The cloud, team collaboration tools, speech technologies, and the digitalisation of the customer experience are all shaking up the business environment. Enterprises and their end-users continue to demand new solutions and media, but many organisations – multi-national corporations and SMEs alike – are unsure of how best to adopt new innovations. How can enterprises maximise the return on investments in communications and collaboration systems, as well as services, apps and networks?

BICS is at Enterprise Connect in Orlando next week (stand 1633), aiming to address exactly this question. Our team will be demonstrating our range of cloud comms tools, and talking to attendees about how implementing such services can deliver mobility and flexibility, and provide companies with a local presence, while extending global footprints.

Why go virtual?

Before diving into the benefits, let’s survey the enterprise landscape. Starting or expanding a company is costly, but reliable international communications remains a core part of successful business development. Companies wanting to extend their customer services reach – for example, establishing a local presence in a new territory – can be a costly and complex process. It has traditionally involved setting up physical telecoms infrastructure in the new region, including resource-intensive and timely processes such as establishing relationships with local partners and ensuring compliance with local regulations and licensing requirements.

Rather than opting for physical infrastructure and cumbersome hardware, organisations can now take a virtual approach to communications and telephone number allocation. Many companies have already made this move: in 2016, almost a third of respondents to one survey using cloud-hosted communications were getting PBX/call control functions from the cloud, a significant jump from 2015, when only 20% of respondents said their organisations were using cloud PBX.

Customer service call centres are a great example. An end-user of a product or service is unlikely to be willing to rack up an expensive phone bill as a result of contacting a call centre on the other side of the planet. Equally, the company overseeing its call centres is unlikely to have the capital required to set up a new call centre in the (metaphorical) back garden of customers in every region in which it operates. High-quality, reliable customer service and engagement is crucial to any business; in fact, a reported 38% of customers will switch to a competitor or cancel orders or services and two-thirds will tell a friend about their experience, potentially causing further reputational damage.

Cloud Numbers on show

At Enterprise Connect, BICS will be showing how these issues can be overcome, thanks to our Cloud Numbers, which are available in 200 countries and more than 2,000 areas. Local, mobile, and toll-free cloud communications are easy to integrate into enterprise applications and ensure great (low cost!) customer service everywhere, at any time, no matter where customers and customer service representatives are located.

Returning to the questions of cost, complexity and investment. The traditional trend of costly comms is bucked by the virtual approach: all businesses need to do is define the geographies for which they would require cloud numbers. Based on this self-assessment, a sourcing partner like BICS can provide local number ranges that can be used by businesses for their specific communications needs – like customer call centre contact.

Enhanced engagement

Today, customer engagement with a brand isn’t centred solely around the call centre experience. Digital-first companies are starting and growing with digital communications at their core. BICS’ voice and SMS-enabled cloud mobile numbers can now be easily integrated into an enterprise’s app and used to interact with employees and service users. And customer engagement extends far beyond person-to-person communication. Our cloud numbers also support SMS alerts, reminders and messaging to improve the efficacy of marketing campaigns.

This approach is a crucial cog in the business architecture of the sharing economy, which continues to develop and strengthen. In China alone, the sector reached $763.5 billion in 2017, increasing by almost half from the previous year, with a predicted annual growth rate of 30% over the next five years.

(Enterprise) Connect with us

Cloud numbers are just one element of our complete enterprise communications solutions we offer – and just one of the many talking points at Enterprise Connect next week. BICS’ also offers SIP Trunking services, API technologies and easy integration with legacy equipment, quality fully managed or hosted Unified Cloud Communications Services (UCaaS), and a worldwide network offering world-class voice SMS and data services. We have the know-how, partnerships and many years of experience in the telecoms world required to modernise enterprise comms.

If you’re attending conference at Enterprise Connect, you’ll no doubt have a long week of listening to speakers and panelists about the trends and challenges driving the industry. So why not visit our booth and learn about how your company can actively take control of communications, and order, manage and troubleshoot your numbers business – while growing your wider business.

See you in Orlando!
Meet the BICS team at stand 1633

An article by Divya Ghai Wakankar, Head of Communications Innovation and Next Gen Services Product Management at BICS