A panel of experts weighed in on 5 tips to keep your business ship-shape through any economic environment by leaning on your business communications solution to deliver more for your business at lower cost.

BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES

Evaluate your costs, uncover redundancies, and determine where it makes sense to consolidate systems, resources, and operations. Look at ways to save money while also improving business performance. Start with a few simple questions:

Does your business use an on-premises phone system that’s loaded with rigid extra costs you may not be aware of like maintenance fees? ala carte services? hardware replacement expenses? service charges for changes and upgrades? and more?

Are you paying multiple vendors for basic communications and collaboration tools like business phones? video conferencing? team chat? contact center? and secure file storage, sharing and backup?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are likely paying more than you should for the business communications functionality that powers most businesses. You may be paying far more than you should.

The right business communications cloud offers all the essential business communications and collaboration functionality in one integrated platform – with a flat-rate for all your calls, chats, file and video conferences anywhere in North America and one predictable monthly charge that is generally far lower than legacy systems.

And, unlike on-premises systems that require a major investment of time and money to add advanced features like video conferencing and file sharing, these features come pre-integrated with a cloud communications platform.

Ask the questions that can free up hidden expenses from redundant and obsolete systems while adding new capabilities to benefit your employees and customers. You may be surprised at what you find.

RUN A TIGHT SHIP

Only pay for what you need, only when you need it. Look for solutions that allow you flexibility and efficiency to adjust to shifts in the economy, seasonal spikes and lows, or market expansion opportunities. If you have to purchase hardware scoped to a certain number of users or are bound to a contract or a set number of users, you should re-evaluate.

Instead of trying to guess or predict what your business will need on an on-going basis, a cloud communications platform gives you pay-as-you-go subscription pricing. You only pay for what you need and only when you need it!

Adding, moving, or changing users with a conventional phone system might take a technician or a call to the phone company. With a cloud communications platform you add users quickly and easily with just a click on a web-based administration console—even from a mobile device.

If you need to decrease the size of your employee base, make sure you aren’t forced to continue paying the same price with your communications system because it’s hard-wired to your office.

If you grow your team, make sure you can do so quickly and easily as your business needs dictate. You should be able to scale up and down and pay only for what you need.

STEER CLEAR OF ICEBERGS

Look for reliable, secure and versatile solutions that allow you to be present for your customers no matter what storms lie ahead. And, be sure to check the reliability and reputation of the service providers you are using.

Every business needs reliable communications tools with good audio and video quality, as well as security and versatility.

A cloud provider with a robust network and core infrastructure located in redundant data centers can provide carrier-class reliability and superior call quality.

Plus, having a mobile and desktop computer application, along with all of your data being backed up in the cloud, means your business continues even in the case of a fire, power outage, or natural disaster.

This reliability and security are priceless.

KEEP YOUR CREW HAPPY AND PRODUCTIVE

Free your business up from workforce constraints and rethink your employee location model. Geographic flexibility, speed and agility has shifted from competitive advantage to table stakes. By shifting the way you do business, you can also expand your workforce to lower cost geographical areas, thus allowing you greater flexibility to find and hire talent, while potentially saving money on salaries and benefits. Allowing for more flexibility with hybrid and remote options, you could save on travel expenses and overall real estate costs.

A cloud communications platform means employees can talk to customers, and to each other, anytime, from anywhere, and on virtually any device.

A good cloud-communications solution provides apps for mobile devices and desktops to support your workers anywhere they are located.

Mobility allows employees to access conference calls, videoconferences, chats, faxing, web meetings, and file sharing from their mobile device or laptop.

The cloud can also deliver advanced features like videoconferencing, web meetings, and file sharing to keep your employees seamlessly connected—and for less overall cost than on-premises solutions.

NAVIGATE YOUR BUSINESS TO SMOOTH SAILING

Keeping everyone connected is critical to keeping your business on course. Open new opportunities for collaboration and communication, keeping your employees connected seamlessly, simply and without interruption. Modern communications solutions offer so much more functionality and at lower overall cost.

The days of waiting for the phone company to install new lines or getting on-site business phone hardware set up and connected are in the past.

You can install a reliable, full-featured cloud communications platform almost instantly.

Getting employees connected is as simple as plugging phones into a standard ethernet wall outlet that is common in most buildings or downloading a mobile or desktop PC app.

Easily spin up branch offices or provision remote workers quickly. Rather than requesting a service call or waiting for the phone company to provision lines, you can simply send phones or headsets to new offices or remote workers. Your employees easily plug the phones into an ethernet wall outlet and they’re ready to go.

SET SAIL WITH INTERMEDIA CLOUD COMMUNICATION PLATFORM

Moving to a cloud communications platform is one of the easiest and quickest ways businesses can cut costs while improving business performance.

Get your message out effectively by using WebToq’s Unified Communications

In today’s business environment, keeping up with technological developments is critical to business success. It is becoming less and less common to have established workplaces or to use just one device to keep up to date. No matter where you are or who you are collaborating with, you have the opportunity to display the best version of your company utilizing a connection between devices and with the cloud.

What are Unified Communications?

Unified communications, also known by its acronym UC, is an umbrella term for the unification and integration of multiple business communication components or tools. In order to enhance company communication, productivity and to extend the way that communication devices and data can be exchanged. This includes instant messaging, presence information, voice(IP and telephone)mobility features, audio, web & video conferencing, desktop sharing, data sharing among many other features.

Importance in Recent Years

It is necessary to be able to have access to everything that you have in the office, in particular when working remotely. Nowadays, most companies work with unified communications in order to have more control of their business. Without UC, there would be a lot of time management issues, productivity issues and loss of business due to inefficiency.

The combination of real-time unified communications can be divided into 3 main groups:

1. Voice and telephone: this component includes traditional telephony services, voice messages, call redirection, voice recording and call logging.

2. Collaboration and messaging: this component includes instant messaging, availability information, file sharing, audio and video conferencing.

3. Integration and applications: this component includes collaboration with other applications such as CRM and ERP’s.

Benefits of Unified Communications:

Expense Reduction: These may be business variable expenses incurred frequently such as travel expenses as well as technological expenses which may include the acquisition of new software or platforms which would benefit the business.

– Increased Productivity: A good UC platform can keep both your employees satisfied and reduce the response time within your organization both internally and externally. By giving workers the freedom to work in the way which they are most productive.

– Mobility and Convenient Collaboration: Another great benefit of Unified Communications is the ease of being able to continue working as a team no matter where you are in the world. With the use of various devices, depending on which in particular suits you. It can be a computer, tablet and cell phone.

Are You Interested in How WebToq Uses Unified Communications to Improve YOUR Business?

Since we have already talked about Unified Communications- its importance and its benefits, we want to continue telling you a little more about how WebToq incorporates UC into your business…

Digital interactions have skyrocketed in popularity and many businesses are changing to digital channels. Customer expectations are also evolving quickly, fueled by innovation and technology. Operations aimed at customer service and sales must support remote, virtual and online communications with customers and stakeholders, as well as improve the way they respond to, route, secure and track customer calls and interactions.

Where should you start?

The starting point is simple: a reliable and affordable cloud-based communication and collaboration platform, complete with phones, text/chat messaging, video conferencing, file sharing and more.

WebToq’s cloud-based unified communications product, VozTop, has everything you need, and things you didn’t know you needed, making it simpler, quicker and more convenient to run your business. In one integrated package, and for one low price.