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A Quick Guide to Global Collaboration Habits

Everyone has a personal communication style and a favorite way to communicate. One person may enjoy a quick chat on IM with a colleague, but others see IM as an annoying interruption. Effective communications starts with knowing the best channel to reach out to co-workers and customers.

Unified communications (UC) lets people choose from email, voice, IM, videoconferencing and mobile, leaving the hard part—deciding which is best—to you. You may not know what a recent hire in the Toronto office prefers. A Japanese colleague may be more willing to videoconference than a colleague from North America or Europe. Similarly, younger hires may never pick up a voicemail message but respond to a mobile text in less than a minute.

Here’s a quick guide to how people of different ages and in different regions are communicating.

Mobile: More employees are working away from the office and rely heavily on their mobile phones for communications. IDC predicts that by the end of 2015, the world’s mobile workforce will reach 1.3 million.

According to “The Mobile Economy: 2015” by GSMA, an additional one billion people will become mobile subscribers during the next five years, reaching 4.6 billion subscribers in 2020. In developed regions such as the United States and Europe, the adoption rate for mobile devices is 80 percent or higher, which makes most people accessible by mobile phone. The adoption rate is much lower in African countries (39 percent), and workers in multinational companies in South Africa or Kenya are less likely to have a mobile phone. That’s changing fast as subscriber numbers are predicted to increase to 1.25 billion in 2019.

Videoconferencing: Asia Pacific (APAC) companies are using videoconferences more than any other region in the world, according to “Global View: Business Video Conferencing Usage and Trends” by Redshift Research. Business users in this region take part in videoconferences at least once a week (66 percent), compared to users in EMEA (55 percent), and the United States (59 percent). Video conferencing (59 percent) and email (58 percent) are forecast to share top billing as a communication preference in 2016.

Instant Messaging: India is a hotbed of instant messaging activity, with it being quite popular within businesses. In 2013, India saw a 113 percent increase in messaging apps. Messaging apps popularity differs significantly by country. China has 1.48 billion mobile instant messaging accounts. In Brazil, 90 percent of the population uses a messaging app, while Russia (70 percent) and Great Britain (50 percent) are less likely to rely on instant messages. All these regions are familiar and comfortable with mobile IM and are likely to be equally comfortable with desktop IM.

Voice: It’s true—you are receiving fewer personal and business calls. Call volumes in 2003 was 88 billion per year and in 2012 the volume dropped to 60 billion. The vast majority of these calls have been replaced with email, but for many communications, a call is the best choice. According to Research Now, voice is considered more personal than texting or email, and voice is used more often for sharing urgent news. Text ranks as more convenient than voice, and it ranks high for immediacy as people are more likely to respond soon after reading their messages.

Location and Presence: Knowing someone’s location or presence can prevent a person from wasting time trying to call or IM. Most regions and demographics like presence information, but they are not taking advantage of its benefits. According to “SMB Attitudes Toward Unified Communication Industry View 2014” by Software Advice, two thirds of businesses do not have access to presence information, and it’s keeping them from being efficient. These companies could be saving as much as 32 minutes a day in missed calls, according to Sage Research.

To know more about mivoice office 250 please visit the website.

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The Benefits of a Cloud-Based Phone System

Imagine for a moment that you’re a sales manager at a growing company and you’ve just been tasked with building a remote team of 40 sales reps.

Your company’s headquarters is in Boston, but these reps will primarily work out of their home offices and much of their time will be spent on the phone — either initiating conversations with prospective clients or engaging existing customers.

While most of your sales reps have personal smartphones they can use on the go, you know that business calls are better conducted on a private line that provides more reliable call quality. Your sales reps will appear more professional, while the features of a business phone system also allows them to be more productive.

But here’s the issue: How exactly are you going to set up each of those sales reps with their own phone lines and all the tools they need to be as productive as possible? The challenges with remote workers and on-premise phone systems

With traditional onsite phone systems, business owners or in-house IT experts would need to take several laborious steps to get remote workers’ phones connected to the company’s internal network.

First, they’d have to purchase an expensive phone for each employee — typically through their TelCo provider.

Next, they’d need to do some circuit work to ensure that the company’s on-premise system could manage the additional call load. And lastly, they’d have to perform regular monitoring and maintenance of the onsite equipment to ensure its ongoing reliability.

Then there’s the issue of system features and functionality.

Generally, the benefits of legacy onsite phone systems are limited to reliability, caller identification, and voicemail functionality.

But with modern VoIP systems, your sales staff (including remote workers) can easily:

Link their phone to CRM and ERP applications, leverage click-to-dial technology, and unleash powerful call analytics.

If your business can’t provide those tools to remote employees, then it’s likely limiting your remote staff’s efficiency and productivity.

To know more about Genesys support please visit the website.

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7 Reasons to Shift to SIP Trunks

Modernizing business phone systems to gain the latest conveniences of unified communications and mobility is also an opportunity to remodel the network connections. For years, businesses have connected their offices to the public telephone network using traditional circuits like T1 and ISDN PRI. The move to an IP phone system is a great opportunity to bring those behind-the-scenes connections into the modern era, too.

SIP trunks are quickly becoming the preferred choice for businesses for IP connections, replacing traditional TDM circuits. More than 20 percent of installed business trunks in North America are SIP, according to Infonetics. Yet usage is also growing around the world, especially in the U.S. and Europe, with global growth of 35 percent in 2014, according to the market research firm.

Here are seven reasons to make the move to SIP trunks.

Enable unified communications and collaboration SIP trunks provide the ability to run voice, video and data across the same connection between offices and communications service providers. This allows workers to benefit from collaboration, videoconferencing and location-presence applications.

Save money. Everyone likes saving money, and most SIP services are significantly cheaper than traditional TDM circuits. It also allows organizations to eliminate or reduce costs associated with ISDN PRI trunks, PSTN gateways, and service provider contracts. Consolidating service providers makes billing and reporting simpler, so businesses have better visibility into what they’re spending on telecom and they have fewer vendors to manage.

Simplify IT. Organizations can consolidate many of their separate analog and TDM circuits over a SIP trunk. This allows them to eliminate circuits and make the most efficient use of their bandwidth.

Adapt the network to the business needs. SIP provides the ability to scale up bandwidth more easily and affordably than with traditional TDM circuits. Plus, many SIP trunking services support bursting, so businesses can pay-as-they-go if traffic spikes.

Easily establish a local presence anywhere. SIP provides greater flexibility with the use of business numbers. Organizations can establish a local number anywhere in the world, while the calls will ring into the physical office of their choosing. It’s instant local presence!

Support virtual contact centers. Sales, support, and other call center workers can be physically located anywhere when SIP trunking is used as part of a virtual contact center. This gives organizations the ability to balance the workload while calls are routed seamlessly behind the scenes.

Weather the unexpected. Using SIP trunks can make communications more resilient. If there’s a network outage or local disaster, businesses can simply switch the routing over the SIP trunks. And in ordinary times, traffic loads can be balanced over multiple trunks, giving workers a better experience everyday.

To know more about shoretel please visit the website.

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Managing the New Digital Normal

Getting to the cloud has taken on a whole new urgency lately, changing the way traditional businesses operate. Packet Fusion has been busy helping organizations manage the new digital normal, making sure they are able to stay connected and deliver great service to their customers.  Here are a few examples:

CyberCoders is a permanent placement recruiting company with more than 350 recruiters nationwide. When the stay-at-home guidelines were established, they had to accommodate a remote workforce—fast, but their on-prem phone system’s SIP trunking solution wasn’t forwarding calls properly—a critical issue that was crippling their ability to conduct business. Packet Fusion identified the issue within 30 minutes and turned on 150 SIP trunks on IntelePeer so they could be up and running.

Smart & Final is a grocery chain with over 325 stores in the Western United States. The stay-at-home guidelines meant they had to enable their customer service staff to work remotely, so they needed to re-assign their extensions in Mitel Connect. Packet Fusion turned the request around in less than 24 hours, enabling them to handle the increased volume of calls immediately.

Resources to Help We’ve selected some resources to help you manage the new digital normal which you will find in our Info Gallery.

Work@Home Checklist for Employers

Five Solutions to Enable your Mobile Workforce

Video Messages: Nailing your Content and Delivery

Do’s and Don’ts for Managing a Remote Workforce

Enabling Effective Communication During COVID-19

Special Offers

Sorting through vendor offerings can be daunting in the best of times. Right now, it’s even more complex with many vendors offering special deals and packages, including 8×8, Dialpad, Genesys, GoToMeeting, LifeSize, Mitel, Ring Central and Zoom. If you are an educator (K-12), a healthcare provider, or a non-profit, you can get RingCentral Office FREE of charge for 3 months. To take advantage of this offer, please click here.

As a trusted advisor, we have made it our business to know each vendor’s strengths and weaknesses, and we are prepared to match your needs and budget to the best solutions.

Check out all of the resources in our Info Gallery. Please contact your sales rep to assist you.

To know more about mitel please visit the website.

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Five Communication Tools Your Millennial Employees Need

The Millennials—young people aged 21-34—are ranked as the largest generation in history and, by 2025, 75 percent of the global workforce will be comprised of Millennials. These 80 million men and women are digitally fluent and have the potential to reshape the business landscape.

Millennials are extremely mobile and prefer to conduct business on their smartphones and tablets across a number of different channels. They are extremely team-oriented and enjoy collaborating and building friendships with colleagues. Social media is a hot spot for communicating and research. To help Millennials be as successful and productive as possible while working, employers need to understand how they communicate and provide the right solutions.

