Recently, it was reported that scientists may have found out a very plausible reason for the disappearance of the Mayan civilization. The 3,000-year-old civilization vanished almost entirely (though there are still some descendants of the Mayans alive today) in or around the 9th century AD, and as yet, nobody really knows why this happened. They were highly advanced, large in number, and had inhabited their lands for millennia, and yet they were effectively wiped out.
The new theory, based on analysis of materials found at the bottom of what is known as the ‘Blue Hole’ in Belize, is that the Mayans left their region and dispersed, breaking up their civilization, because of a drought. A natural disaster was something that this 3,000-year-old civilization just wasn’t equipped to handle.
So, what does this have to do with your business? Well, just like the Mayans, you may well be very vulnerable to the destructive effects of a disaster.
Sophisticated Technology Only Does Part of The Job of Protecting You
Disaster recovery used to be a big deal in business, with companies prioritizing every element of their strategy as essential, from back-ups for data through to providing access to staff from offsite locations to allow for business continuity when an office and its equipment were made inaccessible (or destroyed) by a disaster.
Naturally, some of the things that took a lot of work to plan for 15 years ago are no longer such complicated problems. With the cloud, offsite back-ups are no longer essential for all businesses to preserve data if servers are destroyed. Remote working is very easy to achieve with mobile technology and SaaS applications, so keeping key staff in operation when a site is inaccessible is also no longer something that requires intense planning.
However, just because the technology is there and a lot of your DR plan can effectively be pinned on it, it doesn’t mean you no longer need one.
Detailed Planning
While you know your data is all backed up to the cloud and your staff all have access to what they need from home (or a secondary office location), you still need to look at the details. Important things include the roles and responsibilities in the event of a disaster, inter-team communication protocols, and how key stakeholders and clients will be kept up to date and provided with services during the incident.
Risk Analysis
While devising your DR plan, you should also consider the risks associated with different types of disaster, and also both the likelihood and severity of those risks. This will vary by location for things like earthquakes and hurricanes, however, some disasters like fires and floods caused by burst pipes can happen with fairly equal likelihood anywhere, and this all needs to be thought about in your plan.
Don’t rely on the fact you have the latest technology when it comes to disaster planning – the Mayans had some of the best tech of their age, too!
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/img_7386.jpg39415148StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2018-01-04 18:00:532018-01-21 11:47:35Why Disaster Recovery Strategies Are Still Crucial for Businesses – Even in the Cloud Age
As the owner of a company, you’re always looking to find ways that improve the production level of your employees. Today’s employers know more about what motivates and drives their employees than ever before, which is helping them to enjoy some fabulous results. While there are all kinds of routes you can take, one that you may not have considered is the fuel you’re offering staff.
Pretty much every company, no matter the size, offers on-site snacks, beverages, and even meals for employees to access. Well, here’s the thing, did you know that the options you provide can actually have an impact on their productivity levels since the food and beverages affect their overall health? Let’s take a closer look.
What Fast Foods and Snacks Do to a Person’s Health
In order to get an idea of just how important the right food and drink choices are, one needs to look closer at what fast foods and snacks do to a person’s overall health. As reported in middaydaily.com, those under the age of 30 who consume fast food at least three times a week suffer higher levels of anxiety and stress. This is believed to be brought on by the high levels of fatty acids that exist in fast food.
As far as the healthiest diet goes, the same study went on to show that the Mediterranean diet is indeed one of, if not the healthiest, choices. This is a diet that is rich in fish, seafood, tubers, legumes, and vegetables.
Experts recommend looking at food the same way you look at fuel for an automobile. Sure, the regular fuel will give you what you need to get the job done, but when you go for premium fuel (the healthy food choices), the performance will be that much better. Food has a huge impact on a person’s cognitive performance, which plays into a person’s decision-making skills. If you want your employees to make sound decisions, then better food options may be the answer.
What Can You Do to Help?
So, what can you do to help your employees make food choices that will impact their productivity in a positive way? Well, you can start by encouraging them to eat small meals and/or snacks more frequently. Forcing your employees to go hours and hours without any fuel is going to greatly affect their performance.
Ideally, your employees should get a break every couple of hours where they can have a quick snack and re-fuel, keeping their mind sharp. Not only that, but it helps employees from feeling sluggish, which can then lead to mistakes and errors in the workplace.
