We are now almost three months into the COVID-19 pandemic, with no clear end in sight. As talks of re-starting the economy take root, global executives will begin feeling the pressure to reduce costs to help keep their companies afloat. According to PwC, managing the financial impacts of COVID-19 —including operations, future periods, liquidity, and capital resources— are the main concern for 75 percent of CFOs. Executives across the board are growing … [Read more...]
How POTS Is Derailing Your Telecom Expense Management
It's easy to ignore plain old telephone service (POTS). It’s relatively low-cost, it’s reliable, and it’s not what you’re using for the bulk of your communications, so in many organizations it never makes it onto the radar of telecom expense management. It’s assumed to be such a small percentage of your budget that it’s almost not worth the trouble. You might be surprised just how much you’re spending on POTS. In many cases, carriers are pricing them out of the market because they want to … [Read more...]
How Telecom Expense Management Is Changing
For businesses, the importance of telecom expense management grows as they adopt more cloud solutions and they implement sprawling Internet of Things (IoT) and mobility strategies. While expenses analyzed previously included voice and data, the scope of management has expanded exponentially with nearly every area of business occurring over IT connections. Gartner recently conducted a survey to gain a better understanding of telecom expense management and how it is changing alongside broader … [Read more...]
Structuring Your VoIP Budget Following Cloud Migration
Migrating to the cloud introduces some attractive benefits, including anticipated cost savings. Particularly when investing in as-a-service cloud options, enterprises expect lower monthly invoices, as well as freedom from hardware maintenance plus troubleshooting and unexpected device failure. The reality is often a bit different. When completing a cloud migration, many enterprises fail to structure the voice over internet protocol (VoIP) budget to reflect their new environment. With unified … [Read more...]
Why the Phone System is Still Important
It wasn’t that long ago that expensive phone systems were part of every thriving business. With online communication becoming the go-to method for reaching out to clients, partners, and prospects, the technologies revolving around the phone system have evolved. In fact, most small business leaders will say they’re more important today yet less costly than ever. The Small Business Phone System Are you considering using your personal phone number for business calls? You should reconsider … [Read more...]
Invest in Technology That Delivers Value to Your Digital Transformation
Enterprises pursue digital transformation with sizable expectations surrounding customer experiences and streamlining business processes. Transitioning to cloud solutions promises low-cost integrations and maintenance-free application management. Too often, these strategies fail to deliver in terms of customer engagement and loyalty and even in areas such as cost savings and productivity. Instead, when the transition either stalls out or is determined to be a failure, enterprises are left … [Read more...]
Cyber Security and the Remote Worker: Safeguards to Consider
Technology allows for remote work opportunities that didn’t exist 10-plus years ago. More and more workers are looking for opportunities that afford them increased flexibility in where they put in their hours — and companies are giving it to them — but at what cost? There are a number of cyber security issues that arise with the remote worker that must be addressed. You might have done everything you can to secure your network at the workplace, but when remote workers are logging in via … [Read more...]
Meet Tomorrow’s Challenges by Possessing Business Agility
According to Andreas Wieland, business agility is the “ability of a business system to rapidly respond to change by adapting to the changes in a business environment and taking advantage of available human resources.” For an organization to succeed, it has to be able to adapt to the ever-evolving business environment.The way to business agility is through creating the right conditions for teams to reach their goals. Take digitization, for example. New technologies are springing up and changing … [Read more...]
The Benefits of Combining AI and VoIP
Voice over internet protocol (VoIP) is offering enterprises new ways to tap into a wide variety of communications features while escaping the high cost of landlines. As businesses of all size adopt this technology, many are discovering the potential that VoIP has when combined with artificial intelligence (AI). In fact, AI and VoIP are proving to be valuable tools for streamlining customer service. What Is VoIP? VoIP runs voice calls and other communications over an internet line. When … [Read more...]
Balancing the Benefits and Challenges of Multi-Cloud Environments
A migration to the cloud is rarely a neat shift from on-premises, legacy solutions to a dream partnership with a single cloud provider. In most situations, enterprises are employing a multi-cloud approach in order to meet their business needs. This often occurs because the enterprise appreciates the cost savings and innovative potential of a public cloud provider, but the company also values the security and control of the private cloud environment. Even among public cloud providers, there … [Read more...]