Equip Your Mobile Workforce with Unified Communications

Equip Your Mobile Workforce with Unified Communications

The State of Mobile Workforce

By 2020 mobile workers will account for nearly three-quarters of the U.S. workforce, according to a report from IDC. Being tied to a desk is now a productivity killer. Maintaining a mobile presence has become critical for modern business.

1. Millennials matter

The “mobile-first” working habit is favored by millennials who are now playing a key role in modern businesses. By 2020, millennials are forecast to comprise half of the American workforce, and by 2025, 75 percent of the global workforce. (source) As the millennial workforce grows, the technologies they embrace most will likely gain widespread adoption.

2. The Rise of On-the-Go and Remote Workers

With well-developed broadband mobile devices, technologies, and services, more employees are no longer confined to their desks. Remote working is welcomed by more as employees are allowed to access business communication methods and information from personal devices. According to Gartner, 84% of organizations have been employing a remote workforce.

3. Across Various Business Sectors

Mobile working is taking over many industries. Financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and hospitality are some of the key verticals that are becoming increasingly mobile. For instance, healthcare is a rather time-sensitive vertical that requires prompt notifications and effective communication anywhere anytime.

4. ISDN Switch-off

BT have announced that they are moving to turn off their ISDN network for voice calling in 2025. As more telecom operators started to switch off PSTN and ISDN lines, businesses are looking for alternatives such as IP-based adoption. How to adapt to a mobile workforce has become a key consideration when weighing the options.

5. The Arrival of 5G

We have been hearing about 5G for a few years and the technology has attracted greater attention recently with a high expectation on its commercial launch. Simply put, 5G means higher internet connection speed and lower latency, which will be a new driver for the mobile workforce.


5 Ways That UC Enables a Productive Mobile Workforce

The key to empowering a mobile workforce is to allow employees to work the way they want, from anywhere, at any time, on any device. Unified communications has proved its value for a mobile workforce in the following ways.

1. BYOD and Anywhere Anytime Communication

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is gradually becoming the norm in the workplace with softphones supported on multiple devices to enable easy communication wherever employees are. Besides mobile and home workers, office workers also use softphones as a convenient replacement for traditional desk phones. Overall, BYOD mobility brings cost-efficiency, employee satisfaction, improved efficiency, better work-life balance, and expanded global reach.

2. Advanced Call Handling through Multiple Devices

With unified communications, employees can not only make and receive calls on different devices, but also transfer, hold, mute, and record calls, personalize call forwarding rules and ring strategy settings, and check missed calls, call history, voicemails and one-touch recordings via the devices they prefer.

3. Presence and Contact Management

Take the customer service team for example. A customer calls with an issue that is beyond your Ken. What would you do now to improve the customer experience? With the full enterprise directory and presence status, you can immediately find an appropriate skilled and available colleague to solve the problem or provide answers. Simply forward the call and your customer will be happy with the quick response.

4. Instant Messaging

IM has become cost-effective and convenient assistance in real-time business communication. An instant message is certainly a more convenient way to ask a quick question than making a call or heading over to your colleague’s desk. It connects off-site staff members, allows for group communication, complements other forms of communication, thus improves employee engagement.

5. Ad Hoc Conferencing

There’s no doubt that a simple phone call is much faster to resolve an issue or reach an agreement than an email thread. However, you may find it challenging to get several people on the phone spontaneously when they are working remotely. UC solves the problem. Unified communications enables modern employees to initiate an ad hoc conference from their smartphones or desktops, which makes a real difference to team collaboration.


How Unified Communications Brings Value

Instead of working 9 to 5, modern employees embrace greater agility and are used to taking business calls outside of traditional business hours and locations. Unified communications allows them to work remotely with the same capabilities they have at their desk. The business communication system is at the palm of their hands to make sure they never miss business calls and they can also achieve a better work-life balance.

2. Reduced CapEx and Operational Expenses

Having employees use their own devices not only improve their work efficiency but also results in a significant cost saving due to the reduced needs for expensive office hardware and even office space. Businesses also save big by cutting travel expenses and the cost of external conference services.

3. Flexibility and Productivity

Happier employees mean a more productive team. UC frees employees from juggling desk phones and smartphones. They only need to use one device for both personal and business communication. Research has shown that businesses can gain up to 240 extra hours of work a year from enterprise mobility. Besides, thanks to unified communications, more businesses are able to disregard geography when recruiting talent.

4. Team Collaboration and Streamlined Workflow

In essence, UC is to make it easier for employees to “talk” to one another. The modern workforce uses different methods to communicate, including email, phone, text, messaging, or video. Unified communications integrates these communication methods, making it easier to react to customer needs and accomplish organizational objectives more effectively.


