As the technology landscape evolves, there’s been a lot of talk about collaboration. The role of the IT department is steadily changing to a more tactical and strategic position within an organization, while developers are also gaining power and in many cases, driving financial and other important leadership decisions.
Facilitating collaboration is crucial to this evolution, not only within an organization, but in terms of interfacing with customers and strategic partners. Face-to-face meetings are ideal, of course, but not always logistically possible. And with the rising popularity of small branch offices coupled with more and more workers jumping on board the bring your own device (BYOD) bandwagon, phone conferencing becomes paramount in the world of collaboration.
Being able to set up a phone conference on a moment’s notice is a massive benefit to any company interested in fostering collaboration. And not all organizations, particularly smaller ones, have on-site conferencing equipment or software in place. In fact, it’s downright cost prohibitive for many SMBs to have this type of system, and yet they are often the ones who would benefit the most from conferencing.
Reservationless Conference Calling is a service offered by AT Conference, a company that specializes in on-demand phone conferencing services. In a nutshell, the service lets users conduct calls around-the-clock, from anywhere, using any type of phone, without the need to make a reservation. Conferencing functions are performed easily using keypad commands on the phone, with the ability to link call data to specific projects or codes and statistics on users freely available after the call.
The service may also be linked with Microsoft (News - Alert) Outlook via a conferencing plugin so that email and calendar invitations may be sent out, and call recording and transcription is also available. Additional features include the ability to lock a call as well as record caller IDs and assign security access codes to participants.
Small businesses structure their operations and communications based on budget, time and manpower. Being able to set up an ad hoc conference on virtually no notice is an extremely powerful tool in fostering collaboration. Companies like AT Conferencing, which also offers web conferencing through a cloud-based service, are major allies to businesses that can’t afford to install and manage their own on-premises conferencing equipment.
Edited by Maurice Nagle