Updated: May 04, 2023
Gartner, in one of their reports, suggested that over 39% of knowledge workers would be working in a hybrid format by the end of 2023. If we look back at the last year, the figures tally. Undoubtedly, this shift in work culture was fueled by COVID-19. It began in 2020 but it has continued to fancy employees so much that it has become an expectation, not a perk as per Ranjit Atwal, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner. The fact that 28% of the leaders in research conducted by EY believe that their employees were as productive in a hybrid model as the traditional setup further strengthens the fact that Hybrid is here to stay.
This was a drastic shift in the way people were accustomed to work. The impact is so huge that cloud-based calling is being considered as the future of communication. Wainhouse Research analyzed to compare the number of cloud calling licenses in 2022 and 2021. The report suggests that there was a 25% hike in the numbers. While we’re still waiting for the 2023 numbers, we can expect them to be much higher.
But is switching phone systems to cloud technology worth your investment? Industry leaders reveal astonishing advantages. Consider this report by Webex in association with Wainhouse. The ROI generated by Webex Calling, a cloud calling solution by Cisco is shooting through the roof. Apparently, it can reduce the annual IT maintenance expenditure of an organization by up to 50%.
To understand the subject better, let’s deep dive into the transformative power of cloud calling.
Here are the 5 benefits of cloud calling that can help propel your business into a new era of connectivity and efficiency:
When there’s no need for an on-premise setup, the capital expenditure becomes extremely low compared to traditional phone systems. Cloud-based calling solutions are license-based requiring you to pay only for the active users. This feature brings your operational costs down too and gives you more control over how you want to spend. Of course, there are some initial investments to adopt this model and migrate from traditional phone systems. However, in the long term, the cost savings outweigh it.
The biggest challenge that traditional phone systems posed was scalability. It was an expensive affair. Consider upgrading hardware, software licenses, and physical infrastructure all at once to accommodate a few more users. Cloud Calling’s pay-per-user model allows organizations to conveniently add or remove users whenever required. Not only that, one can also add or remove features anytime. Organizations feel more in control and gain the ability to quickly adapt to changing business needs whether it’s upscaling or downscaling.
The remote work revolution, as discussed above, plays a pivotal role. With cloud calling in the picture, all your employees need is an internet-connected device, and they can make or receive calls from anywhere, at any time. Collaboration among distributed teams was a tedious task with traditional phone systems. Cloud-based calling simply eliminates all the hurdles and empowers users to do much more - video conferencing, screen sharing, instant messaging, annotations, and whiteboarding.
Traditional phone systems did not allow tracking of crucial business communications. They did not offer features like call recordings. With cloud-based calling, one can maintain a comprehensive record of all communications. It’s convenient for organizations to integrate it with their existing CRM and acquire crucial analytics like response times, call volumes, and sales performance metrics. This facilitates the efficient measuring of employee KPIs and empowers organizations to optimize operations and performance.
A lot could go wrong with traditional phone systems. Imagine frequent power outages, hardware malfunctions, or natural disasters. The growing need for high up-time and redundancy made cloud-based calling solutions more significant for organizations. Due to their distributed infrastructure, they proved to be extremely reliable; to the extent that you can easily guarantee a 99.9% uptime without any doubt. In addition, such solutions also offer convenient data replication and failover procedures making them a worthy investment.
The seemingly inexorable march of cloud calling in replacing traditional contact centers is evident through the growing number of licenses every year. Migrating your phone system to the cloud can help you manage costs more efficiently, give your team the time needed to focus on growing your business, and prepare your organization to meet the future of business communications head-on.
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