Research has shown that foods such as carrots, blueberries, whole grains, avocado, nuts, and dark chocolate all help with productivity levels. It can be beneficial to add these choices to your snack stations or on-site cafeteria/kitchen. As well, be sure that employees always have a supply of fresh water available to them, instead of just coffee.
Providing your employees with energy and brain-boosting foods won’t just benefit them, but the whole company.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/img_7384.jpg37935066StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2018-01-04 13:00:222018-01-21 11:31:33Improve Your Employees’ Production Levels by Changing Up the Food and Beverage Options On-Site
The worst number in business is one. If you have just one source of leads, it is only a question of time when the price per click goes up or the targeting options change or the viewership of the publication changes.
Because of this, you want to have several lead generation mechanisms in place. This way, if something happens to one of them, the other ones will continue working for you and generating new leads. This article will introduce you to five tactics you can use in your business.
1. Media Buying
Media buying is the process of negotiating and purchasing advertising time and space.
The secret to successful media buying lies in knowing your audience. One of the biggest mistakes a marketer can make is to advertise a niche offer to a broad market. The ad campaign will be expensive and the response will be small. This is not how you want to run your campaigns.
You need to know the age of your buyers, their gender, level of education, income, family status and interests. You also want to know what publications they read, how they spend their free time and what websites they visit.
Once you have this data, you can start making intelligent choices about how and where you can advertise to them. One of your goals should be to find media that are not obvious to your competition. This way you will be able to purchase space and time at reasonable rates (because the competition is not yet there) and be the only advertiser in your category in that media.
If there are certain media that you would like to use for advertisements, but can’t afford, call them or email them and tell them how much you can pay. Often, you’ll be able to get a last-minute offer if one of their advertisers pulls out and they have some free time or space. Many media are very negotiable as to how much they will sell advertising for. This is not something they advertise upfront, but if you negotiate, you will often be able to get a great deal.
2. Affiliates
Affiliate marketing is a great way to market products and services because in affiliate marketing you don’t have to pay for advertising upfront and you don’t have any risks.
Typically, you pay for advertising or lead generation activities first. These activities generate leads. Then, you have to do the work to convert the leads into paying customers. If the work is successful, only then you get your money back and a return on your investment.
This is not how things work in affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketers do all the work for you. In exchange, you pay them a percentage of the sales or a pre-agreed amount per sale for all the sales that they make.
The best way to use affiliates is to scale your sales systems that are already working. Nobody wants to pay money to test something that is not proven. While you may get affiliates to test your offers, if they lose money, they will not work with you again. If, however, you have a system that works and need more leads or need to convert more leads, then working with affiliates is a great way to go. You will make more money and your affiliates will make money, which will make them want to work again with you in the future.
3. Social Media Marketing
Today there are all kinds of social media, from Pinterest to Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn. However, this does not mean that you have to be everywhere. You need to be where your customers are. If you are selling a consumer product, you probably do not need to be on LinkedIn. If you are a high-end executive recruitment boutique, then being on Pinterest may not be a good strategy for you.
Find out where your customers spend their time. Then, get in front of them.
The good news is that social media today offer a variety of tools and ways to reach prospects and existing customers.
Using Facebook Pixel or Google Tag Manager, you can mark everyone who visits your website or certain pages on your website. You can also create audiences based on sequences of pages that people visit, videos they watch, elements of pages that they click on and parts of the pages they scroll to. Then, you can retarget these visitors with custom ads on social media and other websites. The opportunities for marketers today are virtually unlimited.
4. SMS
SMS or text messaging can be a very effective way to target customer but you need to be very careful with how you use it. Today most people use text messaging to communicate with their friends and family. They don’t get a lot of advertising messages via text. For this reason, you want to only text them about something important. Reminders typically fall into the important category and work really well. For example, you can send a reminder about a webinar. You can also send a reminder about a demo or a sales call that you have coming up.
You can also offer your existing customers to notify them via text about special sales and events.
At the same time, sending regular updates and marketing messages via text messaging is probably not a good idea. Most people check their text messages very frequently and if you are sending them messages that they don’t find valuable, they may feel as if you are spamming them and interrupting them with no good reason.
5. Ringless Voicemail
Ringless voicemail is a relatively new technology, which is why it is extremely effective.
Ringless voicemail works only will cellphones. According to studies, over 90% of adult Americans own a cellphone, which means that you can reach virtually any person with ringless voicemail marketing.
Ringless voicemail works by completely bypassing cellular networks. It contacts the cellular provider directly via a business landline call and drops a message on the server of the cellular provider. The provider then moves the message to the server space of the recipient and notifies the recipient about the message. This way there is no call made to the recipient, no charges to the recipient and no interruptions.
