Small businesses tend to turn over less revenue than large corporations, at least to start with, but the responsibility on them to their clients or customers may be greater since the workload depends on a much smaller team. In a small business, the entrepreneur(s) often depend on themselves and have to think of ways to make their business more efficient. Modern technologies play a large part here. High quality telephone systems for small business may help the workforce in the office and prove to be cost-effective and efficient.
The most important benefit of telephone systems for small business is their cost-effectiveness. Phone systems using VoIP technology are much cheaper than regular phones, with free national and network calls and inexpensive international calls. For small business this is a great advantage helping self-employed businessmen and small business ventures curtail their budgets without cutting on communications.
Telephone systems for small business that rely on the Internet for business communications may sometimes prove to be more reliable than regular public telephone networks. Small business doesn’t have big capital to back it up in case of emergencies and disasters, so every penny lost may have a detrimental effect on the whole business. In the unfolding of events like bad weather or roadworks, continuous business communication is likely to be disrupted if traditional telephony is used. Hosted VoIP solutions, on the other hand, help businesses recover from these events and ensure business continuity even in extreme situations. In events of emergency rapid re-routing of phone numbers may be conducted saving businessmen time they would otherwise spend on reconstructing the phone system after the failure.
Owners of small businesses are often working more than regular company employees, sometimes even taking their work when they travel or to their homes in the evenings. With VoIP systems it is easy to recreate the office atmosphere in a new location or in the home office, enabling businessmen to take their affairs wherever they need to go. It is important to understand that with a purchase of telephone systems for small business hosting companies provide training to users in order to facilitate work with IP phones. There are two levels of training, end-user training and system administrator training, and educational sessions may also be divided into initial and ongoing training sessions. In a small office it is especially important for all staff to perform tasks without delays so it is vital to schedule either group or one-to-one sessions for all the employees who will be using the phones. For bigger companies with their own IT teams training may be provided for IT specialists at basic and advanced levels.
It is vital to remember that modern telephone systems for small business may help small business cut costs on communications and save money which in turn may be spent of developing the business further. There are different packages available, featuring phones with a variety of functions, including after-purchase service and phone use coaching. The solutions are flexible and easily scalable so it is possible to find the right option for each type and size of business venture. It is also possible to tailor each individual product for the needs of a given project. Therefore, small business owners are able to make their jobs in communications easier, helping the whole venture function more effectively.
To get more information regarding telephone systems for small business and services we offer, please visit our website at http://www.cloudtelephones.co.uk.
Grow Your Small Business with Cloud Hero Cloud Storage
The basic principle of growing the business is finding the best person to get the job done, with practical cost. That is why the payroll is outsourced to ADP; In-house Email Server replaced by Google Apps Premier; Business contacts are managed by Salesforce.com.
Your in-house data storage will grow as your business grows. Over time, it will become expensive. For instance, it might take a couple of days to backup 50G data to a FTP server. It will take 200 days to do the same thing for 5 Terabytes of data. Your business premise frequently is the slowest connection to the Internet. It will not be a good plan to have local storage space grow to a level that it is hard to shift to a different site over the Internet.
1. Move Your Email Server Out First
People dont generally imagine electronic mail as storage but it is with all the messages and attachments. If you keep it local, over time you will have to improve the email servers. It is best to move it out early on. Google Apps or Microsoft Windows Live could be good choices.
2. Leverage Online Storage Suites
If you dont use an online storage space suite, workers usually will just send electronic mail attachments around for sharing and collaboration. You might have a SharePoint server in house for that use but over time, you will run into storage troubles again. There are plenty of internet based storage suites around, such as Google Docs, Windows Live SkyDrive, Box.net. You can without problems share files with your co-workers by means of these on-line services. All that you need is a quick and effortless desktop access tool to Google Docs, SkyDrive or Box.net which is what Cloud Hero offers www.cloudhero.com. You can now use Cloud Hero to move and sync data documents and folders with Google and Box.net see www.cloudhero.com
3. Use Cloud Storage As a Backup Target
If you are using a local PC, you cant stop local storage space from growing. However, you can backup significant data to cloud storage space. There are plenty cloud storage services around, such as Amazon S3, AT&T Synaptic Storage and so on.
4. Use Cloud Storage As Tier 2 Storage
You may have a local file server shared by everyone in the office. Over time, the file server will grow old and run out of disk space. You need to be ready to replace it every 2-3 years. One of the best procedures is to have cloud storage attached to it as tier 2 storage space. After you take care of the email storage space, collaboration storage and backup storage space, the file server storage will not grow as fast so it will last longer. With cloud storage attached as tier 2, you now have a subsequent copy of the information in case anything goes wrong with the file server. It is more of a business continuity and disaster recovery solution. With Cloud Heros 2-way automatic sync the PC and the cloud account at Google will always be redundant see www.cloudhero.com
5. Look into the Future
The best could be that there is no local storage where your desktop is in the cloud too. Everything else is an online application delivered through a web browser. This way, as an alternative to needing a physical IT infrastructure, you have a virtual infrastructure. Cloud storage will still be around, the only difference is the access point changed from local desktop to cloud desktop and web based applications. This is why Cloud Hero is a perfect management tool to allow full duplication of your business data is being performed automatically on every file when it is modified. See www.cloudhero.com for more details.
http://www.cloudhero.com
Programs to make Google Docs easier to use.