Telecommunications company offers resources for small business

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This article was published 09/04/2019 (2574 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One of the many challenges for small business is being able to compete with larger companies that have the resources to deploy better technology to create more efficiencies.

But one of the hopeful elements of the dominance of technology in our culture is that it can, over time, level the playing field.

That’s what’s starting to happen with telephony.

The big telcos have marketed what’s called unified communications solutions for their enterprise customers for a few years now. That service allows companies to do all sorts of communication services like seamless collaboration on the telephone, linking computer files, easily undertaking video conferencing, and never having to let callers receive a busy signal or deal with annoying voicemail.

That kind of unified communication service — that can be tricky to use and typically needs some in-house IT support to really allow everyone to use it properly — is now available in a simple-to-use format for the small and medium-sized enterprise market from a number of commercial cloud-based platform companies that are now in the market.

In Winnipeg, Telexperts, a 30-year business communications solutions provider, has become a dealer of a European cloud-based unified communications platform called Wildix that operates off a regular web browser.

For all sorts of reasons, Telexperts president David Guberman knows it is the future of his business.

“For one thing, the premise-based companies are dropping out of the market,” Guberman said. “When you see companies like Toshiba and Samsung (and Nortel is long gone) exiting, you know… our industry is moving to the cloud.”

Telexperts has long since migrated its offerings to voice-over-internet protocol (VOIP) technology that has the ability to seamlessly connect multiple offices and allow users to work remotely.

The VOIP technology can allow for remote collaboration and identification of the availability of co-workers, but software upgrades that take the system down and annoying sign-ins and hardware add-ons can make it awkward to use.

Video conferencing technologies are also out there, but often require additional subscription fees.

Guberman says, “As good as all these new features were, the drawbacks were significant. Software upgrades were frequent and would take your system down, multiple servers were required for different applications and often things just weren’t easy,” he said.

As amazing as the functionality was, Guberman said that many companies were just not using as much as they could because it was not easy to use.

But just as increasing numbers of enterprises in the world are availing themselves of cloud computing services, cloud-based unified communication services for small business is now an affordable reality.

The Wildix browser-based platform provides a visual template making connecting with the entire organization wherever they might be regardless of the device very easy. (A wireless app links smartphones to the system with exactly the same look to the display.)

For a company like Telexperts that has already transitioned from a voice integrator into more of a managed services provider delivering VOIP services, it is primed to start delivering a cloud-based platform offering.

“We already offer unlimited training and this new technology can be installed in half the time or less,” he said.

But regardless of how much sense it makes for Telexperts, Guberman believes it is the communication platform that will truly allow small and medium-sized enterprises to manage their business and service their customers in the way that will let them be as effective as possible.

“If you can’t answer inquiries or offer to take calls the way your customer (or prospects) want, you are in trouble,” he said. “I think those people are going to be calling someone else.”

It’s still just an early-adapter market right now, with likely less than 10 per cent of the North American market using this kind of platform technology, so Guberman said there is no rush to jump in.

Meanwhile, Telexperts’ thousands of customers can dip their toes in by keeping their existing system while testing out the new platform at the same time and jump in whenever they want with no contract obligation. 

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca