Natural disasters, epidemics and other emergency situations can quickly shut down or disrupt an unprepared business. When a company closes down or operates in a limited capacity for an extended period of time, business is impacted, the company’s reputation suffers, and customer confidence erodes. How well can your business withstand security events, weather emergencies or other extraordinary situations? Can you conduct business as usual during a blizzard? What would happen if you had to shut your office for a week because of swine flu? What would you do if your building was closed indefinitely due to a fire? How long would it take for you to get an interim office facility up and running? Could your employees work productively from home in the meantime? Would your customers and business partners be able to reach your employees in a transparent manner – using your published company phone numbers?
Advances in technology make it easier than ever for employees to work remotely. With a broadband Internet connection and a notebook computer, today’s information workers can work as efficiently from the road as from the office. Employees can send and receive email, access business applications, and carry out most day-to-day activities. To be fully productive though, remote workers must also be able to maintain normal business communications with co-workers, customers and business partners.
OnState lets companies leverage mobile phones, VoIP, Skype, Google and Internet telephony to extend business communications services to teleworkers, mobile users, and nomadic workers. Unlike a conventional phone system, OnState manages people and business functions – not just telephones. It automatically tracks your workforce and monitors the availability and activity of employees wherever they are – in the office, working from home, or on the road. OnState works with traditional phones and office phone systems, as well as mobile phones and Internet services like Skype and GoogleTalk, allowing employees to stay engaged with customers and business partners from any location, at any time. Delivered as a cloud-based on-demand service, OnState is inherently resilient to building closures, power outages, and office phone system failures.
Until now, disaster recovery and business continuity solutions have been beyond the reach of most businesses. Some larger organizations have addressed survivability for customer-facing applications by implementing redundant call centers in different geographic regions. But designing a survivable network is a complex task, and operating multiple call centers is an expensive proposition. For most businesses the task is too daunting. Most companies simply cannot afford to implement and operate redundant call centers – especially in today’s difficult economic climate.
And what about companies that don’t operate call centers or workers who aren’t part of a call center? How do they maintain normal communications if the office is closed or the company phone system is unavailable? Because of the expense, most businesses don’t provide backup phone services for everyday job functions. Take outside sales for example. Can a customer reach one of your outside sales reps if the office is closed? Can the sales rep access her corporate voicemail during an extended power outage?
OnState enables workers to communicate with customers and business partners from any location, at any time, using any device. A cloud-based service, OnState is not impacted by site catastrophes, office closings, office phone system failures or other traditional service-affecting events.
OnState Extends Business Communications to Any Employee, at Any Location, At Any Time
Say your Boston R&D office is closed due to a snowstorm or the PBX in your Birmingham sales office is knocked off-line by a tornado. With a conventional premises-based phone system you’re out of luck – calls simply go unanswered. With OnState callers are automatically connected to the employee who can serve them best – even if that employee is working from home, from another office, or from a coffee shop. OnState lets you maintain normal business communications during office closings or emergency situations – in a seamless and transparent manner – using your published company phone numbers.
Whether you have ten employees or hundreds of employees OnState can help you improve customer satisfaction and run your business more efficiently by connecting customers to the right employee at the right time. And since OnState is delivered as a cloud-based service it is inherently resilient. With OnState, companies of any size can institute rich business contingency plans without the complexity or expense of a backup phone system. And companies that already operate redundant call centers can implement business continuity programs for the rest of the employee base. OnState’s on-demand service offers a practical alternative to expensive premise-based business continuity and disaster recovery solutions. For more information, visit OnState’s communications business continuity page.
[...] financing model, but it does not allow for the speed, flexibility, scalability, and inherent resiliency of a true SaaS solution. But these companies want to seem cutting edge, so as is the case in many [...]