Opportunities for Resellers and Service Providers

1. How Does the Market Look Now?

The UC service segment is growing at approximately 17% per year and is projected to become a $143 billion market by 2024. North America currently accounts for some 35 percent of the UCC market, but Asia-Pacific and Europe are expected to catch up in the coming years as similar workforce trends toward mobility and telework expand. (source)
The market is large and far from saturated. The main concern for service providers and resellers is where they can find the ideal opportunity to cash in on it, how to assess products, technologies, and vendors, and work out a solid go-to-market strategy.

2. Tips, Warnings, and Pitfalls

  • Identify your customer type: every UC solution is different because it’s tailored to fit a business’s specific needs. Your customers may have various buying patterns, business needs, levels of technical expertise, and acceptance.
  • Select the right vendor partner: an ideal vendor partner not only provides good products and technologies that satisfy your customer needs, but also comprehensive training, marketing enablement, and distribution capacity.
  • Assess your capabilities to roll our UC services: major infrastructure and operational considerations include network operations center (especially for MSP), management ability, support & help desk,as well as professional human resources.
  • Every implementation of new technology comes with some level of risk. Unified communications is no exception. There are some pitfalls such as neglecting management easiness, leaving out different pricing models, when entering the UC field. (Related: 5 Pitfalls to Avoid When Selling Hosted UCaaS)

Yeastar’s Unified Communications Solution:

Linkus UC Softphone is supported on Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices, which allows users to sync communication even as they switch among different devices, adding UC capabilities to both our S-Series VoIP PBX and Cloud PBX.

Download Linkus

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User Login

Instantaneously receive user login credentials via email once the extension has been deployed by the adminstrator.

Log in conveniently via any web browser for access to the user portal.

Integrations

Integrate various CRM software for better customer service and satisfaction.

Enable transcription of audio messages into text with integration of third-party transcription service.

Enable API for integration with various third-party integrations for advanced performance such as call center and hotel reception services.

System

Provision email SMTP and template settings for event notifications to be sent out.

Manage storage allocation and duration of various types of data being stored on the PBX.

Determine the types of event notifications to be sent out, and the parties receiving them.

IVR

Add various audio voice prompts to be played according to different call scenarios.

Add voice prompts on multiple levels for more effecient and precise inbound call routing.

Voicemail

Customize default voicemail settings for each user extension.

Add various voicemail messages for allocation to different call scenarios and users.

Provision specific rules to how voicemail messages are played over the PBX system for better caller experience.

Reports and CDR

All call log activities are stored, with the option of having audio conversations recorded by default or for specific extensions.

Use intuitive visual call reports, to check various call statistics over extensions, trunks, queues, ring groups, and more.

Call reports can be viewed and downloaded directly from the PBX, or scheduled to be sent via email to respective parties.

Security

Restrict a general group or specific IP addresses to prevent unauthorized access to your PBX.

Limit the number of otbound calls users are allowed to make within a time period to protect against toll fraud.

Restrict certain country codes for outbound calls either company-wide or on certain extensions.

User Login

Determine extension ranges for different functions.

Define use of different voice prompts depending on call scenarios or intended function.

Provision basic and advanced SIP settings to be used on the PBX.

Recordings

Record all calls made on specified trunks, including inbound and outbound calls.

Recordings

Record all calls made on specified extensions, conferences, or call queues.

Paging and Intercom

Create different types of paging and intercom broadcast groups for selected extensions.

Set a time schedule to automatically start your broadcast.

Maintenance

Check for and download firmware upgrades to ensure that your PBX is always up-to-date.

Perform back-ups to prevent data and settings from getting lost.

Perform troubleshooting on your own to debug.

Conference

Pre-set conference settings and dial-in passwords for security, and allow internal users to send conference invites to external parties.

Speed Dial

Create multiple speed dial numbers to respective external numbers frequently used for outgoing calls.

Speed dial is activated when the set prefix (default or customized) is dialed.

Ring Group

Create multiple ring groups and determine custom ring strategies and failover settings for each.

Call Queue

Create different call queues with specific ring strategies and failover settings.

Static agents permanently answer calls in queue, while dynamic agents can log in and out. Allocate different extensions to each group.

Determine what actions are to be allowed for Mangers or Agents to manage on the Queue Panel.

Call Control

Have calls received on specific SIP trunks routed to designated extensions or destinations within the PBX.

Set-up dial patterns so that outbound calls are routed to their intended destinations.

Determine how calls are routed and received at different times of a day.

Contacts

Store, retrieve, and share company contact details easily on your PBX.

