2017 is a great year to launch a business. If you want to start a business, but you haven’t yet, take a moment right now and list the obstacles that are stopping you. There's a good chance that you have the ability to break through those barriers with the right knowledge.

In the old world, people met in the marketplace or via a network of friends and family. That’s still true, but now both the network and the marketplace have online components. Growing your business depends on optimizing your business communication with strangers, but practice alone won’t make...

What kind of communicator are you?

Do you like to write off long emails, copying every potential stakeholder, and including all the details in interest of full disclosure?

Finding, developing and retaining great talent has become a major problem for businesses of all sizes, across all industries.

In fact, US employers report the highest global talent shortage since 2007. But it isn’t just a national problem. The talent crunch is global, and together with dismal...

Choosing the right telephone system for your company may be the most important decision you have to make about your business infrastructure. Like it or not, the telephone is a necessary evil. The telephone remains an essential link to customers as well as a vital tool for internal collaboration....

Picture managing a team in space. You can't get any more remote than that. How confident would you be? Confidence in your team can be deadly if it’s not based on a solid foundation of honest communication.

You've got 14 seconds. The clock is running down. How are you going to capture the attention of whoever you have on the line?

Here's what we've found: The first step is to hit reset on how you think about time. 

Employees are more productive when using their own phones as business phones.

Email overload and conversation avoidance aren’t two problems. They are only one -- seen from different angles. The problem is inefficient communication that arises from using the wrong channel, and the all too human impulse to resort to the path of least resistance. 

There are two types of churn that SMBs need to contain: talent churn and customer churn. These are not just problems for SMB owners, HR managers, or customer service. Everyone in a small business has a role to play in reducing churn because this is critical to business survival.

On the bright...

Business communications strategies have changed as email, the web, texting, and social media take an increasingly important role in staff and customer communications. However, the telephone is still an essential business tool.

Nothing is more efficient or more compelling than the one-to-one...

Small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are driving the U.S. economy.

Many small businesses have switched to VoIP in search of better scalability and better reliability. In a study from 2014, those were the top two features that drove the VoIP purchase decisions and 57% of these were first time VoIP buyers.

Somehow, when we weren’t really paying attention, the coworking movement grew up from its counterculture roots and became a mature, economically viable ecosystem of shared infrastructure, empowering technology, collaboration and community.   

Remote work can mean many different things to many different people. Some cherish the opportunity to work at home where they can be close to family, while others thrive in the vibrant atmosphere of the global coworking community, with new spaces popping up all over the world.

You may have heard that the future has already arrived, but it’s not equally distributed yet. That’s a good description of the state the following futuristic business technology trends. 

Today’s economy is fueled by startups that grow into small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). In every industry, there are entrepreneurs using new technology and new business strategies to start something innovative, and no matter what their market, these fledgling businesses adopt the same...

There was a time when coworking spaces were marketed as a low-rent version of office space for those who choose OpEx over CapEx due to financial necessity.  

Those days are long gone.

Coworking communities and the freelance lifestyle are defining themselves as destinations that are vast...

In the old-fashioned, traditional office everyone worked the same hours in the same place. While that had clear limitations in terms of business speed and talent retention, at least the communications structure was simple.

The boss handed down work plans directly to employees, usually face to...

It’s inevitable: Digital transformation will end up leaving some companies behind, and not just legacy giants. The mandate goes something like this: Be transformed, or get disrupted. Leaders at Cisco are among those predicting a major extinction event that will eliminate 4 out of 10 businesses...

Have you ever had one of those nightmares where you’re trying to shout something but no words come out?

Have you ever realized that it wasn’t just a dream?

The nightmare of being unable to communicate something critical at an urgent moment is lived out daily in the workplace.

How can you have a business phone line if you don’t have a physical phone system?  

Apps and mobile technology have solved that. Business phone systems no longer live in bulky hardware and desk phones. They can be virtualized to function across your mobile phone infrastructure, offering all the...

Why would you need a virtual phone system?

That answer is easy. In today’s business world, no one is stationary and as executives and employees telecommute and travel, it becomes more imperative than ever to keep in touch by telephone. Virtual telephone systems offer “find me/follow me”...

"The most dangerous place to make a decision is within the office," -- Ulrik Nehammer, Senior VP at Salesforce

His message is clear: Go mobile to collect better intel and then you can make smarter choices about the future of your business. As your business starts to grow, though, it can be...

