Coleman Technologies Blog

What is VoIP?

At first glance, VoIP is almost indistinguishable from the telephone services you are used to using—in fact, you’ve likely used it before.

Basically, instead of using the network of telephone wires that stretches from your service provider to your location, VoIP uses your broadband connection to transmit your call data to and from the recipient. In doing so, you eliminate the need for a pricy telephone service, instead getting double duty from your Internet.

Like we said, you’ve likely used VoIP technology in some form. Skype, Facetime, and Facebook Messenger all operate as VoIP solutions, albeit more for the personal user than an organization. For the organization, many VoIP platforms are available that provide a hefty list of features and options, leading to greater advantages.

The Advantages of Using VoIP in a Business Setting

The benefits of using VoIP are straightforward for the business:

Cost

This is perhaps the most visible (and, for that matter, impactful) benefits that Voice over Internet Protocol offers. A POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) requires a sizable investment for the infrastructure alone, never mind the additional features that aren’t included by default. Comparatively, VoIP needs very little up-front investment, and these additional features are almost always included.

Simplicity

VoIP is a perfect example of a plug-in-and-play solution, with very little else involved in its setup besides signing into your solution and literally plugging in the device. Similarly, starting up and operating the additional features incorporated into VoIP is a very user-friendly experience as well. This ease of use helps to motivate your team to use the platform’s conferencing capabilities and mobile-friendly softphone, and for your part, adding users is a simple enough task.

Function

Finally, these additional features further support your business’ capacity to communicate effectively. Here’s a general idea of what VoIP solutions will offer:

• Call forwarding
• Personalized extensions
• Call routing
• Call recording
• Automated receptionist
• Call queues
• Instant messaging
• Text messaging
• Find me, follow me
• Audio and video conferencing
• Integrated voicemail
• Line-of-business integration

Depending on the VoIP solution implemented, many more features will likely be available in addition to these.

In short, VoIP makes your business communications better, benefitting both your internal collaboration and your outreach efforts. Find out more about what VoIP can do, and what’s involved in implementing it, by calling our professionals at Coleman Technologies at (604) 513-9428.

Voice over Internet Protocol, also known as VoIP, has revolutionized the way businesses manage their communications through the use of telephony. Employees who were once tethered to their landlines or their physical locations can now break free of these constraints, and it’s all thanks to VoIP and cloud-based communication tools. Here are some of the best features of VoIP solutions for small businesses.

More Cost Savings

If you want to save costs, then VoIP is the way to go. When you work with a traditional landline telephone provider, they are sure to bundle a bunch of services together that you don’t necessarily want or need for business purposes. Using VoIP means that you’re using an asset and service you already pay for—your Internet connection—so you aren’t paying for anything you don’t already use or need. Additionally, you likely already own all the hardware you need to make proper use of the VoIP solution, as it uses your desktops, laptops, and mobile devices to function. While you could go the route of acquiring more traditional handsets, the flexibility is there for those who want and need it.

Greater Scalability

Running a business comes with inevitable growing pains. Eventually, your business will outgrow its current communications infrastructure, which is a good problem to have, but not for your phone infrastructure. To add new lines or handsets, you might have to knock down walls or use other creative solutions to ensure the networking and routing of the phone infrastructure is sound, creating all kinds of disruptions to your operations and workflow in the process. VoIP is hosted in the cloud and run through a downloadable application, meaning that you are using your Internet connection and a program to access your phone line. This means adding new accounts or numbers is as simple as creating one and downloading the app.

Enhanced Flexibility and Mobility

With VoIP, you aren’t limited to your landline or even your desk. Thanks to the ability to download a hosted VoIP application on your smartphone, you can keep your work phone number on your mobile device for anytime, anywhere access to it. You can take work calls on your work phone number while out of the office, on business trips, or while working out of your home. With this kind of accessibility, imagine how much more work your organization can get accomplished. Your customers will also appreciate your team being more available than ever.

Ready to Implement VoIP?

If you want to commit to improving your business’ communications infrastructure, Coleman Technologies can help. We’ll work with your business to integrate VoIP with its technology and collaboration platforms in a way which makes sense for you. To learn more, call us today at (604) 513-9428.

Technology is only effective in the hands of the right—or, at least, well-trained—employees. To work toward this goal, you’ll have to ramp up your hiring processes to ensure you garner the interest of the right candidates for the jobs. Nowhere is this more true than for your IT department. Let’s go over how you can make your business an attractive employment option for skilled and innovative technicians.

