Monday, 18 January 2010

VoIP Helps UK Business Overcome Recession & ‘Big Freeze’

Many UK businesses are reporting that IP telephony solutions, such as VoIP phones, are helping them overcome the UK recession and the recent ‘big freeze’.

Many businesses turned to VoIP solutions in 2009 to help reduce costs during the recession. This included many large organisations, and even government agencies, who turned to open source VoIP solutions. It’s easy to see how the savings can add up with national UK VoIP calls from 1p per min and calls to the USA for just 1.5p per min, compared to BTs 7.4p and 11.8p per min respectively. Now that those organizations have seen the cost savings, and seen the flexibility and power of VoIP solutions, it can only mean the continued acceptance and adoption of IP telephony solutions.

Those companies with VoIP solutions already in place were well placed to cope with the recent snowy weather which caused severe transport & infrastructure disruptions, and meant up to 20% of UK workers were unable to get into work on January 6th 2010. According to the FSB (Federation of Small Business) this may cost UK businesses in excess of £1.2 billion.

Companies with flexible IT infrastructures, that combined VoIP and mobile applications into a ‘virtual workplace’, were well placed take full advantage of the benefits of home working during the disruption.

These businesses employed a variety of methods from VPN access, mobile email services such as Outlook Web Access/Outlook Anywhere, and by using VoIP solutions to enable their staff to continue to be productive. Using VoIP solutions a business can equip its employees with softphones or VoIP handsets, whose extension and fixed line number remains the same. This allows the employee to continue working, regardless of where they connect from, but give the impression of always being in the office.

If you would like to see how your organization could benefit from the flexibility, features and cost savings of a VoIP telephony solution, why not give Assyst Solutions a call on 0845 241 66 11.