When data is shared accurately across departments, your team is better connected, and team members stay on the same page. With accurate communication your organization can focus on the same set of facts working on solving problems instead of spending their time fighting about whose set of facts is true. When you eliminate as much uncertainty as possible about the company’s position you save valuable time and money by streamlining unnecessary conversations.

When you don’t effectively share data within your organization data silos begin to form. A data silo is a set of fixed data that remains under the control of one department and is isolated from the rest of the organization. Businesses are frequently fighting a losing battle against dreaded data silos within their organizations causing problems in crucial business functions. When there are data silos mistakes can happen resulting in lost business or costly errors that could have been avoided had a team member had access to data from another department.

Organizations frequently want to ensure they show a unified front for their customers. This creates a good experience for customers and keeps business operations running smoothly. When everyone is working with different sets of data a customer could get different answers from different departments about how to solve their complaint. This is often due to a lack of communication and proper data sharing. When no one is communicating and sharing data effectively you don’t show a unified customer facing front which is crucial for customer satisfaction.


## How Alpha|Stack Helps Your Business Avoid Data Silos
Alpha|Stack is a consolidated business management platform that can help you avoid dreaded data silos. With an intuitive CRM, billing modules, and operations tools, Alpha|Stack combines business processes into one seamless platform. This saves money because you’re only paying for one platform, and it saves you from data silos.

Alpha|Stack is set up to share data automatically between departments effectively eliminating data silos. This way your departments are working with the same set of data cross communicating automatically, avoiding human error.


# [REQUEST A DEMO OF ALPHA|STACK TODAY!][urls.demo]

### About Alpha|Stack

Alpha|Stack is a revolutionary business management platform. With Alpha|Stack’s integrated CRM, site
survey path tool, network management and operation software, Alpha|Stack is optimized to enable seamless
data migration between modules. Saving your business time and money.

[urls.demo]: /contact

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The Problem with Disjointed SaaS Tools

How disjointed SaaS tools can lose your business money

Disjointed SaaS platforms can cause a lot of harm to your business. Alpha|stack can help.

One of the most important things for a business is a positive and smooth experience for customers. Without customers to support your business, your business can’t exist. Businesses, especially those with recurring invoices are always trying to make the lives of their customers are easy and ensuring business processes runs smoothly.

## Building Trust With Your Customers
There are several dimensions that need to be considered when ensuring your recurring billing customers are satisfied with your customer service. One of the most important keys to excellent customer service is transparency. Providing a clear look at your customer’s bills, service tickets, and other relevant account information is important in providing transparency to your customers. This is because if all of this information is given clearly to your customers, both your employees and customers are on the same page. This achieves a situation where the facts of the account are clear and transparent for all parties involved instilling trust between your company and customers.

The Alpha|Stack customer portal is easy for customers to use creating a better service experience with your company. Automated payments give an easy way for your customers to pay you and keep track of their payments or when they’re due. The health of their network and customer service tickets can be accessed in one place, and it’s all available to them whenever they want to see it. The self-service nature of a good customer portal gives instant-gratification to your customers by eliminating wait time.

## What A Customer Portal Can Do For You
A customer portal is a one stop hub for anything your customer may need from your business. Within an Alpha|Stack customer portal your customers can pay their bill, check their usage rates, and even submit help tickets to your customer service department. By giving your customers this portal, you answer most of the questions they may have automatically. If it’s a more complicated question they can easily submit a ticket and escalate their issue. Without this portal, this level of customer support and experience can be difficult to achieve and riddles with errors.

A customer portal doesn’t only benefit your customers, it also helps your employees. An easy-to-use customer portal saves your customer service team time to focus on more major issues that arise, instead of answering basic questions about their account. A customer can pay their bills, check their usage monitoring, and submit help tickets all in one place without needing to interact with your team. This portal automates some of these basic processes eliminating user error and freeing up your team’s time to take care of serious issues as they come up.


