It Shouldn’t Take a Village to Raise a Business Phone System
It’s easy to forget sometimes how complicated it is to make a phone call over a corporate network. It takes a village: IT needs to install and maintain the hardware. The networking team needs to make sure the wide area network can handle the traffic. The help desk needs to support it. Finance needs to cost-justify it. Even HR has to get involved when employees join or leave the company.
But it doesn’t have to be that complicated. Moving your voice communications to the cloud can make phone calls simple again. IT can burn those PBX instruction manuals, network engineers don’t have to worry about balancing real-time communications in their data network, finance can view communications as a cost saver instead of an expense and HR no longer has to play police. Yes, for many businesses, a cloud phone system makes everything better. But there are always those individuals who fear communications change. We call them the “Village People” (the people who avoid change at all costs, even if the cost to your business for maintaining the status quo is far too high):
“The Finger Pointer”
This is the person who likes playing the blame game. If they’re in IT, they blame poor call quality on the network. If they’re in networking, they say it’s an IT interoperability issue. No one is responsible and nothing gets solved. With the cloud, there’s only one direction to point, and your cloud phone system provider had better provide an answer.
“The Chairmen of the Bored”
These are the people who are afraid to leave their desk for fear of losing their productivity. They don’t understand that cloud-based communications follow you on any device wherever you go, so you can be productive anywhere.
“The Silent Type”
You know the type: they ignore emails, never check their voicemails and singlehandedly ensure that deadlines are dead on arrival. For them, cloud-based communications signal an end to their silent treatment because they can’t stay hidden when everyone around them has the kinds of accessibility and visibility features your business can get with a cloud phone system.
“The Nay Sayer”
These are the folks in finance who say “no” to new technology because the up-front fees are too high or the licensing structure is too cost prohibitive. What they don’t know is that the cloud has a much lower cost of entry (like, zero) and can offer flexible licensing structures to ensure you only pay for what you want. Once they understand that, they turn from “no” people into “in-the-know” people, and you’re on your way.
“The Timid Traveler”
There are probably good reasons not to travel on business (airplane food, for example), but lost productivity isn’t one of them. The cloud defines work as what you do, not a place where you have to go five days a week. In other words, you can travel without the baggage of lost productivity.
“The Phoney Croney”
These are the old-school engineers who believe that the statement “You get what you pay for” means that a cloud phone system can’t possibly sound as good as their expensive legacy system. But cloud communications actually sound better thanks in part to technologies like high-definition voice, which is a big reason why more than half of all enterprises have already cut the cord on their old phone systems and moved those functions to cloud today.
Time for a new village
If you’re ready to make the move, but need some help getting past the “Village People” we mentioned here, contact us today. We’re happy to help. After all, a village should be supportive and help you achieve your goals—not keep you from them.
