magazine
10
Better mobile
collaboration essential for
further efficiency gains
Mobile workers with tablets and smartphones are already more
productive when out of the office, but could become even more
so if they used mobile devices and applications more effectively,
claims Azzurri Communications.
The cloud and managed communications services provider’s
Mobile Productivity Survey 2014
shows that 93% of businesses have
seen an increase in the productivity of their workforce when using
mobile devices out of the office, with 47% rating the increase as
significant or substantial.
The increase has been driven in part by the shift towards devices
with larger screens, which is enabling more meaningful work to be
performed outside the office. Today, 62% of employees use their
mobile device equally for consuming information and creating and
editing content.
However, 71% of IT and telecoms managers questioned believe
mobile workers could increase their productivity even further by using
mobile devices and applications to enhance communications and
collaboration between employees on the move.
The mobile application thought to have had the greatest impact
on the productivity of mobile employees is email, given a rating of
4.7 out of five, followed by file sharing & access to company
data (3.9), CRM (3.5), video conferencing (2.9), IM (2.8) and web
conferencing (2.8).
From next year, communication and collaboration
applications are set to become more important,
rising to second and third place on the list
of priorities for 2015, from 9th and 10th
place out of 11 in 2014. Enterprise-wide
Instant Messaging and Real Time Presence
Status remain in fifth and sixth place.
agenda
Larger screen sizes like that sported by
the 5.5in iPhone 6 Plus aid productivity
by making it easier for users to create
and edit content
Wi-Fi from BT and others is a crowd pleaser
Events both natural and man-made over
the past decade must have convinced even
sceptics that business continuity planning
is as essential as premises insurance
to ensure a business can survive the
unforeseen. Disasters do not even have
to be of earthquake proportions to stop a
business in its tracks as last winter’s floods
demonstrated. The point is disruptive
weather events are not that uncommon
and have an impact on work every year somewhere in the UK. So
other than accept it as a fact of life with a British stiff upper lip, is
there something more that can be done?
The answer is definitely yes! In the past decade there have been huge
advances in business communications, but working practices have hardly
changed. Most office-based workers can be just as productive from home
as at an office building.
One way of maintaining effective business communications through
bad weather is to deploy a hosted telephony solution which is ideal for
staff working remotely from home as they have full access to phone
system functionality, just as if they were in the office. Businesses benefit
from the disaster recovery potential of hosted telephony because if it is
not possible to operate from the normal premises, staff still have access to
the cloud-based system from another location.
With the range of backup services including duplicate IP circuits now
available, SIP trunks are now a cost effective alternative to ISDN30e and
ideal for mission-critical applications because they provide robust disaster
recovery solutions. Any number on the Spitfire network can be forwarded
to any other location – as long as it is connected via a SIP trunk or a
normal telephone line. In the event of a failure of the main site, calls can
be forwarded to home telephone numbers, mobile or other sites – or a
combination of locations/numbers. Spitfire is also able to provide a range
of back-up solutions for the underlying IP bearer, or combine a solution of
SIP Trunks and conventional ISDN30e lines.
Advances in broadband mean that home-based workers can link
securely to their company data network, just as if they were at company
premises. Spitfire offers a full range of internet connection backup solutions
starting from £7 a month. Backup solutions are heavily subsidised by
Spitfire to ensure customers have resilient internet connectivity. Solutions
range from simple manual failover options rising to fully automatic failover
and restore solutions. All backup solutions are routed over a separate
network infrastructure from the primary link to ensure resilience.
With the range of comms business continuity solutions now available,
there is no reason why a business should not be operating with full
connectivity for broadband and telephony within hours of an emergency.
Disaster recovery is an important consideration for all customers and
the channel should always encourage customers to factor in business
continuity solutions into any comms deployment.
For more information visit
by Tom Fellowes, Sales Director of
Spitfire Network Services
Business continuity
planning pays off
The Spitfire Communications Column
The best & worst
Automated telephone services, call centres and email spam have been
identified as the three most annoying uses of technology in modern
life. The best technological advances, according to a survey of 2,000
people by One Poll for TheWee Agency, are the smartphone, wi-fi and
tablets.
