When employees are hard to reach, business slows down. Whether the employee is a sales person or an executive assistant, being continuously available is critical for maximum productivity.
The key to increasing productivity — and ultimately the ability to be competitive — is to give employees continuous access to their deskphone and messaging applications, regardless of where they are: in the common area retrieving a fax, driving in a car, staying in a hotel or even sitting at their desks.
Companies also need to achieve this workforce mobilization at the lowest possible cost in order to quickly realize a return on their investment.
Finding a way to enable continuous availability within the workforce will give a company the edge it needs to stay nimble and be a market leader.
Mobile Unified Communications (Mobile UC) is a cost-efficient technology solution that can mobilize the entire workforce while improving the bottom line. It is comprised of a device that sits in the enterprise and a client component installed on a mobile phone. This mobile-communications technology is vendor agnostic, which means it is compatible with any WLAN, PBX
, mobile phone or carrier network.
- Mobile UC combines mobility (seamless roaming between WiFi (News - Alert) and cellular networks) and deskphone functions (i.e., extension dialing, caller ID, call transfer, etc.) with UC applications such as Instant Messaging (IM) and presence.
- With Mobile UC, mobile devices replace deskphones. This means all employees gain the ability to place and receive calls, send and receive messages and broadcast the best way to be contacted, regardless of where they are located.
- When Mobile UC users are in range of enterprise or hotspot WiFi (News - Alert) (News - Alert), their phones run over the WLAN. If a cellular network is the optimal network (based on voice-quality and call-cost) within range of the Mobile UC device, the phone operates in cell mode. If mobile workers roam between the two types of networks, the phone automatically switches back and forth between the two modes.
Increase the Number of Mobile Workers, Lower the Bottom Line
Perceived as an expensive cost that is only justified for sales, executives, support and other customer-facing worker employees, corporate-sponsored mobile phones simply haven’t been viewed as a communications-tool for the masses. Yet the performance of nearly every employee could be improved with increased mobility and availability.
At the same time, because the cost of a mobile phone can be less than a deskphone, it makes fiscal sense to let mobile devices become the single business phone used by each employee. Every mobile worker would be reachable by a single number and on a single device (which is also the source for e-mail, IM and presence.)
- According to Yankee Group (News - Alert) (News - Alert), only 5 percent of the global workforce has mobile e-mail, 20 percent has mobile voice (but no e-mail), and 75 percent has neither.
- Corridor warriors would be exponentially more productive if they could be continuously reachable by phone, e-mail or IM, even when roaming the corporate campus.
- WiFi calls are free. Thus there is an added carrier cost associated with mobilizing everybody from sales director to executive assistants.
- Overseas calling charges are dramatically reduced when placing calls via hotspot WiFi (i.e., hotel, airport or Internet café).
- Companies can choose to turn off the cell-phone option for corridor warriors, allowing them only to communicate via free WiFi.
- Corridor warriors whose jobs are primarily campus-bound, but occasionally require off-site roaming, use minutes from the corporate pool and are therefore a controlled cost.
- Productivity increases when workers can be reached via a single business number. Missing calls and playing phone-tag can add up to a waste of valuable company time.
How Increased Productivity Leads to Quick ROI
Healthcare workers are highly mobile and they have a great need for voice and messaging access via WiFi. Hospitals have notoriously thick walls that render cell phones useless from inside the building, yet they need the flexibility provided by a wireless phone. Enabling healthcare workers to more efficiently provide patient care has a direct impact on the bottom line.
For example, without Mobile UC it can take nurses inside a hospital up to 15 minutes to retrieve a patients test results.
- They must find a desk phone (no cell service available) to make a call and ask for results.
- Then wait to be paged for test results.
- Once paged, they return to desk phone to collect results.
Once enabled by Mobile UC, nurses are able to perform the same task in ten minutes less time.
- Dual-mode phones with WiFi access allows them to place a call from anywhere on the hospital campus
- Requesting and retrieving patient results happens at least five times per day
- Nurses save at least 50 minutes per day
- In an average hospital with 800 nurses on duty per day, the result is a total saving of 650 hours per day.
In this scenario, using Mobile UC resulted in a 66 percent improvement. And because time is money, this translates to significant cost savings.
Mobile UC Increases Reachability and Productivity at the Lowest Cost
So rather than risk letting corporate business stall when a colleague can’t be reached, companies should deploy Mobile UC to achieve more efficient communication and a more competitive position. Mobile UC lets companies achieve new levels of productivity, reducing the amount of time wasted on missed calls and telephone tag. It does this by letting mobile workers be reachable at all times, over any network, and by any means (voice, e-mail or IM). So companies can increase customer satisfaction and employee productivity, and improve revenue opportunities — all at a reduced operational cost.
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Rich Watson is Director of Technical Marketing at DiVitas Networks (News - Alert) (News - Alert).
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