6 Signs Your COVID-19 Workforce Needs Cloud Phone Technology

6 Signs Your COVID-19 Workforce Needs Cloud Phone Technology

Almost overnight, the number of remote workers increased dramatically, as businesses mandated “work-from-home” policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s no telling when the situation will change. Even when restrictions ease on social distancing, employees may not be able to return to the office in full force, and future waves of distancing have been predicted. You may have been perfectly satisfied with your communications solution in the pre-COVID days, but you may find yourself realizing you now need something more robust. If your current phone system isn’t able to handle the office exodus, that’s a glaring sign you’re due for a change.

The good news during this challenging time? A cloud phone solution, like MiCloud Connect, delivers the latest in mobility and ensures employees can work and collaborate from anywhere.

But mobility is just one problem solved by cloud phone technology. Chances are, your communications system is flashing yellow and red in other places as well. Some of these warnings are harder to recognize than others. If you’ve noticed any of the following signs, now is the time to make the switch.

COVID-19: 6 signs it's time to upgrade your communications

  1. High traffic is reducing the quality of your communications. People might run on coffee, but business are powered by a reliable and consistent network. With fewer people working in the office due to social distancing, just about all communications is now handled remotely. Can your current phone system support the increased demand? Slowdowns, dropped calls and low-quality video impede conversations, frustrating employees and customers. Ask providers about their track record. As a reference point, Mitel has 99.995 percent uptime backed by SLAs and financial penalties if we don’t meet these standards. Other important items to look for in a reliable solution are Tier 4 data centers with several layers of redundancy and multiple connectivity options with automatic failover. With these built-in capabilities, employees work fast and never miss a chance to drive customer satisfaction higher.
  2. You’re concerned about security. This is a hot topic both in the news and at weekly IT meetings. With more employees working from home, protecting sensitive information is a top priority. But if you’re not 100 percent confident in your communications system, you’ll want to ask vendors some hard questions. For example: Do they offer Secure Real-Time Transfer Protocol (SRTP), which ensures voice, web and signaling traffic is encrypted? What platform are they using and what levels of security do they offer? At Mitel, we decided to amp up security by partnering with Google Cloud. Our customers benefit from the same reliable and trusted network infrastructure we all use for search and videos on a daily basis.
  3. You operate in a regulated industry. In industries like healthcare or finance, compliance looms large. Violations are expensive and can tarnish your reputation. Spikes in telemedicine and virtual financial advising put companies at increased risk of non-compliance. However, when you work with a cloud phone provider committed to ensuring high levels of security and protecting sensitive data, you’ll ease your IT burden. MiCloud Connect, for example, is certified to meet Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) standards and Service Organization Control Type II (SOC 2) compliance, helping you adhere to even the most stringent requirements.
  4. You need to adapt – quickly and constantly. Every day seems to bring on a new challenge as the world battles COVID-19. Businesses need to be able to rapidly respond to changing demands and requirements. Ask yourself how difficult it is to add or remove lines and users to your current system. If it requires a call to the vendor every time you need to make a change, then it’s time for a cloud phone solution. The beauty of the cloud is that it’s so easy to adjust to new conditions. You can add or remove seats and upgrade permissions in real time, which means your business is more agile. A scalable solution keeps you competitive, while also offering flexible pricing plans so you can stay within budget.
  5. It’s getting harder to meet client expectations. The coronavirus has created a unique marketplace, in which employees and customers are almost 100 percent reliant on technology to conduct business. It has become all too easy to fall behind without integrated collaboration tools. A stellar customer experience is more important than ever, but it can be difficult to deliver when employees are taking extra steps to share documents or discuss issues remotely. When collaboration is built into communications, it’s easier for employees to exceed customer expectations. For example, with click-to-join access for web, audio and video conferencing, a product manager can convene his team to resolve a pressing issue quickly, getting goods in the hands of customers at the right moment. In addition, a persistent workspace with chat, tasks and file sharing gives teams the ability to collaborate in real time. When employee collaboration is easy and seamless outside the physical office, customers get answers faster and satisfaction soars.
  6. Managing multiple licenses keeps you very busy. Every second counts when you’re trying to run a remote employee workforce and keep customers engaged. You don’t have time to worry about managing multiple licenses for your communications system. With a cloud phone solution, you can mix and match license types on a single plan. Need a contact center? Collaboration tools? It’s simple to add licenses on-demand and manage each user via their own profile. And since your cloud provider is responsible for infrastructure, you don’t have to worry about maintenance or carry the cost of unused equipment or lines. Plus, budgeting on an operating expenses (OpEx) model is predictable and easy, which is important in these uncertain times.

