Phone systems fit for home working
COVID-19 hitting the United Kingdom, and across the world in 2020 was an immeasurable and distressing shock for everyone, including business owners. It has taught us some key lessons, and cemented the fact that office-working in the UK will likely never be the same again. The beauty of Unified Communications, and products such as Hosted Phone systems, is that the transition between home-working and the office has never been easier.
During the pandemic, current customers and prospective customers approached us in a hurry, seeking to ensure their communications could remain active and as normal despite the serious problems sweeping the country.
Flexible and unified communications have always been of great importance in business, highlighted never more than ever by COVID-19. Some of our telephony products allow full flexibility for employees between the office and at home, allowing them their own phone number that can ultimately be used anywhere, on any device, provided an internet connection is available. Even desk phones can be simply lifted and brought home, with ‘plug-and-play’ functionality, the transition is pretty seamless, allowing day-to-day business communications to carry on as normal. A key point to note, is that unlike ISDN/Analogue-based phone systems, our internet-based and hybrid systems have allowed customers to simply lift the small amount of equipment from the office, bring it home, and be connected immediately.
Ayo Home Working
Imagine being in an office, and at the drop of a hat, expected to move all staff into home-working mode, and perform as they would in the office, at home. Could your infrastructure handle this with ease, or would you need to start considering upgrades? Our systems, in Telecoms, WiFi and Managed IT, have full capability of this, meaning staff can switch between working in the office and at home seamlessly, at the click of a button.
Phone Systems
Provided you already have, or have opted for one of our cloud-based and hosted phone system solutions, and have an internet connection at home, the desk phones themselves can be seamlessly lifted from your office desk, taken home, plugged-in, and perform at their full functionality – as if you’d never even left the office. Our 24/7 support team can make adjustments or amendments for extension numbers and the like on your behalf, or you can do this on our online portal. All staff members will be able to place and receive calls from the same number, transfer calls within the organisation (to other staff members at home), as well as continue to benefit from the vast range of features on offer, including; Call Recording, Click-to-dial, Call Management and more.
Managed IT
Believe it or not, there was actually a shortage of laptop computers at the beginning of the pandemic – the shortage not being the serious problem. In not having a more versatile* IT infrastructure in place, many organisations rushed to buy-in laptops for home-working employees, which then had to be configured correctly to meet their organisational and security requirements….this can take a lot of time, and isn’t ideal in the event of staff having to immediately transition to a home-working environment. In having fully-configured & secure laptops and IT equipment in place for employees, along with our phone system offering mentioned above, Ayo can ensure your transition to-and-from home-working is as seamless as possible.
WiFi/Internet Connection
Another concern raised during the pandemic was internet connections at employee’s homes, largely down to the speed and bandwidth available. Generally a speed of anything above 30/40mbps download, and 10mbps+ upload would be appropriate for employee’s to work from home without issue. However, many discovered employee’s either didn’t have a live broadband connection at all, or the one in place wasn’t meeting the speed and bandwidth required to carry out their day-to-day work. Zoom calls, Microsoft Team’s meetings and video-calls, Conference calls and Voice/VOIP traffic left many disconnected, or repeatedly interrupted throughout their work day. This is a problem, as it can seriously affect employee’s productivity, and efficiency, not to mention morale. In the event of problems occurring, we were able to lay out a plan to ensure all employees had an appropriate and active internet connection at home – for those who didn’t have an internet connection, but had appropriate coverage of 4G/5G in the area, we were able to implement one of our simple though versatile routers to solve this problem (configuring network settings on each to cater to the requirements of the employee’s workload.)
