A multi-site organisation with a traditional phone system at each site, effectively has multiple completely separate systems. All calls between sites need to go out over the public phone network incurring costs. Staff can’t see if their colleagues at other sites are available, resulting in long games of ‘telephone tag’ with missed calls and voicemails.
Each site must be configured and supported individually, increasing costs and the chance of issues due to mis-configuration.
If the main phone line for one of the sites fails, that site is down until the fault can be rectified. There’s no way to re-direct calls out via a different route.
There may be lots of time and money spent on travelling between sites for meetings, or an expensive hosted conferencing service may be used.
The benefits of a Unified Communications solution
In a Unified Communications world, the entire organisation can be viewed as a single system, with staff able to see availability information for colleagues on other sites, which allows them to make an informed decision about the best way to contact someone.
Calls between sites can be routed over the private data network joining the sites, improving communication and reducing costs.
Where all sites are linked via a private data network, this can be used to route calls more intelligently. If a UK office calls a client in the US, the call can initially be routed over the private network between the sites, before breaking out to the public telephone system in the US, reducing call costs. If the main inbound telephone line for a site fails, calls can be re-routed automatically and transparently via another office until the fault is resolved.
Your Unified Communications systems can provide voice and web based conferencing services across all sites, and out to include clients and suppliers, reducing costs around travelling to meetings.