Here is a shortlist of five UC functions Millennials need:

Videoconferencing. Having multimedia tools that include video available in the VoIP phone environment is critical. Employees need to collaborate instantly and turn a simple phone call into a group discussion. Millennials at work expect to use the latest collaboration tools, such as video conferencing with room-based systems, peer-to-peer video and web conferencing.

BYOD. Millennials already own their favorite smartphone and tablet, so make sure you can integrate their devices with your existing office phone system—securely, simply and cost effectively. Doing so will help Millennials stay connected from any location around the world on any network: voice over Wi-Fi, voice over 3G/4G or cellular.

Instant messaging. Millennials have no time or patience to wait for responses or a call back. Rather, they expect instant gratification and answers. Providing instant messaging and chat tools between employees needs to be an important cornerstone of your business phone system.

CRM. Your entire staff needs instant access to CRM tools and directories, and Millennials (even though they are young) know the value of having phone data aligned with business data in a CRM system.

Visual voicemail. Millennials are multitasking pros and can juggle many responsibilities and communication channels at once. Millennials are accustomed to having easy-to-use visual voicemail like their mobile devices provide. Ideally, their voicemail is integrated with their Microsoft Outlook inbox, giving them the ability to send and retrieve voicManaging the New Digital Normalemail messages from email and also sync meetings with their Outlook calendar.

Make sure your Millennials have the UC functions they need to get your job done. Your aging phone system may need a makeover to keep up with the digital generation workforce. Learn how ShoreTel’s onsite and cloud UC give all of your employees modern communications tools built for today’s highly collaborative world that is being transformed by Millenials.

To know more about shoretel phone system please visit the website.

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Understanding Your ShoreTel Phones, Switches, Service, and Replacement Options

As you review your business goals, if you need support for your legacy phones or if you’re considering an upgrade or update, Packet Fusion is here to help. And if you need assistance in understanding your ShoreTel (now Mitel) phone, switch, or other system elements, we can guide you in the review of the best new options. Contact us for support now!Replace ShoreTel Phones and Switches

If you have questions about the best replacement for your ShoreTel phones, or if you need to repair or upgrade your business IP phones, Packet Fusion is the provider you can trust. We can guide your selection of the hardware, software, and cloud communications options that help

Back in 2017, ShoreTel announced the end of life of many of its hardware and software products. ShoreTel was purchased by Mitel, and there may still be some confusion about exactly how to move forward to take full advantage of your existing hardware. You may also need help with options for replacement. And for the best in total business phone solutions to replace your ShoreTel phone system, you may need the expertise of a company like Packet Fusion. We have consistently been the top provider of ShoreTel phones, and today we provide service for hardware and software-based phone systems, as well as cloud products and solutions for collaboration and productivity.Old ShoreTel ShoreGear Switches

Because ShoreTel is now Mitel, there are no further scheduled software updates or bug fixes. With older switches and software platforms you need a new plan for new upgrades. For example, full-width SG voice switches, appliances under the ShoreGear name, and for newer half-width SG appliances, here’s a way to identify them. Full-width switches take up the full 19 inches in a rack. Half-width switches are approximately 9.5 inches, so two can fit side-by-side in a rack-mount. Also, all switches that have slashes in their name are full-width. For example, ShoreGear 120/24 or ShoreGear 40/8. One exception to the naming convention is for the ShoreGear T1 appliance. If you have a full-width T1 appliance, its name is simply the T1. The half-width appliance is a T1K. ShoreTel systems that were purchased and installed before 2007 are usually those with full-width switches. Since these appliances were taken before their end-of-life in June of 2018, Packet Fusion can advise you on replacement solutions.Old ShoreTel IP Phones

Even farther back in 2015, ShoreTel shared that it would no longer sell their 100/200/500 series of IP phones or the BB24 button box. Even then it was becoming difficult to obtain replacement phones for these systems. Older phones in the ShoreTel 100, ShoreTel 200, and ShoreTel 500 series were less and less in demand, and the ShoreTel 400 series phones grew in popularity and sales. At the time, ShoreTel sales of old phones drove partners like us here at Packet Fusion and our customers to move toward the 400 series phones. ShoreTel 400 series phones became the best desk phones, with enhanced features.Replace Your ShoreTel Phones

Today, other replacement options are available, and Packet Fusion can help. For those with ShoreTel IP 110, IP 115, IP 230, IP 230G, IP 265, IP 560G, or IP 212k, and the BB24 button box, we can assist you in finding new and better phones and collaboration systems. At the time these systems were discontinued, the corresponding GSA bundles for the phones also became unavailable. In some cases, parts and accessories were still available but software compatibility may be a challenge. Packet Fusion can assess your current system to determine the best and most productive and cost-effective way to bring your phone system back as a great tool for today and into the future.

To know more about shoretel phone systems please visit the website.