When the recipient checks his or her voicemail, he or she can listen to the message. The message can be as long or as short as the sender likes. This means that you can create ringless voicemails that are really effective.
A ringless voicemail can have options that connect the recipient to a sales person or drive the recipient to a website. By using these options you can measure the ROI from your ringless voicemail campaigns and make sure that you are spending your marketing dollars wisely.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/img_7375.jpg21433000StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2017-12-29 16:00:192017-12-29 11:47:57Which Lead Tactics Work Best
In the new digital world where everything is shared and connected, there is a growing concern about information security and integrity of the data you keep. This includes both company records and client files. Treating security breaches has become increasingly difficult, and thanks to recent advances in technology, all of your sensitive data could be uploaded to a malicious party at once in a matter of minutes.
While we know that there is no such thing as an unbreakable system, we can use some ground rules to improve data-security. This will make your data unavailable for malicious software and potential hackers. Here are a few steps you have to take in order to reduce the possibility for breaches.
Plan Ahead
In the world of digital information security, hindsight isn’t worth a lot. Make your security strategy in advance, selecting who will have access to which information and when, where that information will be stored and what will be the procedures to access it. If you know everything you need beforehand, there will be no loopholes that you will need to rush to fix afterwards.
Use Professional Help
There are plenty of companies dedicated to information security, and you should use their assistance in the planning process. These companies will help you formulate your protocols, manage your filing system and select which data can only be accessed with ID cards for instance.
Professionals in this field were often once on the other side themselves, and they will know all the IT security holes that companies miss and can help you prevent them in your information security policy.
Analog vs. Digital
No matter how complete a security suite is, there are thousands of hackers who are actively trying to break them. What hackers and malicious software can’t break is the lack of a physical connection with the sensitive data mainframe.
You can work with a company like IDSecurityOnline to make ID cards to limit access. You could have a separate locked room that only reliable personnel will be able to access and transfer very specific data from manually. Having this physical barrier will make your data un-hackable, as there is nothing to hack. There are hackers who are able to pass even the most sophisticated firewalls, but there are none who can pass a literal one.
In this case, even if you have a security breach, most of your most sensitive data will remain secure, and you will be able to patch your system and move on.
Destroy After Use
If you are working with sensitive data, you shouldn’t leave your hardware unattended, even after you have no use for it. If you can, try to destroy anything containing sensitive information.
Believe it or not, but there are people out there who will dig through your trash for your old hard drives. This is why every information security professional will advise you to rinse your hardware in acid before you discard it, and by hardware, we mean everything: hard drives, printers, VoIP phones, everything.
As you can see, reducing the chances for security all boils down to a few sets of procedures. But more importantly, it’s all about having a plan and doing the steps necessary to safeguard critical information from prying eyes.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/img_7378.jpg28004979StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2017-12-29 11:03:572018-01-29 21:18:333 Ways to Improve Information Security in the Workplace
Unified communications sounds like another corporate buzzword, the sort of thing that a bouncy, over-eager sales rep would try and sell to you with vague promises of efficiency and taking your business to the next level. Regardless, there are a number of perfectly valid reasons that introducing a unified communications system into your business is a smart move and one that virtually any business can benefit from.
Really small businesses, where you and your coworkers are few enough and close enough that you can simply speak to each other, won’t benefit from unified communications. However, any business that consists of multiple departments and requires that employees are able to efficiently and easy communicate with one another will benefit from unifying their systems.
Easier to Manage
Having a single, unified system is much easier to maintain and to manage than having a number of different, disparate systems. All of your unified communications go through a single server and can be managed through a single interface. You don’t need to have any hardware on-site, instead everything is hosted in the cloud. Should there be any hardware issues, then backups can take over, meaning that for your business there is little to no interruption in service.
Reduced Costs
Instead of paying for a number of different products, each of which have to be individually managed, a unified communications system is largely cloud-based and the only cost to your business is a subscription fee. For that fee you will be covered in the event of any issues at no extra charge. If yours is a business that needs to make phone calls to other branches or locations, then making these calls using a VoIP (Voice over IP) protocol, such as SIP Trunking as offered by Masergy, is cheaper and more reliable.
Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
Consumers are more vigilant than ever when it comes to demanding that the companies they do business with minimize their carbon footprints. Even if customers are not actively selecting businesses because of their green credentials, being able to tell them that your company takes environmentalism seriously makes it much easier to market your products and services. Switching to a unified communications system is a simple yet very effective means of reducing your carbon footprint and boosting your business’s green credentials.
Improve Productivity
By unifying all of your communications systems you will make it much easier for your workers to get to grips with the most effective ways of communicating with one another. Even if every member of your team has to learn how to use the new system, once they have done so, you will notice some major productivity gains, gains which would be hard to obtain any other way.
A unified communications system offers numerous advantages to any business. The benefits that they bring more than justify the financial cost, as well as the time that you will need to invest in training your team in using the new system.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/img_7377.jpg42236000StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2017-12-29 08:00:412018-01-25 18:09:51The Top 4 Benefits of Introducing Unified Communications into Your Business
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Why Disaster Recovery Strategies Are Still Crucial for Businesses – Even in the Cloud Age
/in Risk Management/by StrategyDrivenThe new theory, based on analysis of materials found at the bottom of what is known as the ‘Blue Hole’ in Belize, is that the Mayans left their region and dispersed, breaking up their civilization, because of a drought. A natural disaster was something that this 3,000-year-old civilization just wasn’t equipped to handle.
So, what does this have to do with your business? Well, just like the Mayans, you may well be very vulnerable to the destructive effects of a disaster.
Sophisticated Technology Only Does Part of The Job of Protecting You
Disaster recovery used to be a big deal in business, with companies prioritizing every element of their strategy as essential, from back-ups for data through to providing access to staff from offsite locations to allow for business continuity when an office and its equipment were made inaccessible (or destroyed) by a disaster.
Naturally, some of the things that took a lot of work to plan for 15 years ago are no longer such complicated problems. With the cloud, offsite back-ups are no longer essential for all businesses to preserve data if servers are destroyed. Remote working is very easy to achieve with mobile technology and SaaS applications, so keeping key staff in operation when a site is inaccessible is also no longer something that requires intense planning.
However, just because the technology is there and a lot of your DR plan can effectively be pinned on it, it doesn’t mean you no longer need one.
Detailed Planning
While you know your data is all backed up to the cloud and your staff all have access to what they need from home (or a secondary office location), you still need to look at the details. Important things include the roles and responsibilities in the event of a disaster, inter-team communication protocols, and how key stakeholders and clients will be kept up to date and provided with services during the incident.
Risk Analysis
While devising your DR plan, you should also consider the risks associated with different types of disaster, and also both the likelihood and severity of those risks. This will vary by location for things like earthquakes and hurricanes, however, some disasters like fires and floods caused by burst pipes can happen with fairly equal likelihood anywhere, and this all needs to be thought about in your plan.
Don’t rely on the fact you have the latest technology when it comes to disaster planning – the Mayans had some of the best tech of their age, too!
Improve Your Employees’ Production Levels by Changing Up the Food and Beverage Options On-Site
/in Entrepreneurship, Talent Management/by StrategyDrivenPretty much every company, no matter the size, offers on-site snacks, beverages, and even meals for employees to access. Well, here’s the thing, did you know that the options you provide can actually have an impact on their productivity levels since the food and beverages affect their overall health? Let’s take a closer look.
What Fast Foods and Snacks Do to a Person’s Health
In order to get an idea of just how important the right food and drink choices are, one needs to look closer at what fast foods and snacks do to a person’s overall health. As reported in middaydaily.com, those under the age of 30 who consume fast food at least three times a week suffer higher levels of anxiety and stress. This is believed to be brought on by the high levels of fatty acids that exist in fast food.
As far as the healthiest diet goes, the same study went on to show that the Mediterranean diet is indeed one of, if not the healthiest, choices. This is a diet that is rich in fish, seafood, tubers, legumes, and vegetables.
Experts recommend looking at food the same way you look at fuel for an automobile. Sure, the regular fuel will give you what you need to get the job done, but when you go for premium fuel (the healthy food choices), the performance will be that much better. Food has a huge impact on a person’s cognitive performance, which plays into a person’s decision-making skills. If you want your employees to make sound decisions, then better food options may be the answer.
What Can You Do to Help?
So, what can you do to help your employees make food choices that will impact their productivity in a positive way? Well, you can start by encouraging them to eat small meals and/or snacks more frequently. Forcing your employees to go hours and hours without any fuel is going to greatly affect their performance.
Ideally, your employees should get a break every couple of hours where they can have a quick snack and re-fuel, keeping their mind sharp. Not only that, but it helps employees from feeling sluggish, which can then lead to mistakes and errors in the workplace.
Research has shown that foods such as carrots, blueberries, whole grains, avocado, nuts, and dark chocolate all help with productivity levels. It can be beneficial to add these choices to your snack stations or on-site cafeteria/kitchen. As well, be sure that employees always have a supply of fresh water available to them, instead of just coffee.
Providing your employees with energy and brain-boosting foods won’t just benefit them, but the whole company.
Which Lead Tactics Work Best
/in Entrepreneurship, Marketing & Sales/by StrategyDrivenBecause of this, you want to have several lead generation mechanisms in place. This way, if something happens to one of them, the other ones will continue working for you and generating new leads. This article will introduce you to five tactics you can use in your business.
1. Media Buying
Media buying is the process of negotiating and purchasing advertising time and space.
The secret to successful media buying lies in knowing your audience. One of the biggest mistakes a marketer can make is to advertise a niche offer to a broad market. The ad campaign will be expensive and the response will be small. This is not how you want to run your campaigns.
You need to know the age of your buyers, their gender, level of education, income, family status and interests. You also want to know what publications they read, how they spend their free time and what websites they visit.
Once you have this data, you can start making intelligent choices about how and where you can advertise to them. One of your goals should be to find media that are not obvious to your competition. This way you will be able to purchase space and time at reasonable rates (because the competition is not yet there) and be the only advertiser in your category in that media.
If there are certain media that you would like to use for advertisements, but can’t afford, call them or email them and tell them how much you can pay. Often, you’ll be able to get a last-minute offer if one of their advertisers pulls out and they have some free time or space. Many media are very negotiable as to how much they will sell advertising for. This is not something they advertise upfront, but if you negotiate, you will often be able to get a great deal.
2. Affiliates
Affiliate marketing is a great way to market products and services because in affiliate marketing you don’t have to pay for advertising upfront and you don’t have any risks.
Typically, you pay for advertising or lead generation activities first. These activities generate leads. Then, you have to do the work to convert the leads into paying customers. If the work is successful, only then you get your money back and a return on your investment.
This is not how things work in affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketers do all the work for you. In exchange, you pay them a percentage of the sales or a pre-agreed amount per sale for all the sales that they make.
The best way to use affiliates is to scale your sales systems that are already working. Nobody wants to pay money to test something that is not proven. While you may get affiliates to test your offers, if they lose money, they will not work with you again. If, however, you have a system that works and need more leads or need to convert more leads, then working with affiliates is a great way to go. You will make more money and your affiliates will make money, which will make them want to work again with you in the future.
3. Social Media Marketing
Today there are all kinds of social media, from Pinterest to Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn. However, this does not mean that you have to be everywhere. You need to be where your customers are. If you are selling a consumer product, you probably do not need to be on LinkedIn. If you are a high-end executive recruitment boutique, then being on Pinterest may not be a good strategy for you.
Find out where your customers spend their time. Then, get in front of them.
The good news is that social media today offer a variety of tools and ways to reach prospects and existing customers.
Using Facebook Pixel or Google Tag Manager, you can mark everyone who visits your website or certain pages on your website. You can also create audiences based on sequences of pages that people visit, videos they watch, elements of pages that they click on and parts of the pages they scroll to. Then, you can retarget these visitors with custom ads on social media and other websites. The opportunities for marketers today are virtually unlimited.
4. SMS
SMS or text messaging can be a very effective way to target customer but you need to be very careful with how you use it. Today most people use text messaging to communicate with their friends and family. They don’t get a lot of advertising messages via text. For this reason, you want to only text them about something important. Reminders typically fall into the important category and work really well. For example, you can send a reminder about a webinar. You can also send a reminder about a demo or a sales call that you have coming up.
You can also offer your existing customers to notify them via text about special sales and events.
At the same time, sending regular updates and marketing messages via text messaging is probably not a good idea. Most people check their text messages very frequently and if you are sending them messages that they don’t find valuable, they may feel as if you are spamming them and interrupting them with no good reason.
5. Ringless Voicemail
Ringless voicemail is a relatively new technology, which is why it is extremely effective.
Ringless voicemail works only will cellphones. According to studies, over 90% of adult Americans own a cellphone, which means that you can reach virtually any person with ringless voicemail marketing.
