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One of the big buzzwords in business and telecom is “mobility.”

“Mobility is the future.”

“Mobility will change how we work.”

“Mobility is the reason the Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup" (which is kind of true, in a roundabout way).

What is mobility? If you hit up Google, you’ll find many answers from Unified Communications to complex computer network discussions. And, technically, those all do deal with mobility on different levels. But what does mobility actually mean for a business?

Mobility is Making Your Real Location Irrelevant

Mobility is pretty aptly named. It’s the concept of the ability of a worker to be mobile and yet still be “in the office” to some extent. For some companies that simply means providing employees with a cell phone number in addition to their desk extension. However, that’s not true mobility.

Mobility allows your employees to untether themselves from their desks without untethering themselves from their extension or, technically, your phone system. With a PBX like 3CX, every extension can be provisioned to a SIP phone that sits on a desk. It’s a traditional phone, just like every office has. In the past, that would be your employee’s single connection to your phone system. Now, what matters more is the extension and the capability of the PBX.

Choose Your Device

For some offices a single phone sitting stationary on a desk is fine. But the workforce is becoming increasingly mobile and, sometimes, decentralized. For true mobility, your employee is assigned an extension that becomes their identifier on the phone system. That extension, naturally, rings on their desk phone. Some employees, however, are constantly on the move. Think of salespeople who move from town to town, make and receive calls in their downtime or while they are in transit. How does that work? That’s where your PBX’s software comes in:

The Softphone

A softphone is a phone that works from a computer. In 3CX it is your user dashboard. You can make and receive calls, chat with coworkers, see the presence of the sales manager and more. If an employee hits the road, they leave their desk behind and use their laptop as their communication tools. They can receive calls while working in a coffee shop in Schenectady or check their voicemail and return calls from their hotel room after they’ve finished their rounds. With a PBX like 3CX, it’s all built into the software.

The Smartphone

In the past, an employee with a cell phone had to provide multiple numbers to clients. One for the office and one for on the go. Mobility allows employees to answer their calls on their cellphones as part of the PBX software. While they’re on the road or if the office is closed due to a power failure, the employee can be reached easily just by calling his extension.

If you hear your IT staff grumbling about the work it takes to provision mobile phones, let them know they can relax. With a 3CX PBX, mobile provisioning is so easy that the users practically do it themselves.

What Else is Mobility Good For?

What makes mobility so great is that no matter where your employees are, they can still be in the office. Whether they are physically at their desks or sitting in a bedroom office in their apartment, they’re on your system answering or making their work phone calls. The workforce is becoming increasingly more mobile, and remote working is becoming more prevalent. A phone system that offers a robust mobility solution is a must. Mobility is great for traditional small business that offers employees a Work at Home Friday, companies with a large sales force that is never in the same place two days in a row, or an innovative decentralized call center, such as translation services, where agents log on and process their phone queue in home offices.

How can mobility change your business? With your great ideas, the sky is the limit. Contact us today about Voxtelesys mobility services, and we can get your workforce on the move quickly.

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