Study: SMBs increasingly using the cloud, hosted UC

A new study says that as many as 50 percent of all SMB employees work outside the office at some point, with 25 percent being off-site at any give time.

The survey, commissioned by business communications solution provider Fonality and conducted by Webtorials, looked at companies with between 10 to 250 employees.

Among the findings:

• Forty-three percent of SMBs plan to deploy cloud-based or hosted mobile solutions to improve delivery to employees
• Real-time presence as well as corporate directory and calendar access are favored Unified Communications (UC) capabilities
• Contact center functionality, including customer escalation, skills-based routing and queue management are an increasingly high priority
• Wi-Fi connectivity is a preferred method to preserve mobile plan minutes
• Tablets are becoming the dominant mobile device and could be the standard mobile device within 18 months.

"The mobile workforces of today's growing businesses have been artificially inhibited by legacy technologies," said Wes Durow, chief marketing officer at Fonality. "SMBs now have access to cloud-based Unified Communications and contact center features that fully enable remote workers in a simple and affordable manner."

The study also contends that mobile employees can often experience difficulty accessing critical business applications, causing productivity losses of up to six hours per week per SMB employee. Providing consistent UC offerings outside the office can significantly reduce productivity losses.

For more:
- see this release
- see the Fonality report

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