Business VoIP in the Cloud Keeps Employees Productive on the Road

Two trends that every business is facing, whether that business is in New York or Hanoi: Employees are armed with smartphones, and those employees are using their smartphones to get work done even if the phones are not company provided.

While there was a time when only a small segment of the workforce conducted business outside of the office, their numbers have swelled thanks to mobile computing. Now, even jobs that don’t have a telecommuting element are being performed outside of the office since the temptation to use mobile technology is too great.

While smartphones have enabled employees to work from wherever they find themselves, a dispersed workforce is not necessarily an efficient workforce, even if they all have smartphones.

That’s because most businesses are just catching up with the trend, so the infrastructure is not in place to make mobile working as office work even if it could be.

Employees armed with smartphones is not enough. There’s still the challenge of connecting these employees properly so the collaboration that used to take place in the office now still happens even when these employees are not in the office. There also is the challenge of dealing with office systems that are decidedly not mobile.

The on-premises phone system is one of those non-mobile systems. While employees may be able to make calls easily from their smartphones, they still need to be able to take calls to the office network while they are not in the office. They need to check their voicemail easier than having to call the office network to see if there are any messages. They need to be able to transfer calls to other employees like used to happen when everyone was at a desk in the same room.

This can be done, but not easily with on-premises PBX phone systems. Instead, businesses need to better enable their office systems to support mobile workers by using a cloud-based business phone system.

Cloud-based calling sounds the same to customers, but it enables businesses to have a dispersed workforce without losing productivity.

That’s because cloud-based business phone systems are truly mobile. Employees can place and receive calls from the road or a home office just as easily as if they are in the office, so there’s no longer the problem of missed calls or delayed voicemail checks.

Cloud systems also connect dispersed workers better, because cloud-based phone systems connect disparate phones as if they were all on the same business phone network. Calling a business and pressing 3 to reach a sales rep can seamlessly connect the customer to an employee in the office, or to his or her cell phone if on the road. If neither reaches its intended recipient, it then can ring to someone else in the company. The experience is the same for the customer, even though employees are no longer working from the same building.

So while all businesses are facing the emergence of smartphones and telecommuting, not all are equally prepared. Those that are best adopting with the times are not just allowing their employees to work outside of the office, they’re enabling the same efficiency that used to exist within the office by using cloud-based phone solutions instead of the tired on-premises phone systems built for a time before mobility. 

Edited by Alisen Downey