3856198797?profile=RESIZE_710xSnowstorms, floods, storms and heavy rain. When extreme weather strikes it can have a disastrous effect on business.

Fundamentally in extreme weather situations - businesses need to look at what technology is required to support employees to enable 'business as usual' and workforce collaboration.

Smart businesses are pushing to stand out from the crowd and compete more effectively. Achieving better, faster, smarter communications internally and with customers and suppliers is vital to building business success.

Having the right communication solution

Employees are never without a mobile device of some kind. Having a mobile and flexible workforce can improve productivity greatly and increase efficiency for businesses.

The right technology can help to re-create an in-office experience regardless of location. By allowing your employees the flexibility to work from home and remotely can be positioned as an attractive benefit of the job and help improve work/life balance. Having the right communication system that support and enables mobility can help attract and keep the right staff for your business.

Collaboration

To accurately reflect their staff’s changing work experience, organisations have begun to implement an entirely new working environment – the digital workplace. 

Advances in unified communications are being driven in part by the necessity of enabling a remote and mobile workforce to be as connected to those in the office. As a result, communications platforms must evolve into truly unified, personal solutions to meet the needs of the changing mobile workplace, anywhere and anytime.

With the tools available, a mobile workforce can help foster a more collaborative atmosphere. We now have screen sharing capabilities that are accessible by virtually all electronic devices. Many people on different electronic devices can work on the same documents. This allows each person to feel as though they can contribute and see the work as the team collaborates on it together.

What features can help increase mobility?

Gone are the days when the workplace was merely a physical space employees occupied during regular office hours. Today's always connected, instant access environment has blurred the lines between the physical office and the place where work actually happens. 

Enterprises need to fully enable employees' productivity and flexibility by supporting the range of mobile and tablet devices but also provide the solutions that ensure company data and networks remain secure. Other business challenges continue to include a need for better flexibility and greater mobility and improvement of business processes along with a requirement to reduce costs and gain competitive advantage. 

With many companies moving from traditional management hierarchies to agile and flexible workplaces incorporating collaboration and teamwork there has been a shift from one to one too many to many communications. Integration with the internet, increasing employee mobility and a move to virtual teams and organisations, along with the need to continually improve business flexibility and adaptability that services-based communications provides. 

Choose your partner wisely

If your business is relying on connectivity to run its business applications or telephony, you are open to risk. Disruption and downtime can last longer on legacy systems or where providers are not governed by a service level agreement to get your business up and running again.

The only way to guarantee reliable connectivity during the winter is by working with a provider that can offer stringent service level agreements should the worst happen, but ideally one that can work with you to put in place the technologies to mitigate the impact on your workforce and customers before it does.

The majority of technologies to consider for increased resilience and business continuity are now cloud-based. De-centralising your core communications infrastructure in the cloud is a simple and effective way to reduce the impact of any disruption at your office locations. Solutions such as inbound call management, or fully hosted phone systems with enhanced features that support remote working can offer businesses a simple way to avoid adverse weather conditions negatively impacting upon sales.

With modern communications solutions and a mobile-enabled workforce, businesses need not suffer this winter.

To find out more about the technology available to help weather-proof your business, contact Exchange Communications today on 0800 008 7600 or visit www.exchangecommunications.co.uk

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Claire Mackie - Marketing Executive - Exchange Communications

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