The UK recruitment sector is one of the country’s strongest industries, seeing significant annual growth year-on-year; it’s also one of the most competitive, with almost 3,000 new startups being founded in the first half of 2016. In this highly competitive and lucrative industry every edge counts, and being tied to an old-fashioned telephone service can spell death for a new recruitment agency; you can easily spend thousands of pounds investing in and upgrading your exchange to handle more calls, with hardware that’s expensive to install and maintain. However, hosted phone systems are changing all of this: the power and flexibility of Horizon’s hosted phone services provides businesses of all sizes with a stable, adaptable and productive telecommunications package.
How does a hosted phone service work?
Essentially, a hosted phone service moves your entire telephone system online, using your premises’ internet connections to provide communications; calls are transmitted over VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), which allows for voice data to be carried over your company’s network. Rather than having a bulky exchange installed in your premises, the data is all handled remotely at a “hosted exchange” – you have as much or as little control as you want, and small-scale installations typically only take a couple of days. By taking advantage of digital information technology, hosted phone services provide a degree of flexibility that old-fashioned exchanges simply can’t match.
Flexible and responsive
As more and more millennials enter the workplace, there’s greater emphasis being placed on flexible working hours and the ability to work from home. To keep your staff happy, it’s good to offer some degree of freedom, but you can’t afford to lose productivity as a result of employees being out of the office – you need to know that staff can be easily and reliably contacted whether they’re at work or at home.
Because hosted phone services can easily re-route calls to an employee’s own device, they make flexible working a breeze, and Horizon’s services are even linkable from an Android or iOS app; simply assign a single number to each employee, and they’ll be instantly reachable wherever they’re working. In addition to this, Horizon’s advanced call management systems are able to route calls dynamically to your staff, sending calls to employees whose phone rang least recently, ensuring that the work is shared evenly and clients receive the best quality service.
Future-proof your business
By transferring your communications solution to a cloud-hosted exchange, you’ll be able to expand your services quickly and cheaply to keep up with demand; licences are granted on a per-user basis, so you can simply add new lines as your business grows, rather than waiting on the phone company to send their engineers out. This makes it much easier to expand into new premises, as well, since you won’t need to install a bulky and costly telephone exchange before you can open for business, a process that typically takes a long time to complete.
Horizon Hosted telephony is provided by Gamma, the UK market leader for cloud-based telecommunications solutions, and is delivered in conjunction with Broadsoft, a global Unified Communications provider. Because both of these companies use cutting-edge technology to provide their services, new features for the already-rich platform are rolled out to users immediately, which allows you to take advantage of ongoing development without having to re-invest.
Always-on, disaster-proof
Cloud-hosted telephony is vastly more resilient than a physical phone exchange as there’s no single point of failure; it’s hosted online, so you needn’t worry about an errant power surge knocking your agency out of business. You’ll be protected, and your clients will be able to reach you without fail, no matter what. You’re also able to re-route calls easily, so if you need to divert calls to another premises you’ll suffer no lack of productivity – Horizon will simply transfer the calls and you can keep on working!
Everything in one box
Horizon supply everything you need to take your business communications systems into the cloud, without requiring any third parties: all you need to get started is a decent internet connection. A Horizon supplier will walk you through all your requirements and handle the migration across to the cloud, including installing any handsets you require. Because it’s so cheap and easy to set up hosted phone services in comparison with an on-site PBX, this is an ideal solution for businesses which are just starting out, and Horizon’s 24/7 support services mean you won’t be kept waiting for an engineer if something’s not right.
For any business that takes communications seriously, hosted phone services are the stand-out choice – their flexibility and scalability make them an excellent choice for businesses both large and small, and in the fast-moving world of recruitment agencies these qualities are essential.
Gemma Maroney is part of the team at hosted communications specialists Solution IP. Connect with them on LinkedIn and follow them on Twitter and Facebook for more insights into hosted telephony.
How does a hosted phone service work?
Essentially, a hosted phone service moves your entire telephone system online, using your premises’ internet connections to provide communications; calls are transmitted over VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), which allows for voice data to be carried over your company’s network. Rather than having a bulky exchange installed in your premises, the data is all handled remotely at a “hosted exchange” – you have as much or as little control as you want, and small-scale installations typically only take a couple of days. By taking advantage of digital information technology, hosted phone services provide a degree of flexibility that old-fashioned exchanges simply can’t match.
Flexible and responsive
As more and more millennials enter the workplace, there’s greater emphasis being placed on flexible working hours and the ability to work from home. To keep your staff happy, it’s good to offer some degree of freedom, but you can’t afford to lose productivity as a result of employees being out of the office – you need to know that staff can be easily and reliably contacted whether they’re at work or at home.
Because hosted phone services can easily re-route calls to an employee’s own device, they make flexible working a breeze, and Horizon’s services are even linkable from an Android or iOS app; simply assign a single number to each employee, and they’ll be instantly reachable wherever they’re working. In addition to this, Horizon’s advanced call management systems are able to route calls dynamically to your staff, sending calls to employees whose phone rang least recently, ensuring that the work is shared evenly and clients receive the best quality service.
Future-proof your business
By transferring your communications solution to a cloud-hosted exchange, you’ll be able to expand your services quickly and cheaply to keep up with demand; licences are granted on a per-user basis, so you can simply add new lines as your business grows, rather than waiting on the phone company to send their engineers out. This makes it much easier to expand into new premises, as well, since you won’t need to install a bulky and costly telephone exchange before you can open for business, a process that typically takes a long time to complete.
Horizon Hosted telephony is provided by Gamma, the UK market leader for cloud-based telecommunications solutions, and is delivered in conjunction with Broadsoft, a global Unified Communications provider. Because both of these companies use cutting-edge technology to provide their services, new features for the already-rich platform are rolled out to users immediately, which allows you to take advantage of ongoing development without having to re-invest.
Always-on, disaster-proof
Cloud-hosted telephony is vastly more resilient than a physical phone exchange as there’s no single point of failure; it’s hosted online, so you needn’t worry about an errant power surge knocking your agency out of business. You’ll be protected, and your clients will be able to reach you without fail, no matter what. You’re also able to re-route calls easily, so if you need to divert calls to another premises you’ll suffer no lack of productivity – Horizon will simply transfer the calls and you can keep on working!
Everything in one box
Horizon supply everything you need to take your business communications systems into the cloud, without requiring any third parties: all you need to get started is a decent internet connection. A Horizon supplier will walk you through all your requirements and handle the migration across to the cloud, including installing any handsets you require. Because it’s so cheap and easy to set up hosted phone services in comparison with an on-site PBX, this is an ideal solution for businesses which are just starting out, and Horizon’s 24/7 support services mean you won’t be kept waiting for an engineer if something’s not right.
For any business that takes communications seriously, hosted phone services are the stand-out choice – their flexibility and scalability make them an excellent choice for businesses both large and small, and in the fast-moving world of recruitment agencies these qualities are essential.
Gemma Maroney is part of the team at hosted communications specialists Solution IP. Connect with them on LinkedIn and follow them on Twitter and Facebook for more insights into hosted telephony.
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