27 Jan 2022 How to optimise business mobiles to help remote staff
As flexible working patterns gain popularity, more and more businesses are providing mobiles for their team. It makes sense. You need your team to be reachable, so providing them the tools they need is sensible.
But there’s so much choice that it can be hard to find the right tools for the job. What’s the best handset? What tariff do you need? How do you get the most out of them? If you’ve found yourself asking questions like these, this blog is for you!
One Connectivity are experts in business communications, and we’ve been supplying and advising on business mobiles for years. We’ve written this blog to offer some tips on how to make the most of your business mobiles.
Get a tariff that works
It’s so easy to overpay for mobile contracts, especially when you’re getting them in bulk. All you need to do is overestimate your required data or call minutes, and you could be stuck for months wasting money on something you don’t need. Or you could end up without enough and end up adding to your bills with bolt-ons or by going over your tariff.
So how do you avoid this? You could spend hours upon hours researching handsets and tariffs, or you could make life easier and trust in experts. That’s where we come in. One Connectivity have helped businesses negotiate their mobile contracts for years and we like nothing more than providing what our customers need. We’ll find out your needs and budget, and then you can leave the legwork to us. We’ll find a tariff that gives you what you need at a price you can afford.
Make sure you’ve got the right tools
Working away from the office can be just as productive as any other form, but you need to make sure your team can access everything they need. Can your team access all your services from their mobiles?
If you’ve got a unified communications (UC) platform, this can really help. It essentially means you can access all business comms from a single location, on any device. You can also integrate this with other software you use. This means mobile users really can do all the things they’d do on a desktop in the office.
They can also set their availability, so that anyone can instantly see whether they’re busy or available to collaborate.
Get the call control features you need
Another important consideration is how calls are managed. Can you easily route calls to business mobiles? When you call out from business mobiles, does your business number appear on the customer’s caller ID?
We can set mobiles up so that they’re fully integrated into your phone system. This means that calls to and from your business can be made via your mobile. It means you can use remote call recording features. Essentially, it means your business mobile has all the functionality of an office deskphone.
This also means you can stop your team from receiving calls outside work hours. This is useful for allowing staff to maintain a work/life balance and prevent telecoms fraud.
Get security right
The ability to work from anywhere is changing business for the better. But of course, it brings dilemmas when it comes to security. Your team will be accessing systems from different connections, and their devices won’t be in the confines of your premises.
If you’re vigilant, you absolutely can combine convenience and openness with robust protection. It’s definitely best practice to require regular password changes. You should also consider other forms of device encryption, and avoid communicating on apps that don’t offer encryption. But really, the best way to stay protected is …
Mobile device management
Mobile device management (MDM) is a fairly literal name as telecoms terms go. It refers to software and protocols for administrating your business mobiles. This means that security, data loss prevention, blocklists and more are administrated centrally through software that you can configure as you need.
If a member of staff leaves their role or loses their mobile, you can wipe the device remotely. You can set permissions and blocks to protect your team from unsafe or inappropriate websites and apps. Data loss and security breaches are a huge threat to your business. MDM makes you that bit safer from both.
Train your team
You may have the best policies in place, the best security and the best possible tariff. But if your team doesn’t know what you expect from them, standards can drift. If they’re missing notifications and updates, that slows you down. If they’re ignoring security protocols, the consequences could be even worse.
Even a short training session can make a huge difference. You can go through best practice, security, company policies and the other essentials. That way, everyone knows what’s expected.
How can One Connectivity help?
Quite simply, we are seasoned experts when it comes to mobiles and business communication tools. But more than that, we believe in expertise you can trust. We don’t upsell for the sake of it, and we don’t forget about our customers after the point of sale.
First, we’ll assess your business needs and budget. Next, we’ll use our knowledge to make recommendations tailored to you – with no surprises or sudden price hikes. You’ll be able to check your usage data and billing whenever you need, and we’re always on hand if you need any information or advice. We can also provide our own MDM service to offer you the highest standards in security.
If you want to find out more about how we can help, just give us a call on 0115 896 88 60.