Business continuity planning has become a bigger priority for smaller companies that increasingly recognize the high cost of unplanned downtime. We’ve all seen grim statistics about the high percentage of small businesses that never recover from long stretches of downtime, whether it’s caused by a power outage, equipment failure, a data breach, or a bad storm.
Most businesses focus on implementing processes for restoring internet connectivity and recovering critical data, business systems, and applications. For some reason, however, voice is often left out of the conversation. This can prove to be a costly mistake.
Your phone system is not only essential to business operations, but it enables to you to keep employees, vendors and customers informed. Even when other areas of your business are halted or limited because of some type of disaster, the ability to call people and explain what’s happening can go a long way toward limiting the damage. Disruption to your voice communication system can have just as much of an impact on your business as a network outage.
The problem with an on-premises phone system is that if your physical facilities are seriously damaged, unsafe or inaccessible, you won’t be able to make or receive calls. In a worst-case scenario, the on-premises system could be destroyed. A cloud-based VoIP system, on the other hand, is virtually disaster-proof.
Cloud-based voice services through Ancero’s Utility VoIP solution are always available because they’re not dependent on onsite power, technology or connectivity to function. Even if local phone service goes down, you’ll still have working phones. Calls and phone traffic can be remotely managed and rerouted to mobile devices while maintaining high quality of service.
Call forwarding simulates your existing Auto Attendant by forwarding calls placed to your published numbers to assigned numbers in the cloud. Every unanswered call could potentially result in lost business, and Utility VoIP ensures those opportunities aren’t missed.
You might say, “We’ll just use our mobile phones. They still work if our on-premises phone system goes down. We’ll be fine.” But do all your vendors, business partners and customers have those numbers if they need to get in touch? If not, will they accept calls from unfamiliar numbers? Shifting to mobile could add to the confusion of an already stressful situation when mobile devices are treated as a separate line of communication.
Utility VoIP seamlessly integrates your phone system with your employees’ mobile devices. Utility VoIP’s Virtual Attendant allows you to virtually manage business communication and gives you the confidence that calls will be properly routed – and answered – regardless of the situation.
By placing our mobile app on employee devices, you make it possible for your team to make and receive calls with your business phone number through their mobile device. With a fully redundant, cloud-based phone system, reliable communication channels are always available. Even if a disaster or emergency is causing problems in other areas of your business, these issues won’t affect those who want to communicate with you. From their perspective, it’s business as usual.
When you create or review your business continuity plan, make sure voice communication is part of the conversation. With Utility VoIP, your phone system won’t be affected by disaster because employees will be able to communicate from home or satellite offices without missing a beat.
What makes Ancero Utility VoIP different?
Clear and reliable communications are essential in today’s fast paced business world. Whether you are using a desk phone, mobile device or the soft phone on your laptop – the VoIP system needs to work and work well.
When you engage Ancero Utility VoIP we start with a full evaluation and grooming of your network to ensure proper connectivity to support VoIP. We monitor your system 24/7 for consistent quality of service with the addition of an edge device. With this management tool we can spot any bad calls, fix them and proactively make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Ancero’s on-boarding process ensures that goals are met with thorough planning, zero downtime, expert implementation and ongoing support from our 24/7 Network Operations Center. Onsite training for your staff is included so they can seamlessly transition to the new system.
You won’t receive this level of quality, service or support from a plug and go VoIP provider. When searching for a new cloud based communications system be sure to ask the vendor – Do you have engineers on staff? Will you install the system and provide ongoing support? Do you provide free system training for my staff? Can you improve connectivity to my site to ensure business calling quality of service?
When they say no, call Ancero!