Ringless voicemail works by completely bypassing cellular networks. It contacts the cellular provider directly via a business landline call and drops a message on the server of the cellular provider. The provider then moves the message to the server space of the recipient and notifies the recipient about the message. This way there is no call made to the recipient, no charges to the recipient and no interruptions.
When the recipient checks his or her voicemail, he or she can listen to the message. The message can be as long or as short as the sender likes. This means that you can create ringless voicemails that are really effective.
A ringless voicemail can have options that connect the recipient to a sales person or drive the recipient to a website. By using these options you can measure the ROI from your ringless voicemail campaigns and make sure that you are spending your marketing dollars wisely.
3 Ways to Improve Information Security in the Workplace
/in Risk Management/by StrategyDrivenWhile we know that there is no such thing as an unbreakable system, we can use some ground rules to improve data-security. This will make your data unavailable for malicious software and potential hackers. Here are a few steps you have to take in order to reduce the possibility for breaches.
Plan Ahead
In the world of digital information security, hindsight isn’t worth a lot. Make your security strategy in advance, selecting who will have access to which information and when, where that information will be stored and what will be the procedures to access it. If you know everything you need beforehand, there will be no loopholes that you will need to rush to fix afterwards.
Use Professional Help
There are plenty of companies dedicated to information security, and you should use their assistance in the planning process. These companies will help you formulate your protocols, manage your filing system and select which data can only be accessed with ID cards for instance.
Professionals in this field were often once on the other side themselves, and they will know all the IT security holes that companies miss and can help you prevent them in your information security policy.
Analog vs. Digital
No matter how complete a security suite is, there are thousands of hackers who are actively trying to break them. What hackers and malicious software can’t break is the lack of a physical connection with the sensitive data mainframe.
You can work with a company like IDSecurityOnline to make ID cards to limit access. You could have a separate locked room that only reliable personnel will be able to access and transfer very specific data from manually. Having this physical barrier will make your data un-hackable, as there is nothing to hack. There are hackers who are able to pass even the most sophisticated firewalls, but there are none who can pass a literal one.
In this case, even if you have a security breach, most of your most sensitive data will remain secure, and you will be able to patch your system and move on.
Destroy After Use
If you are working with sensitive data, you shouldn’t leave your hardware unattended, even after you have no use for it. If you can, try to destroy anything containing sensitive information.
Believe it or not, but there are people out there who will dig through your trash for your old hard drives. This is why every information security professional will advise you to rinse your hardware in acid before you discard it, and by hardware, we mean everything: hard drives, printers, VoIP phones, everything.
As you can see, reducing the chances for security all boils down to a few sets of procedures. But more importantly, it’s all about having a plan and doing the steps necessary to safeguard critical information from prying eyes.
The Top 4 Benefits of Introducing Unified Communications into Your Business
/in Business Communications/by StrategyDrivenReally small businesses, where you and your coworkers are few enough and close enough that you can simply speak to each other, won’t benefit from unified communications. However, any business that consists of multiple departments and requires that employees are able to efficiently and easy communicate with one another will benefit from unifying their systems.
Easier to Manage
Having a single, unified system is much easier to maintain and to manage than having a number of different, disparate systems. All of your unified communications go through a single server and can be managed through a single interface. You don’t need to have any hardware on-site, instead everything is hosted in the cloud. Should there be any hardware issues, then backups can take over, meaning that for your business there is little to no interruption in service.
Reduced Costs
Instead of paying for a number of different products, each of which have to be individually managed, a unified communications system is largely cloud-based and the only cost to your business is a subscription fee. For that fee you will be covered in the event of any issues at no extra charge. If yours is a business that needs to make phone calls to other branches or locations, then making these calls using a VoIP (Voice over IP) protocol, such as SIP Trunking as offered by Masergy, is cheaper and more reliable.
Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
Consumers are more vigilant than ever when it comes to demanding that the companies they do business with minimize their carbon footprints. Even if customers are not actively selecting businesses because of their green credentials, being able to tell them that your company takes environmentalism seriously makes it much easier to market your products and services. Switching to a unified communications system is a simple yet very effective means of reducing your carbon footprint and boosting your business’s green credentials.
Improve Productivity
By unifying all of your communications systems you will make it much easier for your workers to get to grips with the most effective ways of communicating with one another. Even if every member of your team has to learn how to use the new system, once they have done so, you will notice some major productivity gains, gains which would be hard to obtain any other way.
A unified communications system offers numerous advantages to any business. The benefits that they bring more than justify the financial cost, as well as the time that you will need to invest in training your team in using the new system.