All signs point to cloud phone technology

COVID-19 has changed the way we do business. The new “normal” requires organizations to support remote communications and collaboration and to respond quickly to changing conditions. If any of the signs discussed above are flashing red or yellow in your organization, it’s time to start exploring what cloud phone technology can do for your business. A solution like MiCloud Connect will adapt to your business needs, ensuring you stay current with the latest technology – and healthy in the battle against the coronavirus.

Source:Mitel

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WHY WE LIKE VIDEO MEETINGS BETTER

why-we-like-video-meetings-better

If you go to any telecommunications conference or tradeshow, one thing will be apparent: the era of video collaboration is here. Competition for a customer’s video meetings business has grown fierce as each vendor offers a “true collaboration experience”. Hardware vendors are providing all kinds of accessories from cameras to speakers to switches that make connecting in a video huddle room as easy as the press of a button. We as consumers are desperately trying to find some way to make meetings more productive. Why shouldn’t we? Mitel research discovered that more than a third of our workdays is spent in meetings. And, while we consider them ‘valuable’, meetings simply aren’t productive.

So, are video meetings a gamechanger for business? In many ways, yes.

Video Promotes Employee Attentiveness

As companies grow, the need for employees to collaborate remotely increases. In the past, audio and web conferences provided the perfect environment to multitask. It was not uncommon to have at least one participant offer a long pause after being asked a question. Much time was wasted in lack of attention. But, with video, you can see when someone isn’t engaged in the meeting; there are visual cues that they aren’t paying attention. And now it only takes being caught unaware once before you find people are more compliant and stop multitasking. The end result: meetings tend to be more productive.

Video Helps Remote Employees Feel Connected

Ubiquitous high-speed mobile internet combined with capable unified communications and collaboration tools have empowered more employees to work anywhere at any time and on any device. However an HBR article suggests that more than half of surveyed remote employees often feel disconnected from the larger organization and frequently report allowing issues to persist for days or even weeks compared to their locally based colleagues. These feelings affect employee performance and satisfaction and, ultimately, the organization suffers as employees quit.

Video allows employees to participate and have the level of human interaction that they may not have working from home all day. While it may be important to bring remote employees into the office for important meetings, it’s impractical and expensive. Video has proven to be a much better alternative. Remote employees who use video report feeling more connected to their colleagues and increased trust as a result. We are social creatures who need to feel part of a whole. Video can facilitate that ― and it can even save a person’s job.

Video Can Be More Useful

In each of these cases, the communication channels we used were siloed in such a way that we needed to move from one application for chat to another device for voice, to another application for video. It doesn’t have to be that way. When we consider our mobile devices, we can chat via text message, promote from the same interface to a phone call, and on the phone call screen, we can transition to a video call.

Now that we, as a workforce, have adopted all three of these communication channels (text, voice and video), it’s time to bring these together under one unified system. We don’t need to cross launch other applications to continue a conversation. These create communication seams that slow our ability to connect and cost more to support multiple applications than a single application that does all three.

Video Is The New Meeting Space

It’s clear that video brings value like no other to meetings. Participants not only gain a sense of comradery, but also new levels of focus, connection and communication. It’s the meeting method of choice and paving the way to more seamless and available communications across the enterprise. A bonafide game-changer, it is gaining momentum across the globe. Where does video live in your business? Has it become your new meeting space?

Source:Mitel

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SMART WORKSPACES WORK SMARTER NOT HARDER

Smart-Workspaces-Work-Smarter-Not-Harder.

