2020 brought on a radical transformation in how businesses of all sizes communicate. And as the market adjusted to these changes, it’s become more vital than ever for companies to maintain robust, effective mobility tools as a part of their unified communications infrastructure.
Although travel to and from the office has diminished, it has been replaced with a ubiquitous need to be able to work from anywhere at any time. Organizations ranging from schools and small businesses to Fortune 500 companies have made the transition to dispersed workplace environments, and this trend will likely remain intact for the foreseeable future.
Sophisticated mobility tools emerged as one of the best ways to enable distributed employees to seamlessly collaborate and conduct business no matter what combination of environments they’d been asked to rotate through. Mobility is also about accessing the features and functionality of a company’s unified communications system and using those powerful capabilities from any location and any device. In this way, communications solutions that incorporate robust mobility not only facilitate the new hybrid workplace, they increase productivity in ways that will extend long past the pandemic.
The mobile office trend was already percolating in the marketplace. COVID-19’s disruption only accelerated it. Statistics gathered by management firm Perillon showed that 70% of employees keep their phones “within eye contact” at work. 71% spend more than two hours a week accessing company information on a mobile device. Mobile tools have changed the way people work – well before employees began navigating the shift to work-from-home environments.
The increased accessibility of a mobile workforce enhances productivity. “By leveraging mobile unified communications to mobilize workers’ desk phones, enterprises can ensure that their employees are continuously reachable, regardless of their location,” confirmed Gregory Ireland of eWeek’s knowledge center. “This means they are more available for customers and colleagues, and they can answer questions or provide information as quickly as possible.”
As offices that house their employees in a single location become less commonplace, robust mobility is not so much a convenient feature as a must-have, basic capability. Advanced mobile tools allow companies with multiple branches, on-site, and at-home workers to communicate with key stakeholders from anywhere and still present themselves to the outside world as a single, cohesive organization.
To get the full value of a modern unified communications system, workers should be able to access advanced features such as presence management, voicemail, and call transfer capabilities with the same ease as they would in an office setting. And a reliable, versatile videoconferencing system has become not just a social tool but an invaluable resource for allowing organizations to collaborate and maintain efficient operations in these new environments. As writer Zachary Comeau in TechDecisions magazine confirms, “If teams communicate and collaborate better, then employees are more engaged and meetings have better outcomes. That is made possible with the simplicity of unified communications solutions.”
The move to integrate personal mobile devices has helped businesses thrive even in the wake of a global crisis. Businesses should take advantage of this development – creating a more relevant offering for their customers, helping them increase productivity, and enhancing their communications both virtually and on-site.
