Written By: Andrew Rosenbaum
With employees clamoring for BYOD (bring your own device), more and more businesses are questioning whether they should go to the expense of providing employees with desk phones. Why spend an average of $150 a pop on a deskphone, when employees are happier to be on tablets and mobiles?
Thanks to IP telephony, employees can have a single, portable number where he or she can be reached at any place, any time. Why do they need a fixed extension on their desk in that case? Just because they officially spend part of their time there?
So why hasn’t the deskphone disappeared (it has disappeared in Silicon Valley at companies like Facebook)?
According to research by Frost & Sullivan in 2015, a majority of managers would like to see the deskphone disappear, viewing it as one old-fashioned headache they don’t need.
But a majority of employees don’t agree, according to the research. They just don’t want to change their working habits to that extent. Although they want to have smartphones and web connectivity at their disposal, they don’t want to give up on the habit of checking their voicemail every morning when they get to work.
Perhaps to satisfy this ‘old habits die hard’ mentality, deskphone makers are coming up with an increasing variety of UC-friendly phones. Manufacturers are adding functionality like desktop collaboration, video calling, device pairing and Bluetooth connectivity to link up deskphones with the UC universe.
An Italian company has even come up with a desktop telephone boasting a WebRTC screen. The phone has an open-standards browser that allows full connectivity for Web conferencing and document sharing, just like your computer. Perhaps that’s the best way to combine old habits with new trends.
3CX connects its computer softphone to IP deskphones, so that calls can be made from the device screen. That links the IP deskphone to all of 3CX rich Unified Communications technology, including WebRTC videoconferencing from computers or mobiles, document sharing, collaboration, and access from smartphones.
To find out if this 3CX technology is right for your business, give KeeFORCE a call today at (270) 366-0553 or by email to blog@keeforce.com.
