Meeting the needs of the modern workplace requires communications that grow alongside your organization. A start-up business doesn’t need and often can’t afford a full on-premises communications suite, but it needs a solution that allows it to grow as the business grows without having to continually invest in new. There are some cloud-based communications solutions offering scalability with a pay-as-you-go model. For example, Slack and Cisco Spark are both good options for meeting your communications needs as you grow your business.
Cisco Spark
We support many of our clients’ communication and collaboration needs with Cisco Spark. There is a free app that allows you to try the service for free, testing phones, and video conferencing before you decide to buy. We set it up for you, customizing your experience.
When you decide Spark is your ideal communications and collaboration solution, we’ll help you select a plan that integrates your calendar, adds conferencing rooms, connects your phone system, adds an interactive whiteboard, and messaging. You pay based on the types of communications solutions you need and the number of users, so as you add employees or expand to new branch office locations, Cisco Spark will grow alongside you and keep everyone connected, without the need for updating or buying new infrastructure.
Slack
For organizations that want to limit the number of emails sent and the endless game of phone tag, Slack is a communications solution that helps you organize conversations and improve the effectiveness of collaboration. Create a channel for each project, topic, or team – and everyone who needs to be involved will have access to the conversations at all times. As your business grows, the Slack platform capabilities can be extended to meet your changing needs. There are thousands of apps that integrate to streamline your work, and developers can use the robust API to customize solutions.
Know Who is Available… and When
For internal communication, presence technology allows employees and employers to see who is available or who is unavailable. If a team member is unavailable, you can determine their status – are they in a meeting, at lunch, etc.?
Cisco conducted an internal survey that revealed their average employee spends roughly 15 minutes per day playing phone tag. Then, they spend an additional 13 minutes calling multiple devices in an attempt to reach that person they originally called. When they finally reach the person, they spend an average of 12 more minutes setting up meetings or conference calls to discuss things in more detail.
Accessing presence allows you to find the right people when you need them and determine if they are available at that time or not. No more wasted phone calls, emails, or messages when someone isn’t available and no more time wasted from sitting around waiting for a response.
We’ll Help You Meet Your Evolving Communications Needs
Both Cisco Spark and Slack provide presence technology, the ability to pay-as-you-go, and ability to add more services as your business needs them. With more employees working remotely, either while traveling or from home, or simply due to spending more time away from their desks in the “modern workplaces,” presence technology and a cloud-based solution is a must for your internal communications.
About Us
Fidelus Technologies, based out of New York City is a Professional and Managed Information Technology Services company focused on customer success and business efficiency . Our services provide seamless networking, data center, wireless, security and unified communications expertise for medium and enterprise sized businesses. We have a consultative life cycle approach that includes requirements gathering, assessments, solution design, planning, project management, engineering, adoption and evolution (training) services to fully support the IT needs of your organization.
If you’re looking for more information on how Fidelus can help with your current IT environment or with unified communications and collaboration technology, please contact us here.
