Johannesburg, 23 Apr 2020
Almost three weeks after the first positive COVID-19 case was confirmed in South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a nation-wide lockdown. This required businesses to quickly adapt to having staff work remotely.
While working from home is far from the norm for most South Africans, many businesses have realised that with suitable tools and technology, it is possible for most of them, or at least significant portions thereof, to continue to operate near full capacity.
“One of the main concerns our clients had when the lockdown was announced was how their office telecoms would be handled,” says Candice Evans, Marketing Coordinator at United Telecoms. It is common practice for South African businesses using traditional on-site PBX telephone systems and copper lines, to activate a call forwarding facility in the event that their main landline number cannot be answered.
Once activated, the call is redirected, at a full call cost, to a designated phone number. While this traditional approach may be sufficient for businesses that make and receive fewer calls, there are disadvantages, such as additional costs for the redirection of calls, the inability to handle more than one incoming call concurrently and clients may feel frustrated by this convoluted process. Furthermore, there are limitations on transferring calls.
In addition, technicians need physical access to on-premises PBX Systems for on-site hardware programming and companies incur additional admin around reconciling employee refunds on private cellular calling for business purposes. All of this can be eradicated with a centralised cloud PBX.
An appealing alternative is a cloud-based PBX telephone system. Encompassing the latest in unified communications with the ultimate in flexibility and reliability, cloud-based PBX systems give your employees the ability to:
- Continue to make and receive office calls on their extensions from home as if they were in the office, with no additional hardware. This is enabled on a mobile app and/or a softphone program that is installed on their laptops or PCs;
- Automatically and seamlessly route inbound calls via an Auto Attendant to mobile extensions;
- Call colleagues on their extensions free of charge and transfer calls to colleagues as if they were at their desks;
- Initiate and take part in group conference voice calls;
- Use instant messaging services to chat with colleagues directly, or with teams/departments; and
- Listen to voicemail messages left on their extensions or receive voicemails via e-mail.
“Understandably, since the announcement of the lockdown, we have seen a significant increase in growth for our United Voice Cloud product, a hosted PBX service. This is not just a remote phone system, it is a feature-rich communications solution built with South African SMEs in mind to empower employees to work from outside the office both productively and cost-efficiently” says Ryan Lumley, MD of United Telecoms.
In addition to this functionality, United Voice Cloud enables your business to:
Keep existing office number(s);
Access and monitor call reports for control and budgeting purposes;
Stay connected during power outages;
Allocate direct geographic numbers or 087 numbers; and
Reduce costs with significantly cheaper per second call rates.
The solution is completely scalable and can be deployed remotely within a matter of hours, with no long-term contract in place.
Although many countries around the world have already embraced the concept of remote working, South Africa has to date been hesitant to apply the practice. The current lockdown has compelled South African businesses to explore the viability of having employees working from home, and perhaps adopting some of the significant benefits in the longer term.
If you would like to find out more about United Voice Cloud or how we can minimise disruption to your business through a seamless transition to remote working opportunities, please contact us on 086 001 8500 or info@unitedtelecoms.net.
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