No one likes spending money on network equipment upgrades. Words like “paradigm shift” haunt the dreams of many a CFO. None the less, times do change, and sometimes the march of progress means you have to be swept along or risk getting left behind.
As we get well underway in the 21st Century, now is definitely the time to upgrade your office telephone systems, if you're still using old-style copper systems. Their time is done, and it's time for you to look forward towards the future of communications.
Five Reasons Now Is The Time To Upgrade Your Small Business Phone Systems
I. Copper Is Fading Away
Given how extensive our phone grid is, we're certainly not expecting copper to die next week, or next year, or even next decade. However, its heyday is gone and it's not coming back. The movement is going to be towards a reduction in wires, and towards optical technologies over copper.
If you're still on a POTS (plain ol' telephone system), you're just not going to be seeing any new innovations or ideas. The grid will undoubtedly be maintained for a long time, but its use is going to dwindle quickly.
II. Unified Communications Make Everyone More Productive
A modern IP-based office telephone system creates the foundation for Unified Communications in your office – a single shared datasphere where your office communications simply become one more piece of data to be transmitted anywhere. Office messages can be compressed and mailed as MP3s, or transcribed automatically to text and sent that way.
Beyond that, Unified Communications also made collaboration simple. If all devices have equal access to the same servers, groups of any size or composition can work on projects together or separately, as circumstances dictate. How to get together and work ceases to be a problem.
III. vWLANs Bring Your Offices Together
In turn, Unified Communications bring you something better: vWLANs. These virtual wide-area networks allow you to connect remote offices into the same distributed network, with shared policies across the board. Phone messaging and extension systems can be unified, regardless of size. New users -or offices- can be added through central control in minutes.
Those same collaboration tools will work just as well with both workers in the same office, as if one were in Tokyo. Either way, you get across-the-board unified access with centralized security, no matter where your workers roam.
IV. Videoconferencing Is Here
We were promised it for decades, and now it's finally viable: Anyone with a laptop or mobile device and a decent network connection can videoconference. Staff at home with sick children or attending a conference across the country can still participate in the same way as if they were there in person. IP office telephone systems and unified networking software don't just make this possible, but easy.
V. Do You Need An Office At All?
Let's end this one on a question: As distributed office telephone systems advance, it starts to make one wonder at what point we could consider cutting the office out of the equation. After all, if your network is distributed, your employees can all collaborate remotely on any project, and they can chat with each other by video... how often do you really need to get together in person?
As offices look to minimize as much as further, reducing their physical footprint is attractive if it can be done without a loss of business. However, if you don't have to show off the office to clients, it doesn't need to house much more than a receptionist and your IT squad. Theoretically, anyway.
Has anyone successfully taken their small businesses out of the office entirely? Let us know how you did it!
