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We’ve all watched high-performance athletes lose a race by mere fractions of a second. It's compelling to watch whether the athlete is running on a track, racing down a ski hill, or skimming across a swimming pool. It’s also heartbreaking because that margin meant the difference between winning the race and being left behind, no matter how small.
The business world isn’t much different. Competition is extremely tight in almost every industry. It’s too easy to be left behind by competitors who are faster to market, work more efficiently, and do more to keep their customers happy.
Your business systems are crucial to increasing your competitive edge and winning the race, no matter what industries or markets you serve. Every system you rely on must reliably operate at peak performance levels — especially your business communications system.
You can’t afford to let your communications systems fall behind for many reasons, but here are three important ones.
1. Seamless Communications Accelerates Time to Market
It takes unconstrained teamwork across every area of your organization to get new offerings to market faster. Every member of every team needs the ability to quickly and easily connect, collaborate, and share information from anywhere, at any time.
If your communications system isn’t up-to-date, your teams can’t leverage the latest features and functions available in the web, mobile, and desktop applications they rely on to stay connected. Like high-performance athletes, your teams need every advantage they can get. No matter how seemingly small that advantage is, it makes a difference – especially if you multiply the effects across your organization.
Keeping your communications system up to date means your teams always have the most recent voice, messaging, video conferencing, screen sharing, and file sharing capabilities at their fingertips.
Depending on how long your communications system has languished without updates, getting current could bring new capabilities to jumpstart collaboration initiatives across your teams.
2. Lost Productivity is More Expensive Than You Think
A Grammarly Business' survey of over 1,600 business leaders and knowledge workers found that 72% of the workweek is spent on communication and collaboration. When you add up the lost time, those inefficiencies cost more than $1.2 trillion, or $12,000 per employee annually.
But productivity losses aren’t only measured in dollars. Almost half of the survey respondents also said that inefficient communication and collaboration had created friction with co-workers and other departments. While those losses are more challenging to quantify, no business can afford them.
Communication technologies and systems that provide more features and functionality are crucial to making communications and collaboration more efficient. The capabilities that were cutting-edge just a short while ago are no longer at the forefront of what’s available. Your staff knows this, and they’re looking for you to provide more efficient solutions.
Of the 1,600 survey respondents, 58% of knowledge workers and 73% of business leaders felt they would be more effective with better tools, with 80% of business leaders considering investments in AI tools.
If you look at these statistics differently, employees say, “We like what we have, but it needs to be enhanced.” The easiest way to deliver on this requirement is to keep your communications systems fully up-to-date with the latest enhancements all the time.
3. A Great Customer Experience Depends On Great Communications
We’ve already shared a few statistics, but we could fill pages with the statistics that confirm a better customer experience leads to increased business revenues.
Customers' communications with your organization are central to their experience, increasing revenue. The key is to ensure your customers have a great experience at every touchpoint across your organization. To do this, you need to look beyond your contact center technology and the service your contact center agents provide and take a holistic approach to the customer journey.
According to customer experience consultants Temkin Group, “every single person in a company plays a direct or indirect role in determining whether it provides consistently good or consistently bad human or digital interactions.”
Your business communications system plays a significant role in those human and digital interactions. When evaluating the current state of your current communications system, think about how customers interact with your sales team and employees located at remote sites. Also consider how your internal teams connect and collaborate to deliver on customer requirements, especially when customized solutions are required, delivery dates change or supply chain issues slow down processes.
If your communications system doesn’t provide the capabilities needed to ensure customers have the best possible experience, they can become disillusioned with your organization. They might assume the outdated communications system they encountered when they called your sales team reflects the overall state of your organization. They might take the challenges they’re experiencing with their order or inquiry as due to a lack of effort or care rather than internal disconnects caused by out-of-date communications technology.
Don’t Let Your Communications System Let You Down
With these few examples, it’s easy to see that your business can fall behind if your communications system fails.
If you’re using a MiVoice Business platform for communications and collaboration, there’s an easy way to reduce the risk of falling behind. Simply renew or reactivate your Mitel Software Assurance subscription.
Mitel Software Assurance ensures your MiVoice system has the best, most up-to-date software and features for voice, data, and video communications and collaboration. Your software is also protected with the latest security fixes to reduce vulnerabilities.
In addition, you can receive proactive fault reporting and performance analytics so any system issues can be dealt with before they impact your business. And, if you run into any problems that your Mitel-certified partner can’t resolve, they can contact our technical experts for added support.
They sure would if high-performance athletes could easily access new capabilities to help them edge out the competition. High-performance companies need to do the same.
