Industry professionals and entrepreneurs today are looking for a flexible working environment. In fact recent surveys revealed that more and more staff prefer to work on a flexible shift and if possible to work from home. All these may seem to be too much for a business to handle but in reality businesses and staffs will gain equal benefits from such set up.

A flexible working environment such as work at home will promote better efficiency and dedication to work which will lead to higher productivity rate. Cost wise, having your staff work from home can also save you money. How? Obviously the more people in the office the higher your bills will be and since you will have less people on site you can even downsize your office to a smaller space further reducing your overhead costs. But bear in mind though that there are also quite a few considerations that you need to bear in mind before deploying such set up. Below is a list of considerations you need to take into account.

Communication – One of the biggest challenges in a work from home set up is communication. This is where a reliable and effective office telephone system comes to play. You should be able to contact your staff; the same way contact you anytime without the distance boundaries. The main idea to perform duties and tasks as if they are in the office, luckily technology today has paved way for a newer and innovative office telephone system that allows just about that.

A cloud PBX is a solution from VoIP that removes the distance boundaries because it uses the internet and trunks instead a set of hardware. This means phones can be located anywhere in world as long as there is an internet connection and work as if it located under one roof.

Data storage – Since you will be working distant from each other, local file storage will not work anymore. A cloud based storage where you and your staff can view, download, upload and share files is a must have. There is several free cloud storage software in the market today and some CRM also has the capabilities to accommodate such feature.

Time tracker – A method to track your staffs time and progress is also a must have. Not only that it will tell you how much work they’ve put up to pay accordingly but also let you know the challenges they are facing with their work. Additionally, there are some time trackers that will even take screen shots or allow you to view your staff’s screen in real time to remove any doubts in a home based set up.

In general a cloud PBX office telephone system is a great business communication solution. It is able to deliver unimaginable levels of flexibility, tons of amazing features and above reduce overhead cost by as much as 50%. However businesses need to be aware that since it is a VoIP solution the main requirement is the internet, which today is a no brainer because almost everyone can secure a reliable connection. But still it pays if you are able to understand the exact requirements of VoIP solutions to maximize the technology.

Most articles on the web will say that a good internet connection is a must have for a cloud PBX office telephone system to work properly. Well, that is true. However, it raises a question. What is considered good and what’s not? Below are some points to watch out for before deploying a cloud PBX office telephone system or any other VoIP solutions.

Speed – Obviously a sufficient bandwidth is needed to run VoIP solutions, both download and upload speeds are equally important as phones work both ways. Depending on the audio codec built onto it, an IP phone may require 7kbps to 50 kbps. Not much, but remember it is a continuous stream, whilst on a call, so the internet speed you have should be able to accommodate all the requirements of your phone and your computer, if you will be sharing a network. Also some ISPs have bandwidth thresholds, which mean that you can only use a certain amount of data in a month. Be sure to also take this into account.

 Jitter – Is an undesired deviation during a data transmission, the higher the jitter the more likely voices will be delayed during a conversation. In a VoIP call, voices are converted to digital signals that are packetized. Think of as message envelopes, when you say the word Hello, The letter H and put to an envelope and sent, then the letter E and so on. The other party’s phone then transcribes these data into a form that we understand. Jitter causes these data to be delivered in an incorrect manner. For an instance in the word Hello the letter E comes first before the letter H. This is easily solved by IP phones with the use of jitter buffers because all data are sent with a sequence number. However, the more jitter your internet have, the more incorrect data are transmitted leading to delays.

Packet loss – Is the amount of data that are lost during the transmission. The average acceptable packet loss is below 2% because the network, server and other components of VoIP can still fill in the lost data, go higher then you will then start to notice that voices are breaking up.

Consistency of connection – Apart from speed, jitter and packet loss stability is also important. You don’t want an internet connection that goes from 1 megabit to 10 megabit and back to 1 megabit because it can affect the quality of calls.

If you are experiencing the above problems make sure to talk to your ISP because these are often cause by bad fiber connection. Have them check your lines and exchanges. Additionally it is advisable to secure a business grade plan because of the top level support priority and avoid contention because of overly subscribed home grade plans.