The traditional notion of a 9-to-5 workspace has drastically changed. No longer are employees chained to their desk. Instead, they can work from anywhere, often at hours of their choosing. Today’s workspace moves with the employee, whether it’s to a mid-morning session at Starbucks, aboard an Amtrak train or even a midnight email check after a school band concert.

While many factors are behind the rise of these smart workspaces, there’s one main ingredient required to make them succeed: the right communications technology. Let’s explore the smart workspace in more detail and see how you can set up your business to meet this growing employee expectation.

What Is A Smart Workspace?

In today’s world, the term “workspace” no longer conjures an image of employees sitting at their desks, surrounded by cubicle walls, pecking away at their keyboards for eight hours straight. Workspaces have evolved, and today’s “smart” version allows employees to get their work done from any location, using any device. A smart workspace transcends the physical boundaries of the cubicle and office, creating an environment of collaboration and communication that fosters productivity and increases employee satisfaction.

Flexibility: More than half (51 percent) of employees want their companies to offer more flexible work options, according to a recent study. Flexible options include telecommuting and the freedom to work outside of traditional business hours.

Work-life balance: Your workers don’t want to miss out on their kid’s soccer game or burn the candle at both ends. More employees consider work-life balance to be increasingly important, and fewer people are willing to sacrifice it for their job.

Millennials: By 2020, which is right around the corner, Millennials will make up more than half of the workforce. That number is expected to hit 75 percent by 2025. This generation is tech-savvy, demands flexibility and thrives on collaboration.

 

Next Steps For A Digital Workspace Transformation

Businesses that want to attract and retain top talent have no choice but to embrace smart workspaces. Gartner predicts that by 2020, organizations that let workers choose their own style of work will increase retention rates by more than 10 percent. Already, a unified communications system with a robust suite of collaboration tools can provide a smart workspace for your employees. Such suites offer:

  • A single application for voice, video, messaging, audio conferencing and more so employees can easily switch between channels on the fly.
  • A consistent experience across devices.
  • Mobile-first design that supports both iOS and Android.
  • Audio conferencing and web sharing to promote collaboration.
  • Single number reach, making employees accessible on any device.
  • Individual and group chat to keep the lines of communication open.
  • File and screen sharing, which make it easy to keep team members up-to-date on projects.
  • Secure remote access so employees can work from anywhere without having to worry
    • about confidential company information.
    • Multi-region and multi-language support, to provide employees around the world with access to the same unified experience.

    Not only do such systems meet the demands of your employees, they benefit the business as well. Teams communicate more efficiently and effectively, easily sharing ideas and files. Managers make decisions more quickly and increase productivity. By keeping your employees connected on-the-go, you’ll keep up with today’s fast-paced business world. And, you’ll break down silos between departments and locations. In other words, smart workspaces are just as good for the bottom line as they are for employee satisfaction and retention.

    If your business isn’t already part of the smart workspace culture, it’s time to start transforming. A powerful suite of collaboration tools that gives employees access to everything they need to do their work—no matter where they are or what device they’re on—is the main ingredient for success. The right unified communications solution provides a seamless experience for all employees, breaking down barriers, fostering collaboration and resulting in smarter business decisions made in less time. A smart workspace really is a “no brainer.”

Source:Mitel

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Business Communication Mistakes To Avoid

Business-Communication-Mistakes-To-Avoid

Effective communication is at the heart of every successful business, no matter the size or industry. In today’s diverse global business environment, effective communication skills will definitely set you apart from your peers and competitors.

Here are some common communication mistakes we are all guilty of and it would be best to avoid:

 

Discussing Sensitive Information Through Email

How many emails do you send and receive a day… 10, 50, 100? It’s efficient and effective; without it, we’d all probably have a few problems to say the least! We are so reliant on email that it’s easy to forget the company privacy policy when trying to get through a busy day. However, with the leak of countless confidential emails belonging to prominent organizations over the last few months, now more than ever, it is important to think twice before we hit “send”.