Better Technology Means a More Attractive Workplace

No one wants to work for a business that refuses to upgrade its technology and makes do with substandard solutions—especially in today’s flexibility-minded era. If you want to attract and retain top talent, you’ll need to offer them options like the opportunity for remote work when necessary, or at least part of the time. Your IT department is going to want these capabilities anyway, after all, because they only serve to improve your business’ operations.

Technology Makes Recruitment Easier

Keep in mind that you’re not the only one out there looking for top talent. If you take too much time during the hiring and interviewing process, you might find yourself being ghosted by candidates who were contacted by other, faster organizations. Automation is one tool you can use to ensure that your candidate searches go as efficiently as possible. The right solution will make scheduling interviews and reviewing resumes much easier. This should not only help you attract the attention of top talent, but do so before the competition does, too.

Technology is Great for Professional Development and Education

The last piece of advice we want to leave you with is that you should always encourage your team to expand their current skill sets. Again, with IT requiring constant learning, and sometimes relearning, of various practices and principles, you’ll want to ensure that your team has time to pursue tasks and skills that enrich your business. Automation can free up more time for training by virtue of making tasks easier and less time-consuming. Plus, it also allows your team to be happier with the tasks they are charged with because they will be more impactful and meaningful than rote work. 

If you’re worried about attracting top IT talent, look no further than Coleman Technologies. We can be your in-house IT department just as easily as an outsourced agency. To learn more, call us at (604) 513-9428.

Collaboration is at the heart of any effective business. Most organizations today are trying to make the most of their limited resources, and one of the ways to do this is with a solid collaboration strategy. Here’s how you can do the same to avoid siloing tasks and squandering your workforce’s potential.

Collaboration in Business

In business, it’s easy to confuse collaboration and communication as the same thing.

The truth is that they are very different things. Collaboration involves more direct work between parties toward a shared goal. On the other hand, communication is the channel through which teamwork flows.

Technology gives businesses the ability to improve collaboration at all levels:

• Simple collaboration - This type involves real-time communications like instant messaging that provide quick results. Although it can often lead to distractions, it promotes a fast and easy exchange of ideas, which leads to more effective project completion.
• Data collaboration - This collaboration goes beyond simple communication and gives multiple workers the ability to contribute at the same time. This might look like working in the same document in real-time. This type of collaboration has flourished in a world where remote and hybrid work is accepted.
• Structured collaboration - With this level of collaboration, you have structured meetings where the physical or live virtual interaction between attendees is necessary. Whether the meeting is effective or not usually depends on the agenda (if one exists) and how much the attendees’ input is considered.

The Importance of Collaboration

You can supercharge your business with the right collaborative approach.

More often than not, more opinions and feedback mean more opportunities to do good. When your employees are trained appropriately, collaboration technology helps facilitate just that. With cloud-based tools and streamlined processes, you will be amazed at your team's accomplishments.

For more information about collaboration technology, contact Coleman Technologies at (604) 513-9428.

Collaboration tools can be remarkably helpful for businesses, if not downright essential to their success. With the right tools that are, of course, configured the right way, you can see exponential returns on your investment as your staff enjoy the many benefits they provide. Today, we want to discuss four common pitfalls with your collaboration tool security that must be addressed.

Ensure Secure Data Sharing Protocols

It’s easy to assume that your collaboration platforms are properly securing your business’ files when you share them through the apps, but this is not necessarily the case. You want to do some research and make sure that any tools you use—particularly those that are a part of the public cloud—use encryption to keep your files and communications secure. Yes, this also means your email solution!

Do Research on Your Solutions and Providers

When you are working with providers during the initial setup of your collaboration tools, you’ll need to be extra careful to ensure that you are appropriately configuring your solutions for maximum security. It’s easy to make the assumption that what one business finds useful will work for another, but it’s simply not the case, and providers who aren’t going to help you ensure you get the most value and security out of your solution have no place being on your business’ payroll, so to speak. In other words, make sure you understand your business’ needs first, then clearly articulate those needs to your providers so they can be obligated to help you get what you need from the agreement.

Make Sure Collaboration Tools are Centrally Managed and Maintained

If you’re having your employees use collaboration apps and tools, then you should ensure that they are not finding alternative solutions that are outside of your company’s control. You can dissuade them from making use of external apps—a concept known as shadow IT—by providing them with the tools they need to effectively do their jobs. The reason for this is that you don’t want them sharing company data through third-party or external apps that you cannot control or gain access to if needed.

Make Sure Your Team is Secure, Too

How do your employees access the resources they need to do their jobs? You need to make sure that employees who work out of the office for any reason are using secure Internet connections, further reinforced through the use of a virtual private network to obfuscate your data from any onlookers.

Coleman Technologies can work with your business to secure its collaboration tools, from your productivity suite to your email communications solution to your networking solutions. To learn more, call us today at (604) 513-9428.

Business Doesn’t Stop, But You Should

We’ve all been there. We’re driving or on the train and a phone call comes in that you absolutely have to take. What do you do? Most people will take the call, but the right thing to do is send it to voicemail and return the call as soon as possible. Why? Because you are distracted. It’s best to call back and give the caller the attention they deserve rather than trying to juggle a phone call in the middle of traffic. Okay, this one is pretty basic, but it’s the foundation of all mobile etiquettes.

Don’t Be Rude

One of the biggest problems with mobile business is that there seems to be a continuous amount of communications that come in. This isn’t a problem when you are free to talk or text. It can be a problem if you are with other people, however. If you must take a phone call when you are face-to-face with others, be sure to excuse yourself and go at least ten feet away. This is courteous, and after all, it’s only four more feet than social distancing.

Brevity is often a cornerstone to modern mobile communication, with emails and texts often being short and sweet. Keep in mind though, sometimes being overly short can come across as disarming or even disrespectful to the recipient.

Stop Texting in Important Moments

One of the biggest faux pas that a mobile professional can have is the tendency to text people when other people demand their attention. If there is business going on right in front of you, even if it’s just a meal or an impromptu conversation, do yourself a favor and wait until it is over to return text messages. Again, pretty basic, but it doesn’t hurt to keep it top of mind.

Make Sure You Have Good Reception

This one is a serious problem. A lot of times when people are on the go, their service is not conducive to professional conversation. You can't do business if calls keep getting dropped or texts don't go through because you've chosen a poor place to conduct a mobile meeting; and nothing ruins your ability to communicate than if people have to stop every few minutes to get clarification or ask you to repeat yourself. Choose your location wisely.

Sometimes you can’t help it, we get it, but if you are planning on running a meeting and need to participate, try to be somewhere where the service is reliable. It’s a sign that you respect everyone else’s time. If it’s impossible to prevent, simply be forthcoming about it and let everyone know at the start of the call. Perhaps even give an option to resume the call later if things get too difficult for the other participants.

Return Calls as Soon as Possible

When you return phone calls soon after you miss them, it shows professionalism and respect for the caller. If you are going to be out of touch for a bit, whether it be for meetings or personal time, it is solid practice to change your voicemail to state when you won’t be available. Then, when you are available, be sure to reach back out. Nothing is worse than getting a voicemail stating that the person won’t be available two weeks ago.

The mobile device is one of the best business tools available for people today, but knowing how to use them professionally is extremely important. Have you had to deal with a vendor or client that doesn’t adhere to mobile best practices? Leave your stories in the comments section below and return to our blog for more great tips and tricks each week.

It goes without saying that having a comprehensive communications strategy is critical for the functionality of your business. Many businesses use traditional phone systems, and they pay handsomely for them. VoIP is a great way to utilize the bandwidth you already pay for to facilitate a business phone solution.

A VoIP system works by transferring sounds into data packets and then transferring them in real-time over an Internet connection. The sound is simply unpacking the data packets. The reason so many small businesses are switching to a VoIP system is that it allows an organization to manage their telephone system cost more effectively.

Nowadays there are hosted VoIP options that present companies with a virtual call center of sorts. Essentially, instead of hosting a stand-alone server at your place of business, the telephone system is hosted in the cloud and accessed through a web client.

Before you can consider either VoIP platform, you’ll have to determine what type of control you need over the technology. If you are someone that wants to play with settings and configurations, hosting your own PBX phone server may be the way to go, but if you are someone that doesn’t mind spending a little more per month to have these systems managed for you, a cloud-based VoIP solution should be right for you.

Your average VoIP solution provides your business with a path to cut the often-substantial capital costs of buying, housing, and maintaining an onsite telephony server. Since the provider will absorb the costs of maintenance and the outward reliability of the platform, you can spend less time focusing on managing your telephone system and more time relying on it.

Since VoIP downtime is not an option for the average business, you’ll want to consult with Coleman Technologies IT professionals to help you find the right solution to fit your business’ needs. Our staff are experts at designing, implementing, and managing computing networks that work for the modern business, so relying on us to help you deploy the right communications platform makes a lot of sense.

For more information about hosted VoIP or any other communication used to improve employee productivity and customer satisfaction, call Coleman Technologies today at (604) 513-9428.

Effective teamwork is indispensable for business success. Collaboration stands out as an extremely important consideration, yet devising a strategy that expedites project completion and enhances service delivery poses challenges. This week, we get into modern collaboration practices and how technology can help you improve collaboration.

