The digital age has presented small businesses with many challenges, but the benefits far outweigh the hurdles – particularly, when online tools can help us improve productivity that saves us time and money. Research has shown that VoIP (voice over internet protocol) can significantly aid SMBs in improving productivity for our employees and ourselves. Here are nine reasons how VoIP can help your company become more productive.
1) Improves Supervision
Privacy and security in today’s digital world is a huge concern, and the field of telecommunications is no exception. The comprehensive features provided by a VoIP system enables managers to monitor their agents’ and/or employees’ productivity, in addition to assessing the effectiveness of telecommuters, sales representatives, and other key phone-based personnel on staff.
2) Share the same Phone System
Moving your business to the cloud allows your staff in remote or home offices full-featured business desk phones. Teleconferencing and regularly scheduled video web meetings will make your remote workers feel connected with company at large, whether you employ a handful of employees or dozens.
Dissimilar to the legacy POT(plain old telephone) systems of the past, VoIP instantly sets up a company directory that includes voicemail, and other key features required in today’s business milieu.
3) Delivers Mobility and Flexibility
VoIP eliminates barriers by moving the on-premise PBX phone system out of the building and into the Cloud. Workers can use any BYOD to access, including desk phones, smartphones, tablets, laptops or their personal computer with a softphone application. Your desk phone will be able to connect to the main business phone system from anywhere in the world, simply by plugging it into an Ethernet jack.
4) Reduce Costs & Simplifies Billing
VoIP minimizes charges for long-distance calls and eliminates additional costs associated with the hardware of landlines. Monthly invoicing is streamlined where every line for your entire workforce, including remote personnel are tallied collectively. That translates into a simplified billing process that not only does away with the painstaking process and time of preparing expense reports but also removes the need for managers and corporate accounting personnel to approve numerous phone bills.
5) Flexible Staffing
Today, many IT professionals are responsible for overseeing employees who spend all or part of their time either in a virtual office or telecommuting. With VoIP, you can easily establish remote locations, add telecommuters to support incremental growth, or adapt to seasonal spikes that sometimes occur in a small business. This also allows for customers to communicate with any remote worker as if the employee were stationed in the main office.
6) Ease of Access
The company directories (mentioned above) that are included with VoIP systems will allow you to have access to your entire staff quickly and efficiently. Call any of them with a single click, check missed calls and numbers dialed, as well as average call times. Additionally you can set up unlimited speed dial numbers, so you can quickly make calls without searching for and dialing long numbers. One click puts you straight through.
7) Do Not Disturb & Priority Calls
One of the most frustrating thing in any office is never getting anything done because the phone is always ringing. You don’t want to miss calls, but you can’t have your productivity frequently interrupted either. VoIP addresses that requirement by allowing calls to be sent straight to your voicemail without the phone ringing.
On the flip side, when you are awaiting a call from a colleague or client, you can set priority alerts, so the phone rings only if it’s the person you’re waiting for. This helps you maintain your productivity levels without missing important calls.
8) Messaging
Voicemail is not always an optimal solution. If you receive lots of calls, important messages oftentimes get buried beneath the more recent ones. And some systems delete messages after a week or so. With VoIP, you can receive voicemail messages as audio files in your email. Then you can listen to them, store or share them with others.
9) Call Chaser
One of VoIP’s unique features is making it easier to re-direct calls to your next location. You can either divert all calls to a selected number, or you can have calls forwarded to different numbers in turn, until you pick up. And the beauty is, callers are never aware they’re being routed.
Conclusion
As the workforce for your small business continues to evolve, IT professionals have had to adjust to virtual workers continually being added or removed from your employ, dependent on workloads. After all, your productivity depends on it.
Today’s list of productivity benefits will hopefully open you up to a better way of managing these challenges. A Cloud-based business phone system like VoIP is built from the ground up to do what a cumbersome on-premise PBX did in the past, without the need of manning it – saving you time and money.
These powerful features include all-inclusive packaging that bundles such services as online faxing, business SMS, audio conferencing and web meetings – and for a fraction of the cost that you are probably paying with your legacy telecom solution. Like Telzio, where your small business can virtually and literally install and maintain a VoIP system for as low as $1 per month – if you haven’t done so already – it’s a no-brainer that NOW is the time to shelve your old-school phone system and replace it with VoIP— don’t you think?