Failing To Train New Employees On Their Desk Phones

It’s easy to assume that people know how to use their email client or smartphone, but what about their desk phone? With all of the models and variations out there, the features and functionality of a new desk phone may be completely new to your recent hire. That’s why it’s important to make sure they are trained on it. Any good business phone provider, including Introtel, will provide training services to your staff.

Failing to Respond to Voicemails

There’s no rule on acceptable time to respond to your voicemail messages. Instead of responding quickly with incomplete information, it is better to wait to respond when you are able to address everything in the message. Furthermore, if your caller asked you to call them back, don’t send an email. Likewise, if they give you the option to respond by email or by phone, use the method that best helps you communicate your point. The main goal is to give your caller the information they need, in the timeliest manner. In general, people in our offices respond to voicemails within the same business day or at most, up to one business day later.

Speaking More and Listening Less

To stay on top of any situation, stop speaking and listen. When you listen more than you speak, you open yourself up to learning and empathy — which in turn help you accomplish more.

Transferring Customers To Numerous Departments

Having dedicated representatives to take customer calls is one of the most important customer relationship management plans you can put in place. If you have ever called a company and been transferred to department after department, you understand how frustrating it can be. That’s why as a business, you should have a plan to deal with sales inquiries, complaints, and general questions. It may sound simple but all too often, businesses fail to plan for this and therefore risk losing customers.

Are you guilty of making any of the communication mistakes above? Let us know in the comments section!

By the experts at Introtel

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8 TOP VOIP TRENDS YOU NEED TO KNOW IN 2020

If you’ve been thinking about replacing your business phone system, it’s worth brushing up on the latest VoIP trends. Even if you’re not, things are changing rapidly enough that your competitors may be getting an edge by taking advantage of the latest advancements in VoIP and VoIP-related technology.

Business communications and collaboration has been undergoing a huge transformation recently. According to Harvard Business Review, Telecom is the #2 industry undergoing digital transformation.

What does this mean for you? That depends on your business. We’ve assembled the latest VoIP trends below so you can assess which ones give you the most opportunity to make an impact with your technology choices.

1. Increased VoIP Security & Compliance Demands

As hosted and cloud VoIP gain wider acceptance, companies are demanding more security out of their VoIP solutions. Hosted VoIP is not just a curiosity anymore. It’s no longer the exclusive domain of startups and businesses willing to take risks. Serious businesses are relying on hosted VoIP to carry vital communications and sensitive information.

Leading hosted VoIP providers are responding by ensuring higher levels of security to keep customers’ data and communications safe, away from the prying eyes of hackers. At Mitel, we’ve done this in part by hosting our flagship cloud VoIP communications system on Google Cloud Platform. It means our customers get the resources of one of the world’s largest tech companies to help keep their hosted communications safe.

In fact, it’s not just general security that’s getting attention in the hosted VoIP sector lately. Companies in highly regulated industries like healthcare are interested in the advantages hosted VoIP can provide—demanding greater security and compliance from providers who want to serve them. This is especially true in smaller healthcare organizations like doctor’s offices, dentists, clinics and specialists.

We’re glad that some hosted VoIP phone systems like MiCloud Connect have been updated in a way that’s brought their security standards up to the requirements of the likes of HIPAA and SOC2 compliance—ultimately giving customer a choice they didn’t have before.

2. VoIP System Value Vs Lowest Price

It’s easy for any technology provider to claim it offers a price advantage. But as hosted VoIP becomes more ubiquitous and product/service offerings become more mature, fewer companies are focused on simply procuring the cheapest option. More companies are looking to get good value for the money as the shortcomings of budget systems rear their heads.

Cheap VoIP phone systems are typically just that—cheap. They’re designed to minimize costs, so cheap providers can’t spend time developing and delivering quality products and services. They typically have minimal features, clunky interfaces, poor customer support and little-to-nothing in the way of integrations with business-critical third-party applications, like Salesforce or Google Office apps.

You may get a pat on the back for saving the company money when you first sign a contract with a cheap VoIP supplier, but you’ll be dodging angry looks a few months in, when nobody can get work done because they’re using a glitchy, sub-par system.