BYOD was just the tip of the iceberg. The mobile revolution, combined with the augmented workforce, are creating a new world of work where everyone exists as their own self-contained virtual office. Workers are even bringing their own business telephone services to the co-working space--right on...

It would be easier to manage your staff if all the employees were motivated by the same things and worked in the same way. Unfortunately, the speed of change in the workplace means that business tools and processes evolve quickly, and every new generation of workers brings its own values,...

It seems like everyone is selling a desk phone system these days, even as they race at the same time towards virtualization of the hardware in the cloud. The cloud is eating the channel. The graveyard of defunct business phone systems is growing. Yet, to be fair, the desk phone is still a...

Don’t accept office phone tag as just another cost of doing business. It’s wrong, it’s expensive, and it's relatively easy to fix. There's no reason this modern blight has to follow you into 2018.

Business telecom in the US is undergoing a massive restructuring on a scale that is both unprecedented and incomparable.

At the same time, evolving telecom technology is putting society through some radical changes. The result is a volatile legal/regulatory environment on the state and federal...

Good communication is the foundation of any business, yet effective team communication continues to prove elusive for many organizations. Getting people to understand one another and communicate efficiently has been a problem since man started walking upright. In the workplace, the problem is...

Some things are so simple, like a cup of coffee. 

Other things, like navigating an IP telephone configuration menu, not so much. 

Did you forget something? In all the excitement of running a business, it’s a dead certainty that something will slip your mind. Otherwise there wouldn’t be such an enormous market for reminders, to-dos, and automated task apps.

Technology should be giving you more hours in the day, not frustrating you and eating into your most precious, non-renewable resource: time. 

Having the right tools is not the same as knowing the best way to use them. Here are five incredibly valuable SMB technologies along with the social...

Improving team communications is a sure way to improve operating efficiency and ultimately increase profits. If you appreciate that time really is money, then making the best use of work time is important. One of the simplest ways to make better use of time and increase operational efficiency is...

There are some technologies that change business so significantly that it's hard to remember what came before. That’s true of innovations like ATMs, the web, mobile devices, and ridesharing. You can probably come up with a few more if you think about it. The point is that one or more of the...

Did you know that this year is the 10th anniversary of the introduction of the Apple iPhone? In the last 10 years, the iPhone, along with each of the other iterations of smartphones, has revolutionized wireless communications and changed the way everyone thinks about their phone...

Hiring may be one of the most recognizable indications of business growth, but it’s not the most accurate or the even the best idea, in many cases.

It’s hard to keep pace with changes in technology, especially in the telecommunication sector. It seems that new telecom services and systems are entering the market every day, and many of these innovations can have a direct impact on your business. Tracking trends in business communication can...

Did you know that 99% of private employer firms are medium-sized businesses with less than 500 employees, and 89% are small companies with 20 or less employees?

Small businesses are the true drivers of innovation and growth in America today.

Did you know that it takes between six and eight touches to convert a sales prospect into a customer? Each touch requires a different set of marketing communications tools, with different degrees of effectiveness. For example, the top five tools for business-to-business (B2B) lead generation are...

Did you know that people are sending and receiving around 212 billion emails every day? That’s two emails for every single cell in your brain. Some days it feels like all of them wound up in your inbox

Distributed teams aren't natural. They don't just happen. They have to be crafted carefully like any creation of an artisan. The pathway that distributed teams that in communicating their progress on business objectives need to be built link by link. 

Today’s marketplace is truly global, and small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are becoming bigger players in the global economy. Not only are more SMBs sending goods and services abroad, they are working more closely with global teams that provide regional sales and support, as well as...

Millennials in the workplace are the driving force behind successful technological adoption, but their technical proficiency and communication styles are often not considered when crafting an organizational communication plan. Successful unified communications (UC) planning starts at the ground...

Anywhere you go, you can observe intensely focused people. On city trains, libraries, coffee shops, at the office, bus stops, and even at the dinner table, people are apparently actively engaged in some task, busily engrossed in their smartphones.

Some technologies like app-enabled smartphones seem to appear and change the entire business landscape overnight. Although phones connected to the web had been around for years, it was the iPhone’s rich app ecosystem the kicked off the mobile revolution 10 years ago. 

Effective communication and interpersonal skills are often cited as lacking among the new generation of business professionals. The ability to connect and communicate with others is the single most important business skill a professional can have. It affects not only sales, service, and customer...

Customer retention has to be the top priority for any business. It takes a lot of time and money to attract new business, especially in the age of the web when consumers have more choice than ever and can readily find more alternatives to your product or service. Once you have landed a new...

