How VoIP Services Promote a Collaborative Company Culture
The voice over IP (VoIP) market enjoys a 17.5 percent annual growth rate, according to IBIS World, and it continues to increase its market penetration into the business world. While cost savings and ease of deployment are two common factors leading businesses to adopt VoIP, there’s another major factor that influences everything from business agility to employee productivity: VoIP’s collaboration features.
Collaboration with a traditional private branch exchange system is often limited to conference calling, which doesn’t fit into the increasingly mobile nature of today’s workplace. VoIP services promote a collaborative company culture with a few key features.
Expanding Accessibility
VoIP adapts to how employees actually work — not chained to a desk, but on their smartphones and tablets, at the office and at home. Remote accessibility gives your business the flexibility to have a highly mobile workforce that’s capable of staying productive whether they’re at a hotel on a business trip thousands of miles away or working at home because of inclement weather.
When employees aren’t cut off from the tools they need to do their jobs, they are able to stay productive even when they’re away from their workstations. When 36 percent of employees would take telecommuting opportunities over a pay raise, according to Global Workplace Analytics, implementing remote accessibility works out for your business in many ways.
Integrating Communication Tools
The typical company has over 390 applications in use by the company and employees, reports the Wall Street Journal. While traditional business phone systems can’t integrate with any of these apps, many VoIP solutions are designed to fit into the existing infrastructure without a major hassle. Some are designed with the most popular business apps in mind, making integration easy, while others can be made to work together.
When you have multiple mission-critical apps in use within your business infrastructure, it’s important to get as many working together as possible. This decreases the complexity of your infrastructure, provides better visibility into what you’re using on a daily basis, and makes it easier for employees to use the tools they need.
Virtualizing the Meeting Room
Phone conferencing has its place, but VoIP goes beyond the typical conference call for expanded collaboration opportunities. Video conferencing calling lets you cut down on the trips to the physical meeting room, as you can see the participants and get essential body language cues that are missing in phone conferencing. These cues help employees determine whether they’re getting the buy-in they need for their ideas on projects or if they need to collaborate with the team in a different way.
Screen sharing is another valuable collaboration tool provided by VoIP solutions. It cuts down on the time it takes to explain vital information, is useful for new software and process training, and opens up opportunities to share multimedia as part of a presentation or a virtual meeting. When you can hold engaging and productive meetings through a VoIP solution, you also open up the opportunity for employees on business trips to phone in and get the necessary information, instead of forcing them to wait until they are back at the office.
VoIP services improve collaborative opportunities throughout the office, fostering a more collaborative company culture. When you can help your employees be more mobile, escape from the meeting room while improving productivity, and improve your tool integration, choosing VoIP makes a lot of business sense for collaboration.
Sources:
http://www.ibisworld.com/industry/default.aspx?indid=1269
http://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/resources/costs-benefits
http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2014/01/28/it-underestimates-cloud-app-usage-study/
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