That’s why more and more companies are looking for a good value in their VoIP system—that is to say that they feel like they’re getting a lot for the price they pay.

That can include things like reliability, features, security, service, ease of use and more. Even though you won’t see it on a lot of feature lists, something as simple as time saved and hassle avoided can be major factors in customer satisfaction and how a company intuitively calculates the value they get from their phone system. Smart companies don’t let price be the only decision factor.

3. Proliferation & Consolidation Of VoIP Providers

As the barrier to entry drops, small VoIP providers are popping up everywhere. However, this element of choice doesn’t necessarily help customers, as most of those offerings are ubiquitous and undifferentiated.

On the mid-large side of providers, vendors are consolidating, putting market power behind their innovations. This is typically where you’ll see more unique features, packages and complete offerings. At Mitel, for example, we’re able to put more effort and resources into making our flagship hosted VoIP system easy to use, simple to manage and smooth to implement compared to a new startup VoIP company that may be struggling just to build basic functionality.

What can you do about all this choice? The main thing you can do is research your options. VoIP providers that customers love typically earn a number of awards from respected analysts who have tested and judged their services against their main competitors.

Finally, going with a smaller VoIP provider during this time of industry consolidation means that there’s a good chance they’ll be acquired by a larger provider. That’s not necessarily the end of the world, but it does mean that things you liked about that smaller provider may change once they’re acquired, and you may still be under contract. Mitel is the #1 cloud provider worldwide and the #2 UCaaS (aka, hosted cloud VoIP) provider worldwide, so it’s a pretty safe bet the parts of our hosted VoIP you love the most will remain for a long time (while we continue to make enhancements, of course).

4. VoIP Playing A Bigger Role In Customer Contact & Customer Experience

Hosted VoIP started out primarily as a tool for companies to communicate internally, but as offerings become more sophisticated and niched-out, and as focus on delivering great customer experience rises, hosted VoIP is pushing into this space.

Here are a few examples from iPerceptions:

-67 percent of customers say they’ll pay more for a great experience

-57 percent of customers have stopped buying from a company because one of their competitors provided a better experience

-71 percent of people recommend a product or service because they received a “great experience”

Call center and customer experience platforms started out separate from companies’ hosted VoIP systems. But to take advantage of full customer/prospect lifecycle data and create experiences that are as frictionless as possible, the two have become much more integrated.

Hosted VoIP today, in fact, is often being packaged up into a single omni-channel solution that also handles the diverse channels customers use to communicate with companies and organizations like yours.

Regardless of the customer experience platform you ultimately choose, it’s useful to think about how it integrates (or doesn’t) into your hosted VoIP system—because lots of companies are squeezing competitive advantages out of the right combination of technology.

5. Adoption Is Growing Among Mid-To-Larger Companies

Hosted VoIP really got its foothold with small business, and for good reason—they typically don’t have a ton of expensive legacy systems to rip and replace and they typically have fewer business-critical systems that have to integrate seamlessly with their phone systems. This allowed for relatively simple systems without a lot of bells and whistles, or options, to proliferate.

However, as the core functionality becomes more commoditized and undifferentiated, and as even these same small businesses become more sophisticated, some hosted VoIP companies are offering more in order to attract additional kinds of customers.

Offering more features and integrations to align with more advanced needs. Offering multiple tiers of service. Mitel even offers mixing and matching of service tiers, which most competitors don’t – so you don’t have to pay for features you don’t need for every user. Providers are also bringing different kinds of functions into the hosted VoIP ecosystem, like collaboration and call center / contact center functionality.

Which leads us to our next trend.

6. More Levels Of Service & Customization

One-size-fits-all simply doesn’t work for hosted VoIP anymore. Larger companies are moving to hosted VoIP. Companies with more complex needs are moving to hosted VoIP. Even small companies can have users ranging from expert power users who rely on advanced VoIP functionality every day to rare users who need things as simple as possible.

