Remember the 90s, when cell phones were no longer a product of science-fiction? Brick-sized, with black & white screens and pixels the size of a walnut, these devices were state-of-the-art back then. They were also scarce.
Even in the late 90s, people could hardly afford one, let alone multiple units. But fast forward to 2015, mobile phones are not just hundreds of times faster and more versatile, they’re also vastly more affordable. And they’re so popular that one simply isn’t enough anymore.
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Businesses sell products, services and information to other businesses much in the same way they sell to individual customers. There are more similarities between B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) than you would care to imagine. For example, fruitful B2B commerce relies on emotion. Just like you appreciate good design or a catchy ad, so do companies like to be touched deep down inside before spending on services, or products in bulk.
Driving adoption of anything within an organization is difficult enough, because people tend to resist change. Even more so when it comes to all-new collaboration tools. So how do you ensure their buy-in and ongoing support for the tech? Easy. With some good old fashioned education.
It’s crucial not to take deployment lightly. We say this from experience. If you hand the management department a flimsy brochure or a demo video that just scratches the surface of the product, it might do more harm than good. Sometimes higher-ups may be even more resilient in the face of change than the workforce on the ground floor. When it comes to communication & collaboration tools, knowing the numerous benefits of each feature in part lets you align those features perfectly with your business.
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Quick: what are your staffers doing at this very second? If you’re like most organizations, there’s a good chance many of your staffers are attending to personal matters. But who says it’s acceptable just because it happens in other offices too?
According to a recent survey of 2,000 office workers conducted by AtTask and Harris Interactive – experts in management and market research – employees at various firms said they only dedicate 45 percent of their time to getting stuff done. The remainder (55%) of the time gets spent sifting through emails, or in meetings that could easily be replaced by conference calls. Also on the list of common pastime activities was “miscellaneous interruptions.”
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When you hear contact center agent, the first thing that pops to mind is an employee confined to a cubicle with a PC and a headset. However, these days, that same job can be practiced out in the open with a cell phone. And starting this year, the practice is gaining some well deserved traction.
It’s not just the contact center staff that needs newer, more versatile tools to get their job done. The same goes for knowledge workers, roaming experts, back-office personnel, part-time or overflow agents, and even account managers. Everyone must collaborate to tackle customer issues, or to take full advantage of opportunities as they arise. However, for customer-facing employees it’s critical to have the flexibility to take calls anywhere, anytime, and on any device.
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There are countless studies that tackle the productivity debate regarding remote working versus driving to the office every day. But few have amassed the bulk of data found in Dell & Intel’s Global Evolving Workforce Study.
Commissioned by the technology duo and conducted by TNS Global, the research aims to pinpoint today’s workplace trends. Specifically, where and how people like to work and the technologies they prefer to employ. Two things jump at you from the data.
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Recruiting, supporting and (most importantly) retaining a workforce is no picnic. Especially in today’s competitive market. The 2014 Dell Global Evolving Workforce Study identifies six major indicators for IT managers, human resource professionals and business decision makers to enable them to build a sustainable workforce.
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Before Deploying Cloud Collaboration Software, Ask Yourself This
Service providers can no longer afford to keep their hands clean of any cloud business. Nor should they. In today’s competitive marketplace, moving operations to the cloud isn’t just worth considering. It’s a must.
Aggregated research from Infonetics shows that more than half of companies across North America will be running cloud-based UC software in one form or another by 2016. The research also includes a projection according to which the cloud PBX & UC segment will be valuated at $12 billion by 2018.
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Lately, everybody speaks about how you can increase productivity with better collaboration. Let’s think about how we are used to work together: in-person meetings, one-on-one discussions, phone calls that never end etc. Remember those days when, if you stepped away from your desk phone for just a few minutes, you had every chance to miss a business opportunity, or play phone tag for the remainder of the day?! Well, not anymore.
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Most entrepreneurs will tell you that, while they love what they do, it is not easy to juggle the many responsibilities that come with the territory. If successful, staff will keep growing in numbers, and invoices – both issued and received- will keep piling up. How can the SMB owner make one’s life easier?
New research indicates that a company with 100+ employees stands to reclaim the equivalent of 6,207 eight-hour work days over the course of a year by implementing Unified Communications (UC) solutions. In other words, SMBs are poised to reach significant growth by simply deploying new tech.