Cohesive Dynamics

Collaboration remains a critical concern for organizations due to its pivotal role in productivity. Many initiatives to improve teamwork often fall short of building the collaborative spirit among team members. Without a coordinated strategy for facilitating collaboration, instances of redundancy run rampant. 

Technology's Contribution to Collaboration

Technology serves as a catalyst in creating collaborative relationships and propelling business initiatives forward. The evolution of productivity suites, equipped with applications enabling simultaneous work on shared files allows your employees a cache of tools that can really push the needle in regards to productivity. 

Key Technological Components

Communication Tools

An important aspect of any robust collaboration platform is effective communication. Technologies such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), video conferencing, text and instant messaging, and email collectively constitute a comprehensive communication framework for every business. Unifying all these tools provides businesses with a lot of flexibility.

Collaboration Apps

Recognizing the growing reliance on collaborative strategies for maintaining productivity and efficiency, businesses are now looking harder at collaborative tools. These apps consolidate various tools into one application, enabling project managers to assign tasks efficiently while providing team members with the requisite tools for optimal performance. Features like instant messaging, video meetings, and file sharing streamline workflows, facilitating quicker project completion and bolstering overall productivity.

Effective collaboration emerges as a linchpin for success in an era where businesses seek to optimize resource utilization and enhance customer experiences. Leveraging technological advancements in communication and collaboration tools empowers organizations to overcome challenges and foster a culture of collaboration. Should your business require assistance bolstering its collaboration efforts, our expert technicians can provide tailored solutions. Contact us today at (604) 513-9428 to embark on the journey towards enhanced teamwork and productivity.

We’ve seen the conference rooms of a lot of businesses, from the modified break-room with stale coffee to immaculate lecture rooms with plush, comfy seats, and everything in between.

A good conference room can do a lot to impress potential clients and customers, encourage collaboration within your team, and leave a great impression on potential employees too. While we’re not going to pretend to be interior decorators, there are definitely some important steps that we can assist with to make sure your conference room is up to the task.

Clear Out the Clutter

First things first, your conference room needs to be neat and tidy. I’ve seen workplaces with conference rooms that often serve other functions depending on the day, and that’s fine. If your office has gym equipment or occasionally converts the conference room into a daycare for employed parents, that is definitely a nice gesture. However, you’ll want to be able to quickly transform the room into a comfortable meeting space without a lot of stuff in the way.

Avoid letting your conference room become the catchall for storage, because this is something that can escalate very quickly. It’s not a room for your staff to borrow office chairs from—you should be providing the comfiest office chairs for the butts that sit at the desks all day anyway. Your conference room should be ready to use for meetings and presentations at a moment’s notice.

Thoroughly Test the Wi-Fi

Anybody working in your conference room is likely going to be on the Wi-Fi. Make sure you have very strong service and direct or very-near direct access to the access point. That might mean installing a wireless access point in your conference room, or adjusting the position of the access point that is nearest to your conference room. 

Either way, imagine the types of real-world scenarios that you will put your wireless network through; your staff is all working on the network, and you have 6 or 8 or more people sitting in the conference room, connecting to the Wi-Fi.

You’ll want to make sure you have a reliable wireless network, and that you segment out the network for guests. 

You can do some creative things to help guests get signed into the Wi-Fi; I’ve seen people simply put up a sign with a QR code, or use NFC chips that you can scan with most smartphones. You’ll likely also want to post the guest password for those who can’t scan QR codes or NFC chips.

Wireless Peripherals to Pass Around

If you have a screen (or multiple screens) to display presentations on, make sure you have some easy-to-use wireless peripherals to control and manage on-screen content. A wireless keyboard and mouse assigned to the conference room will go a long way to make things easier for participants to work together and collaborate. 

Usually, that means having an endpoint (usually a mini PC) connected to the screen, so users can sign in and pull up presentations. If this is a standard endpoint on your network, you will also want to make sure that it is secured and monitored like the rest of your endpoints.

Clear Audio and Video for Remote Meetings

There may be times when you want to host a meeting with participants who can’t physically make it to your conference room. Thanks to the pandemic, these are typically called Zoom Rooms, and they are a great way to have multiple participants on your end meet with clients and teams remotely.

There are plenty of devices on the market that accomplish this task, from conference room phones that sit in the middle of the table, to small tablets that can be moved around. Either way, you’ll want a clear audio solution that everyone will be able to hear and participate in.

Need Help Modernizing Your Conference Room?

Your conference room should be dressed to impress. We can help provide the technology that makes it a place of collaboration for your staff, partners, and clients. To get a quote, give us a call at (604) 513-9428.