AlphaStack CPblog.jpg

Customer Portal Blog Pic

Provide your customers a seamless experience with a customer portal

Alpha|Stack's customer portal can help your business build trust with customers and provide excellent customer service.

How a Customer Portal Helps your Business Run Smoothly

Across the world startup businesses are being formed and startup businesses are failing. How do you ensure your startup becomes a viable business model instead of a great idea that couldn’t sustain itself? The answer is organized business processes with scalability. 

## Implementing Scalable Business Processes
Many startups with good ideas never make it to a sustainable business model. Often this occurs from a lack of organization that leads to scaling issues in the business. Scalability is when a business can sustain consistent growth over time. To go from a good idea to a sustainable business you need scalability. To be scalable you need a strong well organized business plan and processes on top of your good idea that allow you to reach target markets effectively and service their needs properly. 

With many organizations the processes are disjointed and siloed into different programs for sales, operations, billing, and more. This results in a lot of different subscriptions to software with bills that add up for software that doesn’t integrate. This lack of integration can be a large detriment to your business. It leaves room for human error in data transfer that can result in poor customer service resulting in lost revenue.

Alpha|Stack allows businesses to organize all aspects of their business in one platform that organizes your data automatically improving business processes. Our platform does this by integrating data across modules automatically. This effectively eliminates data silos making it easier to scale. This factor can separate your startup from the pack to go from start-up to a sustainable business model.

## Achieve Full Life-Cycle Management
Inside Alpha|Stack your team can take your customers from prospect to billing and everything in between all-in-one tool. This gives your organization full lifecycle management of your clients from one use to use integrated platform.

To build your business you need a standardized organization around prospecting your potential customer base. Your sales team member/s need a way to stay organized and as business grows having a stack of business cards and a spreadsheet won’t suffice. Alpha|Stack keeps you organized with full lifecycle management of your customer base, keeping everything organized and more efficient 

As your business grows, tracking inventory and your employee scheduling becomes more complicated. There comes a point where tracking your inventory in a spreadsheet, which is subject to a large amount of human error, won’t be feasible. You need to automate. Within Alpha|Stack, you can track your employees’ schedules, any equipment in the field or in storage with the ability to mark tools based on customer, location, etc. This keeps everything organized in one easy to use platform. Schedule employees, work orders, provisioning all in one place instead of spending lots of money on different disjointed tools or error prone spreadsheets.

For any business getting paid is obviously crucial. Startups especially need an easy way to bill customers and get paid. Set up your billing infrastructure the Alpha|Stack way. Within Alpha|Stack your billing is all connected to your ops and sales with immediately migrated data across modules. This makes keeping track of invoices and which customers’ needs to be billed at what time a lot easier. This is because all the data on your customers is already integrated automatically without having to reenter the information. 

Customer payments can be done through our customer portal where your customers can pay their bill, see their usage, and access other relevant information about their account all in one place. This can automate a lot of your processes giving your team the space to do their work. We also offer the flexibility to do snail mail billing with email updates if you have a customer base that prefers that method.

When you are scaling your business offering benefits like PTO it becomes more important for employee retention. Having a good HR tool integrated with the rest of your business can help to keep track of your growing base of employees and their benefits. Startups can’t stay startups forever you need an HR infrastructure that will support the growth you need to sustain a viable business. In Alpha|Stack you can manage your people and their schedules all though one platform that is interconnected with other modules.


# [REQUEST A DEMO OF ALPHA|STACK TODAY!][urls.demo]

### About Alpha|Stack

Alpha|Stack is a revolutionary business management platform. With Alpha|Stack’s integrated CRM, site
survey path tool, network management and operation software, Alpha|Stack is optimized to enable seamless
data migration between modules. Saving your business time and money.

[urls.demo]: /contact

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Startup Blog

Across the world startup businesses are being formed and startup businesses are failing. How do you ensure your startup becomes a viable business model instead of a great idea that couldn’t sustain itself? 

How to Achieve Startup Scalability

The latest Alpha|Stack news, announcements, articles, and resources. 
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