Improve Employee Productivity With SIP Trunks
The adoption of SIP trunking continues to grow.
According to a recent survey by market research firm IHS, 62% of North American enterprises plan to use SIP trunking by 2017 compared to the 45% that use it today. The increasing popularity of SIP trunking will come as no surprise to anyone who has implemented the technology and experienced its benefits.
For many businesses, ease of expansion, flexibility and lower costs are all drivers of its adoption. But for those companies looking to increase employee productivity, SIP trunking can be an exceptionally smart telecommunication strategy.
Here’s why:
Unified Communications (UC)
SIP trunking makes it easier to take advantage of UC capabilities because SIP trunks and your phone system can be centralized in one location such as your main office or data centre. Features such as instant messaging, presence, audio and web conferencing, mobility, remote workers and desktop sharing can be quickly and seamlessly integrated and deployed throughout an organization, enabling faster and more efficient communication between employees and offices.
Better Collaboration
Together, SIP trunking and Unified Communications greatly improve employee collaboration. Voice, data and email can be centralized in one system, while integrated directories eliminate the need for employees to hunt for numbers. Instead, you can simply click and call.
Voicemails and documents can be shared on the fly, improving information flow and accelerating decisionmaking. In many instances, the number of steps in a task can be reduced to a single click, saving time and fostering a more productive work environment.
Reliable Business Continuity
When companies deploy multiple SIP trunks, they can reduce their potential for downtime in the event of an emergency. By enabling employees to easily switch communications to another location, or even their home-offices, SIP trunking ensures that your business doesn’t grind to a halt. Also — in a multi-site environment with SIP trunking, we can build in redundancy and load balancing to ensure that, if one of your sites goes down, calls can be seamlessly redirected to alternate sites.
Remove Geographic Barriers
With its ability to integrate with local Public Switched Telephone Networks (PTSN) and port your existing phone numbers to SIP, SIP trunking streamlines interaction between employees in multiple locations. This is due to the fact that, with centralized SIP trunks, employees are able to be added easily to the same network and enjoy access to the same communications applications as workers at headquarters. Everyone benefits. High Tech has worked with multiple SIP trunk providers and is very experienced in integrating SIP trunking into our customers’ dial plans.
Internal (Extension) Dialing for Faster Calling and No Long Distance Charges Amongst Sites
SIP trunking also enables extension to extension (e.g. 4-digit) dialing across your company’s entire telephony network, regardless of the geographic locations of the employees. Because employees no longer need to remember or look up and dial long phone numbers when calling other employees at branch locations, this saves time. This also saves on long distance charges if your sites are located in different cities, provinces or countries because the calls become internal, extension calls instead of long distance calls over the PSTN.
On-the-Go Communications
By connecting seamlessly with mobile devices SIP trunking allows employees to make calls directly from their laptop, tablet or mobile phone. Not only are employees freed from their physical office space, but colleagues and customers can reach traveling employees by dialing their regular number. Thus, work doesn’t slow down simply because someone is travelling.
Robust Features and Reporting Capabilities
SIP trunking gives organizations access to features and multiple reports that help monitor productivity and enabling you to take steps to make better use of underused resources. For example, in contact centres, managers use simple tools like agent dashboards to keep an eye on call activity and make any adjustments necessary to optimize performance. SIP trunks have features not available on standard analog lines or PRI.
For example, the SIP trunk “burstability” feature provides additional voice capacity above the base number of trunks and you only pay for the extra capacity when it is used.
Reduce Cost
In many cases the monthly subscription fee for SIP trunking is a fraction of the cost of your telephone lines and digital trunking such as PRI. And, of course, if you have multiple sites, there’s the long distance charge reductions for calling amongst the sites.
These are just some of the ways that SIP trunking can yield significant improvements. Many businesses that make the switch to VoIP, Unified Communications and SIP trunking find they’ve not only lowered operational expenses, but have also increased productivity and ROI throughout their entire workforce.
