How often is the old desk phone used still and is it a cost that a company can do without, or does the old desk phone needs to become more integrated into the daily work of the office worker so that it can improve productivity?
How often do you want to contact someone and you try their desk phone only to receive no reply or some electronic voice or message telling you that the person you are trying to contact is not available and would you please leave a message? In a modern world where the office worker is reducing and more people or travelling or working from home, it is more likely that you will not have you call answered when calling the office phone. So what do most of us do; we call their mobile first. This increases the likelihood that you will have your call answered, but can also increases the costs of the call.
Also when making a call, you might be sitting your office next to your desk phone and you wish to call someone, what do you do? Do you look up the phone number in your address book, dial the number on your desk phone; or do you go to your mobile phone’s contacts and press the green phone to dial the number? Most people will use the mobile phone to call a contact, which can also result in an increase in the costs of the call.
So does the desk phone have a future? Are companies incurring costs on purchasing and maintaining desk phones for people who hardly use them?
If a person is always using his mobile phone then the answer is yes, but maybe we need to look at what can be done to help reduce the costs to the company beyond just the cost of the phone.
There are a number of ways that costs can be reduced either through the use of technology such as Fixed Mobile Integration (FMI) that allows the mobile phone to become an extension of the office phone system thereby reducing the costs of calls and giving mobile phone users access to PBX functionality such as conferencing.
By integrating the phone system with cooperation tools such as Microsoft Communicator allows the user to define how best he is to be contacted and what his availability is. This improves productivity of the staff and helps in reducing unnecessary call costs.
Integration of the phone system with desktop address books allows for users to have easy access and dialling to contacts in the contact directory without having to manually dial this increasing the likelihood that least costs routing of calls take effect.
If the implementation of technology does not generate the business case to reduce costs and increase profitability then user awareness and training on how best to use the available telecoms resources can help to reduce costs.
But all of these options are very much dependant on the companies usage and spend.
Enzela can help companies review their telecoms spend and advice on how these can be reduced by ensuring the right technology is deployed, that users are aware of their telecoms spend and how to use the available resources and ensure that the company has the right 3rd part services and prices to meet their needs.