With an increase in employee requests for remote working and flexible hours, the businesses that will stay ahead of the curve are those that are willing to introduce measures to ensure they are flexible. Using unified communications is essential to the nature of agile business. We uncover the characteristics of a truly agile business, so you can see how yours compares.

1. Supports flexible working hours

Your business must embrace the 24/7 availability culture or lose out to forward thinking competitors. That’s not to say that you must remain open 24/7 but, particularly when in a customer-focused business, if the customer has a way of communicating with your business in times of need (for example if a fault occurs) then it helps to have measures in place to support them.

2. Can manage remote working

For maximum agility your employees should have the ability to work from anywhere, at any time. The agile business fully embraces flexible working.

3. Ability to scale capacity quickly and easily

By investing in cloud-based services, businesses can access a solution that gives them the ability to scale their lines quickly and easily to meet demand.

4. Can cope with seasonal peaks seamlessly

Rather than paying for unused capacity, the agile business can scale resources, meaning they will only ever have to pay for what they need.

5. Able to respond to customer needs quickly and appropriately

This means wherever, whenever, however and most importantly, quickly. By using unified communications tools, businesses need never miss another call.

6. Energises the workforce with new technology

New technologies give your staff access to the tools they need to succeed, meaning that you’ll see a rise in employee productivity and satisfaction levels.

7. Integration with line of business applications

Truly unified communications support integration with existing line of business applications, such as Microsoft Lync (soon to be Skype for Business). This will help to further enhance productivity and efficiency.

8. Remains fully compliant

The agile business uses the most up-to-date technology to ensure they remain compliant at all times. For example, this can include the ability to record calls.

9. A fixed, monthly cost

Cloud-based telephony allows businesses to pay for what they need in one fixed, monthly payment. This will include installation, handsets and maintenance. This means you’ll be able to account and budget for your full communications spend each month.

10. Embrace consumerisation

Agile businesses support Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). Allowing your staff to use their existing handsets will not only save you money it will also ensure your team are contactable at any time.