Organize company contacts into dedicated phonebooks and determine accessibility rights to extension groups for each.

Bulk import a list of contacts instead of having to key details in individually.

Role and Client Permission

Pre-defined user roles within the PBX are conveniently available for allocation, or create your own set of permissions.

Restrict users from viewing specific extensions, departments, or extension groups with Extension Visibility.

Allow or resrict specific users from managing or viewing certain company contacts

Auto Provision

Pre-defined setting parameters specific to respective IP phone models are conveniently available for easy set-up.

IP Phones can be quickly provisioned to your Yeastar PBX with just the pre-defined template and device MAC address.

Trunks

Register multiple SIP trunks on a single PBX as needed.

Different types of trunks can be created, Caller ID can be customized.

Extensions

View, deploy, add, and remove user extensions within your PBX system.

Configure default call and user settings for individual extensions.

Customize allocation of user extensions to specific ring groups.

Portal Login Page

Receive your administrator log-in credentials and set-up guide via email.

Log-in on any web-browser to get started with PBX set-up.

Installation Wizard will guide you through basic configurations.

User Login

Access all company contacts made available to you by the administrator.

Create your own personal contacts list for easy reference and dialing.

Bulk import contact details for convenient data entry.

User Login

Access and manage user settings for softphone application and voicemail.

Manage call routing and presence status for your individual extension.

Retrieve or download your personal call logs and recordings.

User Login

Receive your log-in credentials and set-up guide via email, sent by your admin.

Log-in on any web-browser to get started with PBX set-up.

Configure contacts and personal settings from the web portal.

Auto Provision

Add, remove, or modify IP phone settings from your web interface.

Upgrade IP phone firmware conveniently from your PBX.

Upload various default setting parameters specific to respective IP phone models for greater convenience during set-up.

Contacts

Store, retrieve, and share company contact details easily on your PBX.

Have detailed contact information for your vendors and clients conveniently stored .

Bulk add a list of contacts instead of having to key details in individually.

PBX Monitor

Monitor the status extensions, whether they aren idle, in use, or unavailable.

Know whether your SIP Trunk running properly, or experiencing problems.

Monitor the number of call conferences currently running on your PBX, and their individual durations.

Maintenance

Check for and download firmware upgrades to ensure that your PBX is always up-to-date.

Perform back-ups to prevent data and settings from getting lost.

Perform troubleshooting on your own to debug.

Call Detailed Report

All call log activities are stored, with the option of having audio conversations recorded by default or for specific extensions.

Filter by date, time, or extension number to retrieve specific call logs or recordings

Playback call recordings directly from the PBX or download to store externally.

Event Center

Determine what events and logs are to be recorded and/or have notifications sent.

Specify particular notifications to be sent to respective authorized personnel.

User Permission

Set up vaious groups of users for allocation to certain sets of access rules.

Determine what features a certain group of extensions can or cannot access.

Determine if users can access, play-back, or download call logs and recordings from the pbx.

Security

Restrict a general group or specific IP addresses to prevent unauthorized access to your PBX.

Determine specific the range of SIP ports for connection between your PBX and endpoints.

Restrict country codes for outbound calls either company-wide or on certain extensions.

Voice Prompt

Upload and designate customised audio recordings at multiple levels of a call journey.

Upload recorded music to fill the silence that would be heard by callers on hold.

Upload customised voice prompts to create a professional call experience.

General

Customize general call preferences either company-wide or for individual extensions.

Set-up feature dial codes for convenient user navigation to specific call features.

Determine how voicemails are retrieved, and also upload custom voicemail recordings.

Call Features

Add multiple automated responses to be played at different phases of a call journey.

Designate specific extensions to ring concurrently based on an external caller's dial pattern.

Customize messages and waiting times to keep external callers engaged when put on hold.

Call Control

Have calls received on specific SIP trunks routed to designated extensions within the PBX.

Set-up dial patterns so that outbound calls are routed to their intended destinations.

Determine how calls are routed and received at different times of a day.

Trunks

Register multiple SIP trunks on a single PBX as needed.

Provision SIP trunk settings and dedicate them to particular extensions.

Bulk add DDIs on each SIP trunk, for allocation to an individual or groups of extensions.

Extensions

View, deploy, add, and remove user extensions within your PBX system.

Allocate and deploy specific extension numbers to respective users via email.

Set-up default ring and presence status settings for individual users.

Deal One View

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View cases created for a Deal in One View.

Deal One View

View cases created for a Deal in One View.

View cases created for a Deal in One View.

View cases created for a Deal in One View.

Deal One View

View cases created for a Deal in One View.

View cases created for a Deal in One View.

View cases created for a Deal in One View.