08th May 2020 Several months ago, working from home was a normal practice for a very small percentage of the North American workforce, and a once-in-a-while occurrence for another small subset of the workforce. During this pandemic, it has been a blessing for the estimated 37% of workers who have the luxury of being able to perform their work activities from a home office. A recent (April 10th, 2020) report from the National Bureau of Economic Research titled “How Many Jobs Can be Done at Home?” lists the top 5 job categories that support this option:
The jobs at the other end of the spectrum include: Construction, Agriculture, Retail, Food Services/Transportation and Warehousing.
To compound the problem for those workers that aren't able to perform their jobs at home, the Shelter-In-Place and Social-Distancing mandates adopted by most governments have resulted in waves of unemployment and economic depression which have not been experienced since the 1930's. We are indeed living in a historic time; but like all dark periods in history we will recover and rebuild. In every dark cloud there is at least one silver lining and when we look back on these last few months we will be in a better position to assess what work enhancements and innovations resulted from this pandemic.
Clearly, one work enhancement emerges as a business imperative - Work From Home. Not as an elective or optional practice but as part of a comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery strategy. The term workplace as a bricks and mortar single gathering place must lose its significance as the focus falls squarely on the work. What can be done remotely? Teaming, collaboration, process and organizational management, communication, innovation and sharing; all of these and more can be accomplished without the "single gathering place" being involved.
So how does one go about evaluating the many competing offerings in the market today? There is no perfect answer but as with any Unified Communications (UC) technology hardware/software/service purchase, one must consider the basics:
At a high-level you must consider that work from home requirements are IN ADDITION to all of your existing communications and networking requirements. Consider that it is not just a medical emergency that may trigger a work from home event, it may be a weather incident, or other unforeseen events including personal issues where the need may arise instantaneously.
With all this in mind, one should avoid a solution that is separate from your existing systems, or one that needs to be "turned on" before it functions. This is not a gas-powered generator we are talking about; it is the ability for your users to efficiently, effectively and automatically perform their work tasks from their homes when and if the need arises.
From a cost perspective, the last thing your business needs while trying to recover from an economic event of this magnitude is to purchase and maintain a wholly stand-alone solution separate from your existing communications infrastructure.
HINT: If you have to “Call Forward” your office numbers to your work-from-home numbers, it's not very integrated. Also, if your users are using their cell phones for office calls, you may be faced with lower quality business calls and exposing your users personal cell phone numbers to your customers. Additionally, all of your call detailed reports, call center/customer service reports and other such metrics-based utilities will be circumvented skewing the data (or worse), not to mention cellphone related charges which your business is sure to be billed for. Auto-Attendants, Shared-line appearances, Ring-Groups, even Call-forwarding & Call-transfers may be impacted. Finally, every call coming into your office number and being call forwarded out consumes two inbound/outbound call paths; effectively cutting your calling capacity in half.
Some vendors are proposing new IP Phones be deployed in your workers' home offices. Unless the home office is going to be a more permanent solution for that user, a new IP phone for every user is likely to be cost prohibitive - especially if that vendor is going to charge $25 plus dollars per month for the Cloud hosting license fees.
While some vendors are providing their offering at no-charge during this time, make sure you understand the post-pandemic charges that you will incur if their solution remains in place. They may be counting on you putting it in and forgetting about it. It doesn't take long for monthly charges to accumulate to the point where the solution becomes more of a tax on business than something that economically addresses an ongoing need for a work-from-home solution. Consider at $30/month/user, a 50-user solution will cost the business $18,000 per year...every year, plus SIP/CO trunk charges and taxes – {in addition to your current office communications costs}.
With E-MetroTel’s InfinityOne solution, Voice, Video, Presence and Messaging are all integrated as a cost effective add-on to your existing phone system, accessible from anywhere in the world.
It is important to note that many of the Social Media (SM) companies are positioning their offerings as a viable Enterprise solution. While web-collaboration tools are very effective sharing vehicles, the BUSINESS data you share (including customer contact names and numbers) is not private. Large SM platforms are a favorite target of hackers and unfortunately news of security breaches and data theft is all too common. An Enterprise-Grade Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) application should be wholly contained on a privately owned storage space either on your premise or in your cloud.
While many work-from-home Cloud offerings are provided in a shared space environment, E-MetroTel’s InfinityOne Cloud instance is not, it is your own private storage space.
Working from home may very well be part of what emerges as the "new normal" after this crisis passes. Irrespective of whether we are faced with another medical, weather, personal or other such event, work from home needs to be part of the disaster recovery and business continuity strategy of every organization. At E-MetroTel we believe that InfinityOne has what it takes to be central to that solution for your business.
Compared with all other solutions, InfinityOne checks all the boxes:
Visit us at https://www.emetrotel.com/infinityone-work-home and experience how we can help you work from home with a full featured, secured business solution. While there, sign up for a free 5-user trial by clicking on the TRIAL NOW button at the bottom of the page.
Add new comment