Business

The Great British Switch Off: the future is Cloud

Zen Oct 26 2021

By this point you may be quite familiar with the concept of the Great British Switch Off, but just in case you aren’t we’ll remind you.

By December 2025, the old analogue – copper based – telephone network will be switched off. Stop sell of new services has already begun and is expected to be completed in the next couple of years. And that means businesses need to start planning for the future of their communications.

For residential customers, that fix is likely to be relatively straightforward – voice communications will go digital, with the phone ‘plugging in’ to the router rather than the traditional telephone network. For many that switch will be virtually seamless.

But for businesses – especially those using multiple lines or with multiple users – things are, dare we say, a little more exciting.

That’s because the future of business communications offers so much more than traditional voice services.

Cloud communications

Let’s begin with where you are today. As comms transition away from those old copper wires and analogue connections, new VoIP and cloud-based services will instead make use of your internet connection (a good reason to consider whether your connectivity is up to scratch).

Routing and switching will take place in the cloud, meaning less hardware will be required onsite and the dread of complex setup and ongoing maintenance will largely be consigned to history. Connecting multiple sites and remote users will become easier, and call quality is likely to be improved.

With Zen CloudComms, calls can take place using ‘traditional’ handsets or even using PCs and smartphone apps. You’ll be able to make and receive calls more flexibly from virtually any location and a host of tools and additional functions will be available – including call logs, monitoring tools and virtual ‘switchboard’ functions.

24/7 portal access will make managing your users, permissions, call logs and settings more easily available; and with updates and maintenance taken care of all you’ll need to do is plug in and go.

And costs are competitive – starting at around a tenner a month for a single user.

It’s an ideal replacement for existing telephony setups; cost effective, flexible, high quality, and with a host of additional features.

But cloud communications is about more than just telephony…

Expand your horizons

From voice to video, chat to instant messaging and even social media, cloud comms can provide a single platform for all your communication needs. This is true unified communications, enabling you to reach colleagues and customers alike through a variety of channels.

With Office, Teams and CRM integration, you’ll be able to collaborate more quickly, easily and effectively. And when you can communicate with customers on their terms, when you can easily obtain insight into those communications and more effectively manage your teams and call queues, you’ll improve the experience of your customers.

Imagine being able to monitor data in real-time, quickly review and analyse calls, get to grips with how many calls you’re missing and track call trends so you can better allocate resources. With cloud comms, all of that and more is possible.

Modern on-the-go communications

Even before recent events, businesses were demanding increased flexibility. But with hybrid working patterns now becoming the norm for many, access to communications both in the office and further afield has become essential.

The ability to route your work number to whichever device you prefer, irrespective of location, means that making and receiving calls is just as easy in the office, at home, on the train – wherever you have a connection.

Whether you’re visiting customers at home or on site, you’re working from the kitchen table or you’re in a different location every day, you – and all your people – will be able to take your calls with you.

Punching above your weight

Whether you’re connecting a handful or hundreds of users, cloud comms can give you all the functionality of much bigger businesses.

From hunt groups to hold music, connecting multiple sites and teams, practically infinite (and simple) scalability, detailed insight and easy implementation, this cloud-based service is just at home in the home office as in a multi-site business.

And with most of the hardware associated with more traditional ISDN or SIP solutions ‘virtualised’ in the cloud – and maintenance and configuration taken care of for you – it’s like having your own dedicated IT team at your disposal.

Cloud comms offers big business functionality at a small price – all easily adaptable to the size and scale of your business (as you grow, your cloud comms solution can grow with you).

As traditional voice communications become a thing of the past, you’ll need to ensure that your business is ready for the next 5-10 years and beyond.

With its inherently future-proofed nature, powerful functionality and endless flexibility and scalability, not to mention value for money, cloud comms may well be the tool you need.