That’s why some VoIP providers like Mitel are offering multiple services or plan levels so that companies can get what they need at a price that makes sense. At Mitel, we have a basic plan that keeps costs and features simple. We have a standard plan that keeps things affordable while giving users more capabilities. We have a premium plan with plenty of bells and whistles.

In fact, unlike most hosted VoIP vendors, we even let you mix and match plans on a per user basis so that you’re not paying for premium functionality for a user who only has basic VoIP needs.

7. Companies Are Coming At VoIP From All Different Directions

Acquisitions, mergers and partnerships are popping up everywhere as companies try to combine VoIP and related collaboration and customer experience technologies to give their customers a single unified experience across channels.

Videoconferencing companies are trying to buy hosted VoIP providers, collaboration-only companies are integrating with phone system vendors, and hosted VoIP providers are partnering with contact center companies.

What does this mean for you?

In the long term, it means that all the different facets of communications and collaboration technology should become less fragmented and better integrated over time, making this kind of technology purchase simpler down the road.

In the short term, it will probably pay off to choose a company who has already integrated many of these technologies under one roof and has deep integrations with any third-party partners to avoid disconnects. Of course, we’re a little biased, but Mitel fits the bill.

Want to see how our all-in-one hosted VoIP phone, collaboration and contact center solution works? See the demo > 

Which of These VoIP Trends Can Mitel Help With?

Essentially, all of the above. There are plenty of companies out there publishing posts about shiny VoIP trends they have no way of helping you with. But we know you need to make an impact now—not in five or ten years. So decided to focus this post on trends you can action now, or in the very near future.

How? We have a great range of VoIP phone systems available for different needs, including our flagship hosted VoIP system, MiCloud Connect and our sophisticated private cloud VoIP system, MiCloud Flex. You can also extend and expand capabilities with our hosted VoIP collaboration tools and hosted VoIP customer experience solutions.

 

Source:Mitel

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3 HURDLES TO ROLLING OUT COLLABORATION TOOLS, AND HOW TO OVERCOME THEM

3-Hurdles-to-Rolling-Out-Collaboration-Tools-and-How-to-Overcome-Them

As your business grows, life gets complicated. What could be achieved with a phone call before now involves a lot more people. To get their work done, your employees need to collaborate easily with each other, and with external partners and customers.

The workforce – and its expectations – are changing rapidly, too. A recent PwC study found that 41 percent of millennials prefer communicating via email or some other electronic means rather than in person or over the phone. To accommodate their preferences, businesses need a collaboration and communications solution that’s mobile-first and cloud-connected, like MiCloud Connect. Cloud communications provides them with greater flexibility and support for different styles of work.

BYOD And Shadow IT

Because our world is so connected – via email, social media, smartphones and more – employees walk in the door with all their own mobile devices, apps and expectations. On one hand, this bringing-your-own-device (BYOD) to work can save your small business money in hardware expenditures.

But here’s the rub. If your organization doesn’t provide good collaboration tools, employees will find their own. You can easily end up with a software Tower of Babel. In fact, one recent report found that the average employee uses more than 16 different cloud services, approximately three different content sharing services and up to three different collaboration services. Is your head spinning yet?

The result is lost productivity and inefficiency. Team members get frustrated because of the lack of consistency in the tools they use across different projects. The company can easily lose control of secure data. And it doesn’t look great to customers and partners, either. Using “freeware” and inconsistent or unreliable apps projects an unprofessional image.

Let's Roll

Your organization needs a consistent, easy-to-use set of team collaboration and communications tools. But before you make any decisions, it’s helpful to review some of the typical obstacles businesses encounter when rolling these out — and how you can overcome them.

Obstacle #1: “It’s A Really Cool Tool But It’s Not Integrated Into The Rest Of Our Systems.”

If this is the case, then it’s not a really cool tool. It’s going to be another headache. You need a collaboration solution that connects all the dots — email, calendar, files, your company directory. For example, a cloud communications solution empowers employees to manage calls from a web browser and connect directly from emails or calendar events. They can set up audio and video conference calls with a click and even invite outside parties. A robust collaboration tool should also include desktop sharing, individual and group chat, built-in VPN and business text messaging. You want to give your employees the ability to communicate and share ideas over multiple channels, switching easily from one to another.

