One-Number Calling: A New Necessity for the Modern Mobile Worker

The Mobile Age is transforming the very way we perceive work and when it starts and stops. Concepts such as “regular hours” and “face time” are fading into irrelevance. By 2013, there will be nearly 1.2 billion mobile employees worldwide, according to IDC. The highest concentration of these professionals will live in the U.S., representing a dominating three-quarters of the workforce.

They’ll have less use for an office because there’s so much business to conduct “out there.” They’ll get the job done in coffee shops, or in a parking lot before a customer/client visit. Because of this, the line between a professional life and a “real” one will continue to blur.

The question is: Has your business caught up? Have you given your workforce the tools to do business when and where they need to?

Not surprisingly, nearly nine of ten employees use their own mobile devices for work, industry research shows. If you’re like so many of them, you’re finding yourself checking business-related communications 24/7/365 now—at children’s sporting events, during dinner, before bedtime and first thing in the morning, right? Is there more your business can do to make employees’ lives simpler or at least streamline communications?

This is where flexible technologies such as Hosted PBX can make all the difference.

Previously, many organizations turned to hosted voice primarily for cost savings. No longer, even though those cost savings remain significant—up to 50 percent versus traditional telephone services. Today’s mobile workforce look for the same multi-functionality that they have at their office or fixed work stations. They demand an assortment of features that make life on the road closely resemble that of the office. They don’t want multiple phone numbers on their business cards—not when mobile hosted voice can consolidate all communications so that a single phone number serves as the sole contact point, regardless of where the user is.

It’s this simple: One person. One phone number.

MegaPath, now Fusion Connect, recently launched the availability of Mobility Features, which establishes “one number” VoIP calling capability and allows employees to create and manage their profile preferences, and to make or receive VoIP calls wherever they are—including on their smartphones.

All employees would need to do is go to their personal Fusion Connect portal and customize their voice preferences. It’s browser-based so there’s nothing to configure. They can opt for integrated features such as Visual Voicemail, which transcribes voice messages to text. (Very handy if you’re in a meeting and don’t want to create a disruption by calling your voicemail.)

There’s also Find Me/Follow Me, which routes calls to you no matter where you are. If you’re out of office and a customer calls, for example, you can designate which device the call will ring to. You can even have multiple devices ring at the same time, or in order of preference.

When you make calls, Mobility Features ensures that the number that shows up on that contact’s screen is a single business number. They know it’s you on the line, whether you’re in the office or not.

At Fusion Connect, Mobility Features represents only the beginning. We’ll continue to listen to our customers and find additional ways to innovate so our solutions will meet the expectations of the modern professional. So keep checking this blog for updates in the near future.

Question of the week: Which Mobility Features fits your life best?