Collaboration is an essential priority in all successful businesses, but some traditional business phone systems do not provide the functionality necessary for employees to effectively do so. A recent RingCentral survey indicated that 70 percent of companies utilizing traditional in-office phone systems consider their current phone solutions lacking, challenged by inflexibility, complexity and high expenses.
The survey specifically found that 22 percent of respondents do not consider their on-premise phone solutions to be flexible enough to meet the needs of an increasingly mobile workforce. Furthermore, 23 percent noted that their systems were difficult to manage, and 33 percent indicated their solutions were too expensive. Also, 92 percent of respondents saw cloud-based phone systems as being especially beneficial because of features and attributes like the following:
- The ability to use smartphones as business extensions with mobile apps
- A simplified user interface for administrative purposes
- Easy scalability to meet evolving business needs
- Cost reduction
- Elimination of regular maintenance
With a phone system that is not quite up to par, collaboration and productivity can suffer, which limits business growth and success. However, business decision makers can improve collaboration and further company success by updating current solutions and implementing a virtual business phone system from AccessDirect.
The value of collaboration in the cloud
AccessDirect's hosted PBX system provides many benefits for businesses of all sizes, including that it is a cost-efficient upgrade over traditional systems. Since equipment is hosted in the cloud, there is no need for costly on-premise installations, complicated maintenance or the purchase of additional equipment. In addition, these affordable options provide enterprise-grade communications functionality.
Forbes Insights recently released a report supporting the use of a cloud-based model for collaboration, noting that the ability to consistently interact regardless of geographical barriers or company borders is fast becoming a determinant of success. The report outlined many business benefits of cloud-hosted collaboration, including:
- Producing increasingly efficient business processes
- Accelerating company growth and results
- Allowing for increased innovation
- Creating flexible work environments and enhancing employee productivity
- Enabling improved collaboration with customers, internal teams and suppliers/partners
- Supporting scalability
"Companies today are taking more steps to enable an ever more intimate degree of collaboration between internal groups as far-ranging as finance, R&D, supply chain, production, marketing, logistics and IT," the Forbes Insights report stated. "Moreover, the most advanced among these are now pursuing competitive advantage beyond enterprise borders, seeking closer collaboration with customers, suppliers and other external groups. Within this epoch, cloud is surfacing as the medium most capable of successfully managing the revolution: quickly, efficiently and in ways that can manifest dramatic benefits."
In a recent article for The Miami Herald, BalanceGal CEO Cindy Krischer Goodman shared her perspective on collaboration in business, noting that it can be challenging to encourage individuals to work together as modern corporate cultures tend to primarily value individual performance. Goodman recommended establishing team building exercises in order to help individual employees understand the benefits of working together. With a cloud-hosted phone solution, collaboration can become second nature and a company can enhance the benefits it receives from effective teamwork.