A hosted Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) system can deliver all this and more. By choosing a cloud-based solution, you free yourself from legacy phone systems, so there’s no more worrying about software upgrades or buying new hardware.

A VoIP solution also allows your staff to be mobile, maintaining quality even when they’re on the road or working remotely. Because they’re connecting via a web portal, communications remain as consistent and reliable as if everyone was at their desk in the office.

Obstacle #2: “Is This Going To Make My Life More Difficult?”

Another common obstacle to rolling out new software is employee resistance. But maybe they’ve got good reasons to resist. Because a new tool can have a big impact on people’s daily work life, management has to explain its purpose and business value. For instance, will the tool help sell more product, reduce costs or improve productivity? Will it make employees’ lives easier? Any change is difficult, so people need to know what’s in it for them. If there isn’t a strong business case, people just won’t go along.

Here’s an example: McKinsey reports that on average, workers spend almost 20 percent of their time looking for information inside the organization or trying to track down colleagues who can help them. What if this new collaboration tool could help staff quickly learn the availability of a colleague? With presence technology, employees can set their status and how to best reach them.

To strengthen acceptance of the new tool, first identify your users and their needs. Do you have employees working out in the field or remotely? Do you have staff that needs to collaborate on projects, share files and conference often? How about sales and service staffers (e.g., the contact center) who need to quickly reach internal experts or field personnel? Any collaboration tool you choose must meet the needs of all these users.

Obstacle #3: “How Long Is This Going To Take To Learn?”

We’ve all lived through painful software upgrades. If the learning curve is too steep, you’ll lose people and, in the end, they won’t use the new system. That’s why it’s crucial to find a collaboration and communications tool that’s intuitive and easy to use right out of the box. You also need a vendor who’ll be there after the sale, ready to answer questions, provide training and customize a solution that works for your business.

The beauty of a BYOD environment is that there’s little to no learning curve. People already know how to use their devices. And with a VoIP phone solution, your staff can access all functions and business information through a web portal. The interface is consistent whether you’re sitting at your desk or in your car.

Finding The Right Collaboration Tool

When it’s time to simplify your communications system, make sure you cover these points with any vendor.

Does it have these team collaboration features? Be sure that your VoIP phone system will have easy and secure file sharing, point-to-point video and persistent communication across multiple channels. It should also enable real-time private and group chat and real‐time video chat from desktop and mobile devices.

Does it have robust team communications functions? Any VoIP phone system worth its salt will provide presence and awareness information, single-number reachability and dynamic profiles that modify communications options and routing. It should also have a mobile-first design so that employees can communicate from any web-enabled device.

Does the phone system work with our current IT framework? You want to make your life easier, right? Then you’ll need a system that complements your existing IT infrastructure so that it’s easy to administer and it lowers your total cost of ownership.

Source:Mitel

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WHY ARE SO MANY BUSINESSES MOVING COMMUNICATIONS TO THE CLOUD TODAY?

Here are real-world reasons:

COST:

Predictable monthly costs – this may seem like old news, but many companies don’t realize just how much they can save by moving their communications to the cloud. By hosting a phone system over the internet, businesses are charged on an “as needed” basis, paying only for what they use. That makes cloud-based communication systems especially cost-effective for small businesses—eliminating the need to pay for the installation and maintenance of a traditional phone system.

MANAGEMENT:

Outsource IT support to the provider – the management of an on-premise solution can be very expensive. Because of the complexity of today’s communications systems, it can often takes an entire IT department to manage. Cloud-based communications can help alleviate the burden by eliminating maintenance, IT work load and some of the more costly internal infrastructure, including servers and storage systems.

SCALABILITY:

Scale up or down based on users – anyone who has moved or expanded an on-premise phone system knows just how difficult it can be. Whether a business is growing, moving or sizing down, the cloud provides the flexibility and scalability the business needs now and in the future. And with cloud-based systems, businesses can access and add new features without any new hardware requirements.

