Over the last few months, teleworking has become the norm. And as employees continue to work remotely, it’s important to have the correct tools to communicate and stay connected. Unified communications tools are especially useful, as they can help your company handle increased workloads and adapt to new work environments.
In order to explore more about these tools, 1Path and Intermedia presented a webinar covering different solutions, their value, and a special promotion to help companies during the current pandemic.
Video, Connection, and Employee Morale
The webinar kicked off with Armon Aghaie, 1Path’s Director of Technical Advisory, who shared some statistics about the need for UC solutions. “It’s intriguing how many conversations I’ve had about the importance of video,” he said. “55% of communication is predicated upon the body language we experience. 38% is the tone and the words we’re saying, and the words themselves only make up about 7% of communication. As we go through this world of social distancing, we need to consider the importance of video in the environment we’re in.”
Next, Patrick Kinsella, CTO of 1Path, explained the benefits of unified communications for employee morale. “About a week into this new normal, one of my team members called me,” he shared, “and she said, ‘You know we have such a solid team dynamic in the office, how can we maintain it?’ So, every single morning at 8:30, we all jump on a video call and share something completely non-work related. It gives everyone a chance to know each other, and it almost always involves laughter… it helps to bring back that social value that we get from working together as a team and collaborating.”
Streamlined Process, Privacy, and Business Tracking
Patrick Sheehan, Senior Director Channel Development at Intermedia, continued the conversation by highlighting the more general necessity of a UC solution. “One of the things we’re seeing right now is this immediate need to shift to remote work,” he said. “[In the past], the reason for deploying these remote technologies was for a business to gain new talent outside of its geography. They could also access new tools, improve work productivity, and reduce costs. Now, it’s literally needed to let employees do their job… Customers have urgent communications, and they need to be able to reach you just to continue business operations.”
Following Sheehan, Andy Streiker, 1Path’s Sr. System Architect PLM, explained more about the benefits of UC for privacy and business data. “Forwarding your work number to your home number is great for an inbound call,” he said, “because it can hide your personal number from the client. But you don’t have the ability to make an outbound call to your client, [like you do with a cloud solution]… with a cloud solution, you can make this process seamless for your customers. And because they’re calling your work numbers, [a manager] can still track that information from a business perspective.”
Getting Started with Unified Communications
Integrating UC technologies is fast and easy. As an example, Sheehan described a medical office who had recently decided to make the switch to a cloud solution. Their former solution cost thousands of dollars to upgrade. Additionally, it would have required employees to work in the office, which was closed. Instead, they contacted 1Path and Intermedia on March 19th. UC implementation began on March 24th, and they were up and running by March 25th.
1Path wants to provide this same quick and effective UC solution to the rest of our customers. For this reason, we’re offering a promotion to help our clients through December.
“Essentially, 1Path and Intermedia are coming together because we get how important these technologies are,” explained Aghaie, “but we understand there are financial burdens existing in the marketplace… We want to make sure key technologies are available to those who need them.”
These solutions are key to helping your business survive the current pandemic. Furthermore, they’ll help you thrive long after it’s over.
“87% of remote team members feel more connected when using video,” shared Kinsella. “And 37% of technology professionals would take a 10% pay cut in order to work from home… is this potentially a preview into a new normal? If you don’t have a solution in place right now, this is a great way to try it out and see what your new normal could look like for your operations. I think all of our organizations will be forming that new normal as we turn the economy back on in the next few weeks, and there’s no reason this shouldn’t be part of that.”
To learn more about the benefits of UC and 1Path’s current promotion, watch the rest of the webinar above.