Imagine a world where IT is seen as a strategic investment, not as a discretionary expenditure, and imagine that your foundational technology involves pain-free deployment. Companies such as Amazon, Google, eBay, and iTunes have redrawn the lines. It’s hard to tell where business ends and IT...

Customer experience is the new gold standard for business. Forbes listed user experience as one of the top trends for digital transformation in 2017. But user experience isn’t merely a feature of design and UX. While designers are tasked with creating a friction-free software experience for the...

Business communication involves more than just sales, but sales is the lifeblood of business, so it deserves a bit of special attention.

You may have read that cold calling is dead. That’s what headlines will tell you on many sites across the web. You probably also heard that cold calling is...

Improvements in the speed and stability of enterprise networks have resulted in an explosion in Voice over IP (VoIP). After all, what business wouldn’t want to save money by using VoIP technology to harness the internet for telecommunications? VoIP makes global calling virtually free with...

An urban legend is a false story that contains an outlandish, frightening, or freakish storyline that contains just enough potential truth to be believable. Traditionally, such stories traveled from person to person orally, but now travel through the Internet at light speed.

There was a time when choosing a business phone system was easy; you had one choice, your local telephone company. Today businesses have a number of telecommunications options—Voice over IP (VoIP), on-premise PBX, online PBX, mobile phones, hosted services, virtual phone services—and choosing...

A good friend of mine used to joke around saying, “I LOVE change. You go first!” Humans are creatures of habit. Although many homo sapiens are seen touting about how much they love gadgets and new toys, when it comes to asking them to edit a habit, it’s incredibly difficult to make that happen....

Disruption will always be possible while there remains inefficiencies to exploit. Although technology has advanced at a rapid pace, and individuals have been willing adopters, organizations have moved at a more ponderous rate. Many are still stuck in old legacy models and mindsets, even if...

For many years, business phone systems have promised smart features like natural language processing. Automated answering systems are supposed to be able to understand what people say to them. Instead, they usually just infuriate callers.

Telecommunications is a rapidly changing arena. New technologies and new standards are constantly emerging, and best practices for business telecommunications are continually evolving. Whether you run a large business or a small business, telecommunications is essential to your operation, so...

Trust your instincts. The economy really is stalled and you may need to revisit your  strategy for  business growth.

It’s a small world, especially when it comes to business. Thanks to advancements in global telecommunications and online transactions, we now have a truly global economy where even the smallest companies can easily conduct business overseas. The biggest contributing factor to global business...

Migrating to a state-of-the-art voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephone system offers a number of benefits to any company. VoIP brings features that improve overall communications and productivity, such as integrated fax support, call queuing, call screening, conference calls, call forwarding, call...

Businesses share some characteristics of living organisms. They are born, they grow and all too often they experience growing pains along the way. Over the past few years, academics and business researchers have begun to question what makes a business healthy.  It’s not just a healthy balance...

When was the last time you upgraded your office telephone system? Communications tools should evolve with the needs of your business, especially as new technologies emerge and services change.

Once upon a time, purchasing a business phone system involved many less decisions. Your choices were pretty much narrowed down, based on your number of required extensions and desired features. That has changed.

As the leader of an IT team, you already know that you’ll need to decide whether...

Business communication used to be pretty simple. There were only a few channels for communication, and they were relatively straightforward. There was little chance of messages getting lost, and miscommunications were less frequent. Businesses understood their customers well. They developed...

The telephone remains the critical link to customers, prospects, and suppliers for every business, but how reliable is your telephone system? Most companies have migrated from the old-fashioned Centrex systems to hosted PBX or voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). VoIP offers digital voice...

For any business to be successful employees must collaborate effectively – and use business communication tools that are appropriate for the involved work. Research shows that 86 percent of employees cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communications as the primary cause of project...

No one communications tool can meet every business need. Workers use different types of tools—telephone, email, video conferencing, file sharing, group chat, etc.—for different types of communication and collaboration.

There are a lot of stories going around about how millennials act and what they believe. While it’s impossible to make blanket statements about the roughly 2 billion people who make up the global millennial generation, there is certainly no lack of people who are trying.

Shockwaves rumbled out...

If your small business phone system is more than six years old, you are probably on the market for a new one. And if you’re a small business, under 150 employees, the choices, options, and features are confusing, at best – even determining how many vendors need to be involved to turn on a phone...

