Five Ways for SMBs to Succeed Using New Communications Technologies

What do skate park, lettuce harvesting, and real estate businesses have in common? These savvy small businesses are cutting overhead costs and growing their business by better utilizing communication technologies.

The Changing Communication Landscape for SMBs

In today’s world, brick-and-mortar is no longer critical, and size doesn’t matter. On the Internet, a small company can look as big as a large company. How effectively companies communicate with their customers, suppliers, business partners, and employees can be the difference between business won and business lost. A breakdown in communications could easily send a customer to a competitor, and for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), each and every customer is critical.

The workplace has changed. Today, 90% of employees work at least some time outside of their office1. Because of this, most people must use a variety of devices and communications channels in their daily lives, which can make it even more difficult to communicate efficiently and easily. To improve communications both inside and outside of the office, leading-edge companies are turning to Unified Communications (UC). UC lets workers connect to all the different devices, applications, and other communications systems they use while making communications richer, easier, and more intuitive.

The good news for small and medium-sized businesses, defined as companies with fewer than 1,000 employees, is that many of them have been progressively unifying their communications without coining it as "UC."