Change is good. Really!

For a lot of us, change can be scary, even if the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. I recently experienced this when buying a new car. I loved my aging car even though it was having numerous problems associated with an old car with excessive miles. With no money down and a smaller monthly payment than I was paying previously, I was able to get into a brand new car that offered increased reliability and all of the latest and greatest features available on the market.

My only question was, why did I wait so long to make the switch?

Unified communications can lower costs, streamline processes, and take corporate productivity to new heights. So why aren’t you embracing it more quickly? Customers are sometimes faced with adoption obstacles such as a large capital investment, long deployment times, and limited resources that discourage them from implementing a unified communication solution.

A hosted or cloud-based unified communication solution negates these concerns and offers a more flexible and predictable solution that will enable you to be more effective and efficient. We help you develop a business case for deployment of a unified communications solution that aligns with your organizational needs by answering the following questions:

1.        Do you need to support a growing mobile and virtual workforce with features that foster collaboration and cross state communication? 

2.         Are you interested in reducing the total cost of ownership while extending communications and collaboration to the maximum number of employees?

3.         Are you looking to centralize management, streamline business processes and multiply the capabilities of a lean IT staff?

If you can answer ‘yes’ to one or all of these questions, you could be a good fit for a hosted unified communication solution from SNET, since it reduces overall costs, centralizes management, offers infinite flexibility and features, and enhances communications continuity. We encourage you to make the switch, and remind you that change can be a good thing!

The Big SIP

Right now, a lot of businesses are looking to SIP to save money by using a single IP pipe to their provider- like SNET- for voice calls and reducing or eliminating recurring network charges. But that’s really just the start. The current uptake in SIP services is an indicator of what the future holds: SIP is big.

You may have already heard of SIP. And if you haven’t, the chances are good you will very soon.

SIP is a communications protocol that is becoming extremely popular. How popular? Consider this: Infonetics (www.infonetics.com) reports that in 2011, telco companies saw their revenues from SIP-based services jump 128%. So, even if you are not yet thinking about how to use SIP in your business, the chances are good that one of your competitors is ahead of you.

Very simply, SIP—the initials stand for Session Initiation Protocol—radically simplifies communication between people, places, devices, applications and services. Just about anything that can be tagged with an IP address can be connected via SIP. It simplifies how quickly people can connect and collaborate. And it eliminates the need for a lot of phone lines and extra hardware. In fact, many S-NET customers have reported a return on investment (ROI) of 6–12 months by investing in SIP-based solutions. 

But what makes SIP so revolutionary is not simply its ability to save money. SIP changes how you think about using communications in your business.

 Here are six SIP scenarios. See if any apply to you:

You have multiple business locations. Each one must have a local phone number. But you want calls to those locations to get routed to a central service center where they can be more efficiently handled by people with the time and training. In the past, to get this kind of capability you might have had to rent 800 numbers and/or extra lines that sat unused most of the time. SIP gives you the best of both worlds: local presence and the cost efficiencies of centralization.

You have a mobile phone, several e-mail addresses, a bunch of landlines and a slew of IM contact names. You are tired of giving out all your contact information. With SIP you won’t have to: SIP establishes an “address of record”—an AOR—that provides a single, unifying identifier as your “public address.” People can reach you without having to know each of your unique device addresses or phone numbers.

You find it annoying to keep letting people know about your availability, i.e., “for the rest of the day, call me on my mobile.” Let SIP do this for you. SIP can make call-routing decisions for you by checking your calendar or seeing when you last checked your e-mail or used your mobile phone.

You are handling a conference call from your hotel room, but have to check out and want to keep the call going on your mobile. Or, you are on your mobile, but need to view a document and would like to transfer the conference call to your tablet. SIP makes all of that possible.

You operate a customer service operation using agents working from home. You want them to be able to serve customers using e-mail, instant messaging, Web chat, video, or a phone call. Rely on SIP to make it happen.

You use various programs in your business to keep track of sales, inventory, production scheduling, etc. When a problem arises, i.e., a shortage in a particular part, you would like to have a click-to-conference button on the program itself so you can quickly see who is available, initiate the call and share the application. SIP makes that possible. In fact, many applications using dynamic linked libraries (DLLs in Windows and shared libraries in Linux) are ready to be connected using SIP.

Are you ready to go from Management 1.0 to 2.0?

In the current issue of Selling Power Magazine (April/May/June 2012), there is an interesting article with management guru Gary Hamel. He is thought to be one of the most influential management thinkers today.

Hamel describes two types of management- Management 1.0 and Management 2.0. Management 1.0 is the management style that we all have been taught for the past 100 years- standardization, specialization, hierarchy, alignment, control and the use of extrinsic controls.

On the other hand, Management 2.0 is based on developing adaptive, innovative and engaging places to work. The allows companies to meet the increase in competitive intensity worldwide. It allows companies to outgrow competitors or the economy by encouraging innovation and making it a systemic capability across a company's processes.

Hamel makes some predictions:

• We are moving to a world where everything in configurable by the ultimate consumer.
• As our economy becomes more of a service economy, value gets created in the interaction between employee and customer.
• In order to make organizations more innovative we need new practices and new principles.
• The most efficient companies will be the most democratic.

Okay. So what does this have to do with technology? Basically, everything.

You will need to set up processes that are extremely customizable and that involves a lot of flexibility. Let me give you an example- as the population ages, more and more of your employees may have a parent or spouse to care for. You will need to adapt your infrastructure and work practices to accommodate employees who, for obvious family issues, will have to work from home. Your communications infrastructure will have to adapt to this, your connectivity will have to adapt- your space and energy requirements will change - and so too will your corporate policies on security.

As interactions between customers (a.k.a clients, patients, guests,patrons etc...) become more important, you will have to adapt and perfect the art of customer interaction. You will need tools to measure performance, evaluate employee interaction, and standardize the customer experience to ensure that it creates value.

With a more distributed workforce, you will need to ensure internal communication to make sure that there is a cohesive esprit de corps. Mobile workers, tele-workers, remote offices need to be part of the total corporate body- not far flung fiefdoms or domestic exile. Remember, discipline from goofing off is a Management 1.0 principle. Management 2.0 companies rely on peers as motivators. The logic is simple- if what you do is transparent to your peers, they can see whether or not you are adding value.

The whole area of the technology cloud is an enabler for transforming your company from a Management 1.0 to a Management 2.0 company. Hosted PBX allows your remote employees to communicate freely, easily and cohesively. Hosted Call Center gives you the tools to enhance customer employee interactions and monitor performance. Managed wide area networks and managed cloud security give you the ability to connect your remote locations securely.

See how our clients have evolved from Management 1.0 to Management 2.0