Is it time to review your existing communications system?
No business can afford to stand still. Companies that are responsive, agile and adaptable are best placed for today’s fast-changing business environment. Businesses have to respond to a wide range of factors, some of which may be unplanned or which may arrive much sooner than anticipated. This means having the infrastructure and processes in place to react rapidly and effectively to change.
One of the biggest trends in recent years has been the rise in the number of remote workers and the growth of flexible working.
The Office of National Statistics reports that 4.2 million employees in total are working remotely.
Global workplace provider Regus surveyed 2,200 business owners and senior managers and found that nine tenths of them offered flexible working, including flexi-location.
Flexible working can offer many benefits to employees and employers. It makes job sharing and part-time working easier, can reduce stress, boost morale, increase job satisfaction and improve productivity.
Other benefits include:
Offering your employees the option to work remotely is not enough; the infrastructure needs to be in place to support them. This includes having a telecoms system with the scalability, flexibility and adaptability to cope with workers based both inside and outside of the office. Without this, the potential benefits of remote working can be lost and, indeed, additional costs can be incurred – both in terms of time and money.
Why legacy telecoms systems are not suited to remote working?
Legacy telecoms systems like ISDN were designed for an age when almost all business activity took place at a single site. Few employees were mobile and even less worked remotely. This is fine for a static business environment but the number of mobile and remote workers has exploded.
One of the biggest challenges is ensuring that remote workers have access to the same resources that are available to employees based in the office and that they can be easily contacted by colleagues, clients and customers. ISDN lacks the flexibility to support this. As a result, productivity can suffer and there is the risk of losing business, leads and opportunities.
There are some basic questions to ask about whether your legacy telecoms system can support remote working:
If you are currently using ISDN, there’s a good chance that your answers to the above questions will be no. This puts your business at a disadvantage. However, there is an alternative telecoms technology that offers the flexibility needed for remote working: Cloud-based telephony.
A powerful and flexible telecoms solution for remote working
Cloud-based telephony is a well-established technology that is transforming business telecoms. It has many benefits including high call quality, lower costs and greater resilience. It can also offer great features such as secure connectivity, scalability, flexibility and reliability – making it ideal for remote working. On top of this it’s also very easy to use, helping to put you in control of communications.
On top of this it’s also very easy to use, helping to put you in control of communications.
With cloud telephony remote workers can:
- Make free internal calls and, depending on your provider, free calls to local UK numbers outside of your business
- Have calls automatically routed to their mobiles or even home landlines from the office
- Appear to be in the office when they are away from their desks
- Have access to the same telecoms resources as office-based users
- Access the company directory network from home, either from the desktop or by plugging a phone into an Ethernet port
