Some thoughts from the IP Telecom Team

How a VoIP-based phone system can provide much-needed value for money to businesses in these challenging times

Written by Tai Aderemi | Jul 11, 2020 12:27:07 AM

Since the end of March, most businesses have scaled back and made adjustments to their business operations as they adhere to the government's directive in a quest to contain and combat the coronavirus.

The "new-normal" social life we find ourselves in has been disruptive to business activity, with many business continuity measures failing to provide solutions to maintain operational efficiency and productivity. The external factors triggered by restriction put in place to contain the spread of Covid-19 is having a significant impact on businesses cash flow, with many facing uncertain times, and some ceasing operations.

As the Irish Government joins others globally to release a phased-out plan to return to normality and usher the post-COVID era, businesses are devising a new strategy to survive the new business reality. 

Many businesses are now in the process of drawing the road map to normality and profitability. Central to this is providing the right tech to equip staff with the tools to conduct business as normal. The power of cloud technology means remote teams can stay connect and productive no matter where they are as face-to-face interactions is to be limited for the considerable future.

A VoIP-based phone system can intergrate dispersed team members and aid companies with optimising efficiency, maintaining productivity.

As most business are auditing their bottom-line to sustain their cash flow, here is how a Hosted PBX can enable your business to achieve its organisational costs at a minimal cost:

Get rid of costly traditional lines and future-proof your business phone systems. By migrating to Hosted PBX solution, you reduce costs on monthly re-occurring charges of traditional lines. A Hosted PBX system allows your business to host multiple lines in the cloud, removing costs of PSTN, ISDN, FRA lines, while retaining business numbers through a simple porting process. With PSTN numbers becoming obsolete this is a no-brainer as well as saving an average of 20-50% in monthly costs for most businesses.

 

With remote working set to become an ongoing fixture, Business VoIP is an essential, cost-effective solution to enable the workforce.

 

Remote working enabled through VoIP. It is hard to speculate how long remote working culture will take to become dominant work preference post-COVID-19. What is apparent is that the coronavirus crises has accelerated a much-needed change in work culture. Remote work has been a long-overdue business adoption, and VoIP helps facilitate off-site staff to communicate effectively in their different locations. 

Solutions like IPT for Teams and IPT for Softphones is a dream for team managers. They can check the status of their staff remotely, add call flows, allowing calls to be hunted in groups or with individuals and handled like they would be onsite. Productivity can be measured with real-time stats while providing the same experience for customers reaching out to your business.

As companies try to get staff back onsite, remote working options gives everyone the peace of mind to avoid health crisis, while saving costs on overheads and real estate costs. With remote working, you can expand your team without necessarily expanding your business premises.

 

Maintenance cost reductions. VoIP-based phone systems are designed to give power to businesses to manage, maintain and make configurations as it suits their business needs. A VoIP phone system is the agile replacement of rigid traditional systems. The cost of scaling up and expanding your users is minimal, and with training and user manuals, the configuration of user-profiles and call flows can be done in easy steps that take minutes.

Hardware maintenance costs are alleviated, a dream for IT managers, who can plan and budget for infrastructure upgrades, with a peace of mind, knowing their telephony is future-proof.

BYOD options reduce upfront costs. With most businesses seeing a loss in revenue and shrinking cash flow, a cloud-hosted migration offers an opportunity to get rid of the old and move in with the new, for an affordable cost. VoIP systems allow businesses to turn their current hardware investments to business phones. With softphone solutions like IPT for Teams and IPT for Soft Phones, businesses can power up their devices with licences available for each user.

The softphone licences are device-neutral, and can be configured quickly on provided company portals. These licences are encrypted and provide security for staff working remotely or logging into a company VPN.

Employees that need to be onsite can have their desk phones added to the communicate suite of the business, which keeps the teams unified in a holistic solution, that provides seamless unified communications for all team members.

Reduce calling charges to global teams with a universal phone system. Through the power of a Hosted PBX, multi-nationals with global teams can reduce call charges to their colleagues globally, by moving outbound calls to internal calls, using company-wide extension codes.

International calls to global bases are now free by migrating all bases under one platform. With a VoIP telephony solution, all you need is the internet to turn your global operation into a tiny hub, accessible to anyone within your organisation, and maintain uniformity to communicate effectively.

In a time of a crisis, companies can easily deploy alternative communication strategy and business continuity measures, like our global customer Portwest did recently.

No-one knows what lies ahead post COVID-19, what is certain is that our world has changed, so has the business culture and working structure.

As focus shifts primarily on the bottom line for businesses, the ones that will excel in our new reality will have to make the investment in the right tools to enable their workforce to adapt to this paradigm shift in work lifestyle.

For businesses looking to audit their current set-up, and evaluate options on migrating to a VoIP phone system from a traditional system, our experienced sales team is willing to consult with you and guide you through the process.

You can contact our team directly: sales@iptelecom.ie, 01-687 7777.