Adapting Business Comms To a Remote World

Adapting Business Comms To a Remote World – Digital business has been forced to rethink the way it works with a rapidity never seen before. Workers are flocking to work remotely in unprecedented numbers; Stanford business estimate that 42% of digital workers are now working from their home office. A big part of this relocation involves communications; specifically, how can business adapt in such a way that they can have secure business communications without all of the normal infrastructure that would facilitate this goal. With normal encryption methods not necessarily providing the same level of security as they always have, businesses and their IT partners are getting creative to deal with the new working normal.

Outsourced IT tech

Businesses have long looked for consultation from communications firms for guidance and this is no different in the current climate. This is especially important today given the change in how phone systems work, and particularly the need to be able to extend business phone systems externally to ensure that employees are receiving the right level of support and the right level of communication quality from their home office. According to TechCrunch, an extra focus is being put on joining VoIP systems with the classic hard phone systems that define many physical offices. With communications become absolutely crucial now, with the removal of much face-to-face interaction, businesses are moving towards getting the absolute best quality communications tech they can to improve their productivity.

Quantity v Quality

As outlined by Forbes, a big challenge for corporate comms has been providing the quantity of connections they need for employees to stay in touch – often using video, too. With many bandwidth packages and plans not inclusive of the need to have dozens, sometimes hundreds of employees connecting, a new need for capacity has arisen. However, this often comes at the cost of quality – the best quality connections requiring a higher level of technology to support them. Over time, this has improved as the big names in comms, like Skype and Zoom, have upscaled their capabilities. Once again, this is where third parties can come in. By using technical business nous to negotiate the best deals with internet providers, and with good levels of tech in hand to ensure that the software used for transmission is up to the task, businesses are slowly enjoying proper communications tech.

Looking forward

The amount of workers using remote systems is only going to increase over the coming months and years and so the impact on existing networks is going to increase. There will likely be an improvement in the quality of home tech, and a further expectation that employees engage using video calling, and so business communications will need to be aware of this priority and ensure that new systems and upgrades are designed inclusive of this requirement. The Brookings Institute note that it’s likely an upgrade of whole-continent broadband capacity is going slowly be rolled out across the USA in response to the new need for huge network capacity and the amount of people now heading online with a greater regularity. This, paired with the expertise of communications companies, should help to meet the demands of a new working environment head-on.

How this will change the working environments of the future remains to be seen. What’s for certain is that business communications are taking a more visible role than ever before, and there’ll be a great amount of focus on how they can innovate to continue providing safe, secure, and high quality communications for the US workers heading, tranche by tranche, online, as opposed to being on a physical phone in-office.