Communication and collaboration are critical to any business. Enabling your employees to do both of these effectively requires the right tools. Unified communications provide small businesses with everything they need. If you are considering switching to a new platform, it’s important to define what features matter most to you. Let’s take a look at the top ones you should seek out.
The Small Business Communication and Collaboration Challenge
Small businesses typically pursue strategies based on efficiency and productivity. They know they need to operate lean to find success. These businesses often have distributed teams, even more so now with the transition to remote work. Because teams are not in a central space and cannot interact with partners and clients in person, the demand for communication and collaboration tools is skyrocketing.
The problem that many small businesses face is using multiple platforms for chat, video conferencing, and file sharing. If tools are in silos, teams may be as well. With the rise of cloud-based unified communications, small businesses can now afford integrated solutions that enhance communication and collaboration.
Choosing Unified Communications for Small Business: Must-Have Features
Your small business should consider unified communications to resolve the use of disparate systems, save money, and improve workflows. When comparing offerings, there are some must-have features you should include.
Ability to Scale
Every business has growth aspirations. As you add team members, you’ll need to consider how your technology can scale. It should be easy and straightforward. Unified communications platforms provide you with this control. Ideally, you want to be able to add users in a few clicks. Be sure to inquire about this when comparing providers.
Support for Business Continuity
Business continuity is vital for any organization. Natural disasters or other disruptions can put your company at risk if communication systems aren’t available. Unified communications helps support business continuity. The system can ring all endpoints for every call. If no one answers, you can route calls to a number of your choosing, including mobile or an automated attendant.
Cloud-Based Phones
Unified communications frees your staff to answer and receive calls from anywhere via VoIP (voice over IP). Employees can take calls from their desktop computer or mobile phone. You’ll experience the same call quality, no matter where you are. Cloud-based phone systems also streamline management from a single web-based portal. You’ll enjoy all the features of any standard business phone, including voicemail to email, hold and park, transferring calls, and call recording.
Call Analytics
Measuring the performance of sales and customer support is possible with call analytics. You can track the usage of your teams through reporting. These reports help you analyze the efficiency of your teams and the quality of the engagement with customers. If phone calls are a medium for your sales and support teams, this is a feature you absolutely need. Check out how it works in the video below.
Video Conferencing That’s Secure and Easy to Deploy
Video conferencing has never been more necessary in the business world. It offers your team the ability to connect when in-person meetings aren’t feasible meaningfully. While many unified communications platforms include video conferencing, they aren’t all the same. It’s especially important to determine the security of the system to ensure privacy and compliance.
It should also be easy to deploy. It shouldn’t require your team to sit through hours of training or download lots of applications. A browser-based solution means users can start meetings with a click and work from any device.
File Backup and Collaboration from Anywhere
Having a secure, accessible repository for documents is paramount to simplifying collaboration. Your team members can work together on a document, even editing at the same time. This functionality eliminates the need to email back and forth with multiple versions of a document. Unified communications allows you to achieve the next level of collaboration, and users can have access from anywhere.
Security is also a factor with a file repository. Advanced security technology should keep files safe. Backup of those files automatically also means you can recover them quickly in the case of a ransomware attack or other data loss incident.
Enable Better Communication and Collaboration with Unified Communications
Unified communications is a smart, reliable toolkit for any small business. Your team will have all the resources it needs to communicate and collaborate, all on one platform. As you search for the right solution, keep in mind these must-have features.
Intermedia Unite offers all of these and so much more. Explore how it works today.
Kirsten Barta
Kirsten Barta is Sr Marketing Communications Manager at Intermedia
October 23, 2020
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