Generally speaking, as technology matures and evolves, it has a tendency of causing changes in the way that most people do things. This is especially true in the business world. Gone are the days when a group of people arrived at the office by 9 a.m. and spent the entire day sitting at their desk either working on the computer or attempting to conduct business on a phone plugged into the company PBX (News - Alert) system.

Smartphones and tablets have cut the ties to landlines and made it possible to have a mobile workforce. Companies of all sizes, around the world have embraced the concept of having their employees bring their own devices (BYOD) to work to be used as their workforce tools. While it does raise some security issues, overall it makes it more convenient and efficient for the employee while offering cost savings to the employer.

While these types of cost savings may not seem like a big deal to large enterprises, small businesses need to keep their costs down while still being able to provide quality services. Cloud services are another method of reducing overhead. Cloud services and hosted solutions have given smaller businesses increased mobility, as well as the ability to have remote work sites and even stay at home employees. In addition, field workers can have access to all the information they need either through their smartphones or tablets.

One of the reasons for using your own device is so that you do not have to carry a personal smartphone and tablet along with company supplied devices. You can see significance of this if you are meeting clients outside the office, or working in the field.

 As we continue to become more of a generation of people who are constantly on the go, the need to carry less is essential. It is with this in mind that we see a need to be able to configure multiple identities on one device. This solution is not only a convenience to the employee, but also a cost saving option for the company.

Vonage (News - Alert) is one company that already sees this as the future of corporate communications. I asked the folks at Vonage if they had a specific plan in place designed to give one device multiple identities. The following is their response, “Yes, Vonage recognizes that today’s workforce is increasingly mobile and with the prevalence of BYOD among small businesses, employees need the flexibility to transition between personal and professional identities seamlessly, wherever they are, whenever they need to and on any device. Therefore, every Vonage Business Solutions account and extension has access to the Vonage Business Solutions Mobile app. This is a tool that allows business customers to, among other things, make and receive calls using their business phone number in lieu of the “native” number attached to their mobile device. With the app, business employees can stay on top of business calls without sacrificing their mobile identity.”

These smaller companies have to keep a couple of things in mind for this solution to be successful. BYOD means that there will most likely be a combination of operating systems based on the employee’s device of choice. That means that a viable solution has be one that works across platforms, which means that a minimum the Android (News - Alert) and iOS platforms need to work seamlessly.

Back in the office, one area in particular that has seen dramatic changes is the company phone system. The maturity of Voice over IP (VoIP) has made it possible for small businesses to move away from in-house PBX systems. By taking advantage of a hosted PBX system, companies can grow, change locations and offer a variety of services at cost saving prices.

Vonage feels the same way, in response to my question concerning this scenario their response was “Due to the amount of equipment needed to maintain landlines and the PBX infrastructure, traditional systems are expensive to maintain and require scheduled site appointments, the need to constantly add features adds up. Companies save on upfront costs with the Vonage Business Solutions offerings since they don’t have to buy costly hardware. Companies also save on maintenance costs since new feature releases and handset firmware or server updates are handled by Vonage in the cloud and generally do not require interaction with the customer.”

The trend does seem to be that we will continue to become an even more mobile workforce than we are at this time. The combination of hosted cloud-based services, the advancements in VoIP and the growing BYOD remote employee all lead to the fact that small businesses can dream big while still being able to start small.

The size of the office is no longer as important as the type of services you can provide. The ability to have remote offices through hosted PBX services can give a small business a national, if not an international, presence. Does the dream get any bigger than that? Obviously, choosing the right partners, such as Vonage Business Solutions to get you there is a key factor.