Despite extensive and often successful efforts around digital transformation, there is still one technology area that hasn’t been fully digitally transformed across many organizations: Calling. Couple that with the accelerated adoption of hybrid work, and it is imperative businesses make the move to cloud calling now.

You may think on-premises phone systems are good enough for what you need done, but if recent global events teach us anything, it’s that organizations need agile, innovative, and secure business calling now. Consider the number of hybrid and remote workers your business now supports versus five years ago, and then think again if on-premises phone systems are really getting the job done. Do they provide the inclusive, flexible, available phone services that your organization needs to remain connected, collaborative, and productive—from anywhere, at any time, across myriad devices?

If the answer is, “maybe not,” then it is time for your business to take a closer look at cloud calling. Recently Wainhouse Research released a playbook, sponsored by Webex, that details several operational processes and business initiatives that cloud calling would not only improve but could transform.

Why calling must evolve

Calling often gets overlooked, when it comes to technology upgrades, because it’s taken for granted—it always works. But with the increase in hybrid work and the focus on hybrid workplaces, supporting a work from anywhere workforce, it’s time to re-think your calling needs. Would it be smart to adopt a more agile, flexible calling system now to support a growing hybrid workforce in the future?

On-premises systems run by the IT department include hardware, network, PSTN connectivity, PBX licenses, maintenance, and upgrades. With on-prem phone systems, the IT department is responsible for the system uptime, security, and reliability. The costs add up quickly: staffing to keep systems running; maintaining and updating the systems; providing redundancy for high-availability solutions; applying security updates and patches; performing hardware and software updates; and often increasing or reducing the number of phone lines needed. It can become an accounting—and accountability—nightmare because of the many different budgets involved

Then there are cloud services, which are multi-tenant and offer customers economies of scale. Cloud calling delivers simplified, unified management across devices and locations, and in doing so, it can also mean cost savings in terms of additional staffing, maintenance, and upgrade expenses. Cloud calling services can also eliminate the risk of hardware vendor end-of-life support and software requiring frequent updates and patching, which can lead to service disruption and downtime.

Cloud calling offers businesses easier provisioning, simpler user management, guaranteed uptime in a secure environment, and service continuity, among many benefits. But as the pace of innovation continues to accelerate, cloud calling provides businesses with a means to stay current on security and other technology innovations.

Cloud calling and hybrid work

Some organizations might feel if their phone system isn’t causing issues now, then maybe it doesn’t need an update. But assuming if something isn’t broken, there is no need to fix it, will limit the success of your business tomorrow. Cloud calling will position your business to take advantage of new and emerging technology trends without requiring an infrastructure overhaul that would disrupt operations.

Businesses want to be prepared to proactively take on anything—and not only react if unplanned, external circumstances cause disruption. Cloud calling creates a more agile organization that can pivot when needed and provides collaboration capabilities to keep employees and customers connected.

Take hybrid work, for instance. The past few years forced many businesses to adopt or enhance their strategy for remote, mobile, and in-office workers. Some found themselves scrambling when lockdown orders kept employees out of the office. Now many realize the benefits of embracing technology that provides the same inclusive experience as being in the office wherever an employee can work.

According to the Wainhouse playbook: “Enterprise organizations today are faced with the biggest transition in the employee-employer relationship since the industrial revolution. Innovation is accelerating at an unimaginable pace, and external threats to internal data and communications daily outnumber the ability of any group of humans to track and contain them.”

Recent Webex studies show that 77% of employees will embrace a flexible work style, and 57% of workers expect to be in the office 10 days or less per month. That means employers need to equip employees with technologies and tools to better serve a hybrid work model. The good news is that hybrid work innovators can save up to 40% of the cost of traditional work models.

As part of that, cloud calling opens the door to more advanced collaboration technologies needed for hybrid workplaces to truly flourish. With the right platform in place, employees can more easily connect and collaborate across calling, meeting, messaging, devices, webinars, contact center, and video tools—even asynchronously—to get work done.

Business benefits of cloud calling

Cloud calling can provide organizations with countless benefits, but here are a just a few of the most relevant areas in which the technology can help companies today, according to the Wainhouse report.

1. Cloud calling aligns with a modern workforce. Adopting a unifying technology helps businesses connect the entire workforce. Without this, employees are either leaving for organizations that support flexible work models, or “quietly quitting” a workplace environment that doesn’t.
2. Cloud calling helps your business keep pace with innovation. While traditional PBX systems could require expensive upgrades, cloud calling providers update their calling services seamlessly with the latest innovations, removing the disruption of physical updates and the strain on staff to manage outdated on-premises systems.
3. Some cloud calling providers, like Webex, offer simple migration paths to better services. While PBX updates can be time-consuming and costly, causing disruption to employees’ workstreams, cloud calling vendors provide easy options to migrate some or all the users to the cloud. And it’s likely the current work and resources used to maintain the on-premises estate can easily manage its migration to the cloud.
4. Cloud calling improves your security profile. Simply put, cloud service providers can deploy and manage security on a scale that no single enterprise can match. The proliferation of threats is outpacing human capabilities to stay head of them.
5. Cloud calling controls costs and simplifies management. Cloud calling enables companies to focus more of their dollars and resources on the organization’s core mission, rather than spending cycles on upgrading or replacing old, outdated, and vulnerable systems.
6. Cloud calling makes your business more resilient. Properly implemented cloud deployment models ensure that no system, primary or redundant, is untested or non-functional in a disaster.

Why Webex Calling

Webex Calling goes beyond standalone solutions, bringing together calling, meetings, messaging, devices, webinars, events, polling, contact center, and more. Tight integration of these collaboration services into critical workflows dramatically improves the dynamics of enterprise communications and reduces friction when employees move between the corporate office, in-transit (mobile and remote), and the home office.

When evaluating cloud calling providers, consider that Webex Calling excels in several key areas, including:

• Cloud innovation: Webex has the experience of delivering highly secure solutions, trusted by millions for decades. We also are unique in our mobile-first offerings, award-winning devices, deep audio intelligence and many more innovations.
• Flexible migration: We let customers move to Webex Calling all at once, or by site, depending on the pace that best suits their business. Operations are not disrupted, and customers can easily move users, leveraging powerful migration tools and take advantage of our guided migration services.
• Easy administration: Control Hub lets our customers manage calling, meetings, messaging, contact center, devices, headsets, and network health from one administrative console. It also provides interactive analytics dashboards with proactive insights into call quality, user experience, and so much more.

Finally, Webex Calling creates an open and supportive environment for workflow integration and partnerships that create an ecosystem of support unrivaled by any on-premises environment.

To see if your business would be more successful by migrating on-premises phone systems to cloud calling, please download the full Wainhouse Research report: Future-Proof Your Workplace with Cloud Calling.

Learn More:

• Calling at the heart of hybrid collaboration
• New Webex Calling experiences to empower work from anywhere
• Why your small business needs cloud calling now