If your company was caught out by the recent bad weather and sales and service suffered because you were unable to continue business as usual, then considering a Hosted IP solution to replace your traditional PBX may be the answer.
The snow caused havoc across the region and created many different challenges for the business community. These ranged from staff arriving late, not arriving at all and even extremes of no one getting to the office to open the doors! Business owners were also faced with difficult decisions; is it safe for our staff to travel, do we close early and how do we communicate our decision to our customers?
A hosted (or sometimes known as cloud) telephony solution is an extremely cost effective way of implementing a new telephone system; however giving access to advanced system applications which are often cost prohibitive on a traditional platform.
When using a hosted service your main telephone numbers and DDI numbers become non geographic and not tied to a physical line. This means that your service provider and you as the end user have far more control of managing where your calls are delivered to. Whether through a call to your provider or through your on-line portal you can initiate diverts and messages within minutes rather than hours. That decision to close the office early in the snow suddenly becomes that much easier knowing you can still manage calls efficiently.
Functionality such as Hot Desking allows users to dynamically route their inbound calls to the best devise. This could be the office desk phone, someone else’s desk phone at another site or your soft phone on your laptop connected to your home Broadband. Looking back at the snow disruption, how useful would it have been if staff members could have taken calls at home rather than queuing in stationary traffic? How many staff didn’t get to work because they were looking after their children due to school closures?
A hosted solution does rely upon internet connectivity and uses Voice over IP (VoIP). This can be through Broadband, an EFM circuit or a Leased line and for a multi sited customers potentially a mix of all three. In most instances for a small office environment it will be Broadband which could raise questions over bandwidth and quality. However, that is when you need the expertise of your telecoms provider to recommend the best service for your business. Annex-M Broadband can increase your upload speeds and Quality of Service routing will prioritise your voice over data, both important factors to consider for VoIP solutions.
Although the bad weather highlighted several problems which can be solved with a hosted solution, it can also overcome many other day to day operational issues or events beyond your control. Kevin Cooper, our Business Telecoms Manager posed the question “can your business operate with a reduced workforce and can it afford to miss customer calls?” If the answer is no then please contact Kevin on telephone number 01603 709300.