Great news! Your business is expanding! Whether you’re looking to access a new market in a different location, or you’ve just outgrown your existing premises, opening a new branch is always an exciting time. If you’ve recently expanded your operation, or have been working in a multi-site business for some time, you’ll know there can be some difficulties involved with this way of working.
It can often feel like multi-site businesses are very separate. Without the right technology and best practices to keep them working in conjunction, there’s often very little communication between sites. The rise of remote working only exasperates this scenario, with more teams ending up isolated than ever before. At Netcomms, we want to change this, that’s why we’ve created out guide to keeping multi-site businesses connected. Whether you’re a team of 2 or 2,000, we have some solutions here to help you.
Unified Communications: Keep your business working as one
If you’ve been working from home at all within the past year and a half you’ve probably been using the features of a unified communications platform. These services combine all of your offices’ communication services into one accessible solution.
This includes video conferencing, messaging, file sharing and more. This solution keeps everyone in your company in the same network. This can then be broken down into individual offices and teams. The benefit of this is that not only can you get in contact with everyone in your business reliably, but you can also see what everyone is up to. UC includes a presence system. This shows the user’s status, if they are on a call, in a meeting or ready to chat. This essentially removes the guesswork and makes inter-site communication much more accessible.
Multi-site call management: Gain a full understanding of your business
When working in a business that is dispersed across multiple locations, it can become very difficult to feel in control. If you don’t have a clear understanding of how your team are communicating with customers, then things are not going as planned. Our call reporting services sends you all the data and statistics you need to see, in intervals that suit you. This can be everything from the peak call times to which teams are handling the most calls, and which aren’t so busy.
These reports allow you to take action that is driven by data rather than guesswork. If you notice that the majority of calls are arriving on a Monday morning, then you can assign staff from any site to help handle the rush. Similarly, if a certain team is inundated with too many calls, you can assign more resources to help. Finally, we know that for many industries a missed call can potentially lose your business thousands, our call management service logs the numbers of missed calls, so your team can respond quickly.
Support a BYOD culture: move between workplaces freely
Flexible work requires flexible technology. Many businesses are now seeing the benefits of having a workplace without fixed seating arrangements, where teams can drop into any site to work or operate remotely on a full-time basis.
For this to work effectively businesses need to have technology that works anywhere. Our mobile plans allow this to happen. We have great relationships with the UK’s top mobile providers, allowing you to access the latest smartphones at a far more reasonable rate. We are also network agnostic, meaning you can access the fastest connection in your area, no matter where you are working.
Our UC apps work brilliantly across any device. So if you prefer to work on a laptop, tablet or mobile, you can still access your work. Downtime is the death of communication and collaboration, allowing your team to work flexibly means that your business is always accessible. Collaboration is also supported as UC can integrate alongside a range of 3rd party productivity software such as Outlook and Teams. This goes a long way to helping your multi-site business to reconnect.
Scalability: Grow your business without fear
This is a briefer point but it’s worth mentioning. Many teams fear moving to a multi-site model or expanding their team because they are concerned that their technology infrastructure won’t support it. With our cloud communication services, you can grow your network at the push of a button. Adding new users and supporting temporary or visiting remote staff is simple.
These new users are then visible to your team no matter where they are working. This means that there’s no time wasted on installations or set-up. Simply arrive at an office, connect to the internet, and start working alongside colleagues and customers.
We hope that these tips have helped to show how simple it is to connect your team to a multi-site network. No team should ever be put off expansion or remote work by worries about their communications. With the right technology, your business can thrive in any situation. For more about how we can help your team, get in touch at 0800 298 6022