Remote working is on the rise. The ability to work from any environment with an internet connection not only promotes better work/life balance for employees, but it helps to reduce turnover and improve productivity for employers too. For small businesses that want to branch out and hire talent from multiple locations, remote working is particularly useful.
In a small business, the advent of telecommuting means that you can connect with skilled workers from any location, and add them to your staff, without ever investing in a physical company presence. However, this practice means that SMBs need to be ready to support their talent from any location – regardless of which country they’re in, what kind of set-up they’re using, and when they’re logging on.
Preparing for the Remote Revolution
Every business is different, that means that all remote workers have unique communication requirements to think about, like the typical office workers that might exist within a company office. For a company to thrive, it needs to consider the individual needs of each worker when it comes to equipment, support, and connectivity, then look for way to streamline communication and collaboration.
According to one survey, about 70% of small to mid-sized businesses feel that poor communication is the main problem holding them back from success.
Moving a Business Off-Premises
While there’s never a one-size-fits-all solution for communications, most small businesses will find that legacy PBX systems simply aren’t cost effective – particularly when you’re supporting less than ten users. Therefore, most remote workers are equipped with residential phone services that don’t have the features and functionality you’d expect from a business communications system.
Some experts will need to connect to your primary SMB office using a virtual private network or VPN, but this isn’t always the best opportunity when you want to maintain high voice quality. Ultimately, the easiest, and most successful option for many professionals, will be to take advantage of the many benefits of the cloud.
Embracing the Cloud
Though cloud communications are still in their adoption phase – despite years of progress and evolution, it’s difficult to ignore the benefits that they bring to remote and dispersed working environments. Particularly for small to mid-sized businesses, cloud communications solutions allow for a virtual UC system to exist across all the remote spaces in your organisation.
This means that everyone in your business, no matter where they live or work, can access the same UC features – like contact centre solutions, call recording, and instant messaging.
While both on-premise systems and cloud communications strategies have the capacity to support remote and mobile workers, on-premises systems must be adjusted to suit the needs of a multi-location workforce. On the other hand, cloud communications are designed to embrace the upcoming future, where remote working becomes the norm, and being tethered to a desk will soon be a thing of the past.
With the cloud, location is no longer a part of the equation. Every user gets the same set of features they could access in the office – no compromise.
