From enabling videoconferencing and shared-screen sessions, to its immediate positive bottom line effect, VoIP can easily boost corporate productivity without added expense.

Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a connectivity technology that initially found favour for its ability to drastically cut business voice and data communication costs to the bone.

“Immediate savings of some 45% are routine when corporate clients make the switch to IP-based communication,” says Rad Jankovic, CEO of independent telco, Otel.

Jankovic says corporate clients operating in our current tight economic climate are initially drawn to VoIP’s promise of bottom line savings. However, it’s VoIP’s productivity-boosting benefits that really turn users into solid VoIP voice and data converts.

“Clients always say to us they knew this technology enabled additional voice and data services over and above what they had been used to on copper wire, but they never expected the range of VoIP services that now enables them to be so much more productive,” says Jankovic.

Configuring any number of additional value-added services on a VoIP line is as easy as selecting options on a web-enabled computer interface.

Jankovic outlines five specific reasons why VoIP services have such a positive effective on SME and enterprise productivity:

* By eliminating the need for both an office line and a mobile line, and offering a single voice mailbox, VoIP means faster and more efficient responses to everything from sales enquiries to customer complaints and new business opportunities.

* VoIP ensures that home-based employees have access to work emails and other communication around the clock. Studies show that work-from-home and telecommuting employees with access to work emails and calls work several hours a week longer than office-bound employees.

* VoIP means improved intra-office collaboration by enabling employees to communicate better with each other over the same phone system. Internal and external calls can be all placed and received using the same convenient system. Simplicity equals productivity.

* VoIP enables accessibility which prevents both miscommunication and missed communication opportunities and the resultant potential gaps in service to customers and internal clients. VoIP meets and exceeds what both employees and customers have come to expect.

* VoIP is scalable. Because VoIP systems rely on the Internet to send data and connect calls, they can be easily expanded. Adding a new line or number is usually as simple as clicking a button. Start-ups will find that new extensions and additional services on their lines can be added as they grow and without the need to keep calling an external telecoms service provider.

In addition, Otel specifically provides SOHO (small office, home office) clients with its ‘Business in a Box’ offering which includes the productivity-boosting duo of an LTE connection and a VoIP handset.

This effective voice and data combination is so easy for the start-up to install, there’s no need to pay an installation fee.

Furthermore, Otel offers SME clients on this VoIP option a reduced per minute rate with the same value-added benefits as larger enterprise clients.

“VoIP is exceptional when it comes to connecting people because of the enormous variety of voice and data-enhancing value-added services that it enables. It’s this enabling feature that, at the end of the day, is VoIP’s most productivity-boosting attribute,” says Jankovic.