COVID-19 forced work-from-home upon even the most unlikely businesses. Organisations of every size\u2014from early-stage startups to global enterprises\u2014had to abandon traditional ways of working and adopt unfamiliar tools and strategies almost overnight.<\/p>\n
While the disruption was universal, startups were among the most impacted. Limited budgets, lean teams, remote operations, and growing customer expectations created a perfect storm. Yet, it is also startups that stand to gain the most from embracing cloud phone systems as a long-term communication foundation.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s explore what cloud phone system<\/a><\/span> are, the challenges they solve, and why\u2014by 2026\u2014they have become indispensable for startups.<\/p>\n A cloud phone system works much like a hosted website\u2014it is fully hosted on the cloud and does not rely on on-premise hardware or legacy PBX infrastructure.<\/p>\n Instead of installing complex physical systems at your office, calls are routed through the internet and forwarded to any device of your choice\u2014smartphones, laptops, or desktops. The hosting, maintenance, upgrades, and security are managed by the service provider.<\/p>\n With solutions like Acefone\u2019s VoIP services<\/a><\/strong> and Cloud hosted PBX<\/a><\/strong>, startups can set up professional business calling in days\u2014not months\u2014without investing in hardware or dedicated IT teams.<\/p>\n For example, many startups choose to route calls directly to their smartphones. This is a brilliant option for those who have a dispersed setup or don\u2019t have a fixed office space as yet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Organisations, both large and small, are going through digital transformations, moving away from legacy technologies and shifting to cutting edge cloud phone systems. As teams move into the digital world, they can quickly become overwhelmed with the sheer number of options of not only vendors but also different cloud solutions.<\/span><\/p>\n These days, even service providers have come to recognise that an increasing number of applications and platforms\u2014from\u00a0Cloud PBX tools\u00a0to CRM to data analytics and so on\u2014have become difficult to integrate, harmonise and manage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This is especially so when they\u2019re installed and operated by different vendors. If businesses leverage a cloud phone system, then by combining all of these processes and functionalities into a single platform, organisations and businesses can very easily manage their communications, contacts, and all related information.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Plus, this can happen on the same application, provided by the same vendor, under the same terms of the contract, and charged on the same invoice as well.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>Startups by their very nature are businesses with a very distinct set of needs and demands. Same goes for their consumers as well, given their fickle nature. These need to be factored in before any service decisions are made.\u201d<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n COVID-19 has thrown open a can of worms, a completely new set of challenges, if you may, for businesses, especially smaller ones like startups operating out of homes. Following are the three primary obstacles they\u2019re facing owing to the pandemic –\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s been a rapid increase in digitisation and multiplication of use cases of the same, literally overnight. What this has done is, it has put tremendous amounts of strain on legacy, traditional, capacity-constrained phone systems.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Call drops, delays in replies, poor communication quality, etc. have shot through the roof and a usual voice call seems like a burden on most days. This adversely impacts the productivity of the organisation and may drive away customers as well. This is why most people have frequently started to use cloud-based services.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The Internet and the <\/span>digital infrastructure more broadly have held up rather well<\/span><\/a>, and this has only accelerated this trend and provided an impetus to an inevitability. This is a big reason why most businesses are finally making the complete switch to digital.<\/span><\/p>\n There is tremendous business uncertainty all around, no matter which industry your organisation might be dealing in. One of the most important things right now, for anyone running a business, is flexibility.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The most vital part of it is the fact that they should have the ability to scale up and down at a moment\u2019s notice. Plus, this should be done without too much investment being required, or it will go to waste in case of a scale down.<\/span><\/p>\n Businesses around the world pay huge amounts of money in buying new hardware while expanding.\u00a0However, a cloud phone system is very, very flexible and it grows effortlessly as per a business\u2019s needs without incurring any extravagant upgrade charges. Same is the case when scaling down business operations.<\/span><\/p>\n A lot of present-day startups, especially in the services space, have a sizeable base of overseas clients and customers. And they need to be in constant touch with them for a number of reasons. Doing this on any premise-based legacy system would rack you up to massive bills, something out of bounds for startups especially.