SUPPLIER MANAGEMENT:

One supplier for everything – with cloud communications, a supplier manages communication systems off-site, and IT departments are freed up to focus on other high-priority issues.

TECHNOLOGY:

Instant updates – with cloud communications, service is outsourced, and upgrades are deployed through automatic software updates. This allows organizations to stay focused on their business and leave the upgrades to the cloud communications provider.

QUALITY OF SERVICE:​

Maximize uptime and downtime coverage – for many businesses, up-time is pivotal. To keep things running, they rely on the ability to scale and leverage remote work teams or serve customers from anywhere.  For these kinds of businesses, cloud communications maximizes up-time and coverage through multiple, remotely hosted data centres, helping them avoid costly interruptions and downtime.

AFFORDABLE REDUNDANCY:

Leverage shared resources – with an on-premise communication system, hardware and software geographic redundancy can be challenging to deliver. But when multiple businesses share resources in a cloud environment, they get access to a level of redundancy that would be too expensive to procure with an on-premises solution.

DISASTER RECOVERY:

Business continuity made easy – businesses are using the cloud to protect themselves from the affects of disasters. With cloud communications, they can get up and running quickly after a disaster, or in some cases, continue running the entire time. Some reroute calls to remote locations and cell phones, others rely on remote access to voicemail or use cloud-based auto attendants continue taking calls and providing information. It’s a hard-to-resist combination of reliability, resiliency and redundancy.

SIMPLICITY:

Easy to use interface – with a cloud-based interface, it’s easy for employees to talk, chat, collaborate and connect anytime through a single platform.

MOBILITY:

Many businesses need to keep their teams connected and communicating efficiently even when they’re miles or even countries apart. With cloud-based unified communications, remote workers have access to the full feature set from their mobile devices anywhere they go, just as if they were sitting at their desks. It opens up a whole new world of productivity and possibilities.

Source:Mitel

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ARE SECURITY CONCERNS STOPPING YOU FROM MIGRATING TO CLOUD?

As the prices of storage and bandwidth continue to drop fast, cloud-based communications services are becoming more and more attractive to businesses of all sizes. Business leaders are seeking to reduce licensing costs, to avoid recruiting IT staff and to focus fully on their core responsibility – growing the business. Although the list of benefits offered by cloud (hosted) solutions is long and well accepted, every time ‘cloud’ is brought up in a discussion, the conversation invariably gravitates to the security of data in the cloud.

You can find enough arguments to support security features of both cloud-based and premise-based communications solutions. The fact is, while a premise based system may initially offer more control over your data it is not inherently more or less secure. True security has more to do with your overall communications strategy and how you are using the technology. Cloud can be as secure as you want it to be.

In order to evaluate security of a cloud-based solution we first need to understand what data security actually means in terms of communications solutions.

A few basics about cloud solutions first: It consists of off-premise servers accessed via the Internet and these servers are owned and maintained by your communication solution providers. In terms of safety, solution providers have three overriding promises to keep: Availability, Integrity, and Confidentiality.

A few other questions to ask internally are:

1) Is your IT team ahead of the adoption curve?

The rise of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) culture means that many cloud services and tools are sneaking into organizations under the noses of IT leaders. One of the biggest challenges for IT teams in regards to cloud services is to assess data security implications before users adopt these cloud applications.

2) Do you have a security policy?

Many organizations don’t have security policies. No matter how large or small your company is, you need to have a plan to ensure the security of your information assets. A security program provides the framework for keeping your company at a desired security level by assessing the risks you face, deciding how you will mitigate them, and planning for how you keep the program and your security practices up to date.

3) Who is accessing your data from outside?

Outside hackers are what most people perceive as their biggest threat to security, but employees pose an equal risk. The risk is compounded when employees work remotely or use their personal mobile device to access sensitive materials outside of the company network. Make sure you have implemented solutions for secure data access when employees login from an external network.

Your communication solution provider should be able to discuss and advise you on each of these potential security concerns.

By the experts at Introtel 

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