It makes sense when you think about it. At one point, every business – from tech giants like Apple to a local store – started as an idea. From there, the idea evolved into an office or retail outlet, and then sometimes into a network or global network. And each time the business grew, its network of phones, computers, administrators, and employees grew too.
But until recently, that also meant additional landlines and leases, in addition to new facilities and equipment. Now even small businesses start with the same flexible mindset as large organizations and multinationals. By taking advantage of scalable communications platforms, business owners can be confident that as their needs change, all they need to do is interact with the Unified Communications platform and make the necessary changes.
As recently as last year, a detailed report on communication for SMEs released by Ofcom found that SMEs have benefited greatly from Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology in three ways:
Cost reduction
This hosted system has proven to be much cheaper for SMEs than conventional landline phones. First increasingly popular in large organizations, VoIP allows heavy workers to use a virtually unlimited number of lines, limited only by the broadband bandwidth available to each business.
However, small and medium-sized businesses quickly started to pay attention to the possibilities of VoIP, in particular international calls were much cheaper. As a result, UK communications companies such as Gamma have started offering tailor-made packages for businesses of different sizes and public sector organizations.
Call recording capacity
Ofcom has also found call recording to be a popular feature of VoIP technology – especially for SMEs in the financial and legal industries. Call recording is one of the many features of VoIP and other network communication solutions that underline its convenience and versatility over traditional analog communication networks.
Connection to remote call centers
This advantage is particularly important for the scalability demand among SMEs. With a scalable communication solution like VoIP, you can seamlessly connect to a variety of offices, including external call centers. From the perspective of any customer connected to the business, they only communicate with one person and don’t skip from component to message while making a purchase or troubleshooting a problem.
Scalability is key in 2021
Since the publication of the Ofcom report, the popularity of scalable communication platforms among small and medium-sized businesses has grown steadily. Essentially, a scalable communication platform grows as a business grows. While additional bandwidth and additional hardware may need to be added, or at least connectivity, neither customer service levels nor internal communication strategies are threatened as much as business expansion.
Finally, the SME manager (s) (often those who had this “light bulb” moment that we mentioned above) have less management concerns about their communication platform.
As SmallBusiness.co.uk has pointed out, scalable web management is internal. task – but the burden of service and support is shifted from the company to the supplier. Subsequently, people who run SMEs can spend more time developing, strategizing and managing other members of their workforce.