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A cloud-based phone system allows you to get local free phone numbers of almost any country across the globe.\u00a0Using these free phone numbers<\/a>, businesses can make international calls at very minimal costs. All that a start-up needs then is a high-speed internet connection.<\/span><\/p>\n Sheer variety of services and possibilities. Do you need a feature like call forwarding? It lets you fix a phone number and then forwards your calls to that number. Startups find this useful because forwarding to a phone keeps them mobile.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Call scheduling\u00a0allows you to program the forwarding to reach separate numbers at varying times of the day and to forward via a series of numbers up till the time somebody answers. Then there are other features like custom greetings as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Following are three specific ways in which cloud-based phone systems can be of immense utility to startups\u00a0 –\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Any startup working on its own domain of service, especially those at a relatively early stage of functioning, functions pretty much round the clock.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n More than that, these organisations often don\u2019t have a fixed, traditional office space and their workforce is working from a wide variety of places and spaces as per their own convenience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because cloud-based phone systems allow calls to be easily forwarded to your phone, you can answer them even on the go\u2013\u2013whether you\u2019re in the car, at home, or anywhere else.<\/span><\/p>\n Another classic COVID-19 trait of working these days is that businesses have workforces that are dispersed and working remotely as well in fact.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In such a scenario, having a cloud-based phone system becomes more than imperative in fact, given the nature and kind of communications that an organisation comes to need, both internal and external.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Every employee can have their own extension that forwards calls to their personal lines. All employees can be clubbed under a single phone number but they can answer calls on their cellphones as well. This saves costs for the business and makes it rather simple for both customers and employees.<\/span><\/p>\n The defining feature of cloud-based phone systems<\/a> is, well, that they are hosted on the cloud. This is very distinct from legacy, premise-based setups of the yesteryear.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What this leads to is massive gains as far as reliability of services and managing of downtimes is concerned.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because the different components of such a cloud-based phone system are not all hosted in the same location, the providers can ensure a low amount of service downtime and very few operational disruptions.<\/span><\/p>\n Another piece of this puzzle is the fact that such a system also has crucial redundancies built-in. What does that mean? That means that if you use a cloud-based phone system, there\u2019s a high likelihood that your service provider has servers across multiple locations. What that leads to is the fact that if the data hosting on one server fails, the operations can be simply routed via some other server.<\/span><\/p>\n Having a cloud-based phone system is a question of when, and not if, for startups at this stage, especially in a post-COVID-19 era. Businesses can make the call, introduce massive efficiencies into their operations, save costs, and meanwhile upgrade their customer experience as well while at it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n To find out more about our hosted phone system<\/a>, call our expert team at\u00a01888-859-0450<\/a>\u00a0now! Come on board! <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" COVID-19 forced work-from-home upon even the most unlikely businesses. Organisations of every size\u2014from early-stage startups to global enterprises\u2014had to abandon traditional ways of working and adopt unfamiliar tools and strategies almost overnight. While the disruption was universal, startups were among the most impacted. Limited budgets, lean teams, remote operations, and growing customer expectations created a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":19637,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[185,190],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3163","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-contact-center","8":"category-startups"},"yoast_head":"\nWhat are Cloud Phone Systems?<\/span><\/h2>\n
The unexpected challenges that cloud phone systems can help startups:<\/span><\/h2>\n
1. Massive burden on communication pipelines \u2013\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n
2. Uncertainties of operation \u2013\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n
3. If a startup has international clients \u2013\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n
In what ways does a startup benefit by adopting a cloud phone system?<\/span><\/h2>\n
1. If you work on the go<\/span><\/h3>\n
2. If you have a remote team that is spread out<\/span><\/h3>\n
3. Reliability of services and access –\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n