There are some things you can bank on every summer. Barbecues, promises of heatwaves, festivals, strawberries & cream, Wimbledon and August Bank Holiday Travel disruption.
Once again, Network Rail are keen not to disappoint. They’ve booked this year’s holiday issues early, by kindly alerting us to avoid London stations during the summer period. In short, eight major stations will be closed over the holiday break, with a further twenty operating with significantly fewer trains, impacting another 190 stations due to increased capacity. It’s little wonder that National Rail are advising commuters to work from home, rather than face 30 minute wait times to enter tube stations and then endure all the travel misery that follows.
Whilst I’m sure commuters and businesses will welcome any future rail improvements made, there is a far better way for your people to remain productive during these, and indeed any future inconveniences. Remarkably, a weekly solution will set you back about the same as that cappuccino you’ll have on the station platform while you wait.
Hosted communications and collaboration places powerful business tools within reach of all staff for a minimal investment. For around fifty pence a day, every member of your business can be collaborating remotely with colleagues, partners and clients, avoiding delays, lost revenues and a whole lot of travel stress.
So, what kind of cloud communication and collaboration experience can you get for 50p a day?
- Telephony: Make and receive calls with a full featured PBX
- Presence: See the availability status of your colleagues in real time
- Instant Messaging: Message and chat with co-workers and even connected partners and clients
- Video : Hold native point-to-point video calls
- Conferencing: Use ad hoc conferencing up to 6 people or scheduled conferencing for up to 10 people
- Mobility: Use you smartphone, tablet and PC to collaborate with instant messaging, presence and calling
- Online collaboration: Share your desktop with another to improve online collaboration
- Call recording: Keep your inbound and outbound calls recorded for future reference
Wait, what? A week of all of the above for the price of a coffee?
People’s time is one of your most expensive business costs. Losing an hour of productivity from one of your team will probably pay for a month of hosted communications.
Yet that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Want chocolate sprinkles on that coffee? No problem, take a free desk phone too. Cream? Coming right up with a double squirt of all inclusive UK land and mobile minutes. How about a free biscuit? There you go, have some free call recording.
But seriously, why take your chance on the UK transport infrastructure this summer, when you can have your people working smarter? They’ll thank you for it too. Hosted communications and collaboration plays a key role in enabling a better work/life balance. Even if you only flex it’s mobility and remote working capabilities when an emergency falls, you’ll still have an incredibly powerful and effective business asset in your kitbag every day of the week.
To find out more about how our hosted communications and collaboration services are changing business experiences, get in touch here.