Collaboration is often an ongoing problem for any size business. You may have a sales team of competitive individuals who are working hard to earn their own commission. Or your team might be spread across several continents. Perhaps you’re just working out the kinks of improving communication...

Messaging apps were supposed to save the world from the inefficiencies of email by delivering instantaneous notifications, but there is mounting evidence that they’ve further fractured an already fractured business communication infrastructure. To compound the confusion, everyone has at least...

Don’t do it. Don’t calculate how much of your IT budget was spent on desk handset devices and the technology to support those. And after you’ve calculated that, do not calculate how often your colleagues elect to use a smart phone over the carefully selected magical desk phones that promised...

In recent blog posts, we have been talking about how the right communication tools help build smart teams. The key to effective team building is effective communication and the better your collaboration tools, the more productive your teams will be. That’s why more smart teams are looking to use...

It's Friday. Are you leaving the office early today--or did you not go in at all? An increasingly number of companies are  offering more flexible office hours, including Fridays off. But while you should definitely leave the office early today, you should really think about leaving the office...

Good communication is the key to any successful business. Good internal communication increases productivity and employee satisfaction and decreases employee turnover. Good communication skills also help cement relationships with coworkers, customers, and partners. The better your communication...

Shopping for a business phone system? Navigating the wrecked landscape of a telecom industry disrupted can be confusing, to say the least. Everyone is selling a proprietary system (or even two or three), and the transition from legacy PBX to internet telephony seems to have replicated rather...

Improving the performance of any team requires effective communication. If you follow any sports team, what separates the winners from the losers is better internal communication; being able to telegraph moves to your teammates is what makes winning plays. But what is the foundation for...

Is BYOD really a question? If you didn’t bring your own device, whose would you bring?

The smartphone has become a ubiquitous feature of modern life, and integral to better business communication. Something like an external hard drive that we carry everywhere with us, our reliance on search...

I remember as a grad having "phone conversation lessons" at my first job in 1998. One of the most useful tips was to always smile before you answered the phone. This helped ensure a kind and uplifting tone in our voices. I cannot, however, remember having a lesson on how to get the most out of...

Employee interaction and trust are foundational to a successful organization. While water-cooler conversations and birthday cakes may seem to be a waste of time, they actually are an important part of team building. Almost as much so as scheduled, strategic team building activities. In fact,...

The millennial generation is technologically proficient, well-educated, highly skilled—and historically disengaged from their work. The latest Gallup data finds that only 31% of millennials are engaged at work. This disengagement, and the resulting productivity slowdown is the existential crisis...

“No Customer Success = No Your Success” -- Lincoln Murphy, Founder, Sixteen Ventures

People used to talk on the phone all the time, despite the many known perils attached to the practice. For example, tripping on the long, curly cord coiling itself around your feet like some kind of freaky rubber snake. Remember that? That was rough. Or how about painful red ear syndrome,...

If you take a hard look at your company’s internal communication, can you honestly say that it removes friction from your daily operations?

How effectively does your team collaborate? How difficult is it to share information in order to reach a decision? If your business is like most operations, 

The benefits of effective business communication can’t be overstated, particularly in boosting productivity and employee engagement. A comprehensive report by AON Hewitt found a direct correlation between communication and engagement, which in turn directly impacts financial outcomes....

How scared of your email inbox are you? Do you wake at night and worry that emails have been left unread, unactioned, and lonely? I have worked in senior roles within large corporations for a number of years and the one thing everyone complains about, no matter where they work, is the volume of...

Millennials represent the largest generation in US history, outnumbering even the prolific and very vocal boomers. Because of their sheer size and influence, their preferences and tendencies amount to a sea change in the way business is done, both on a consumer level, because this generation is...

Will VoIP technology make IT’s role obsolete? It sounds ironic, but the trajectory seems undeniable. First a technology is introduced, then dedicated specialists have to manage it until the technology becomes simple enough for everyone to use. It’s happened over and over with things like...

When you install any new technology, you are going to encounter roadblocks. There are a number of reasons people resist change, and without the support of senior management and the willingness of the employees to adapt to a new system, you will be fighting an uphill battle. Here are seven basic...

Do you ever feel like you’re lost in a communication desert? You have all the tools you could possibly need to communicate with anyone, anywhere; and yet you still can’t seem to get your point across. Your message is driven hither and thither by powerful winds, like the sands of the time, and...

Agility is something all businesses strive to master. An agile strategy means you are able to adapt to changing market conditions in order to stay ahead of the competition. Agile practices are becoming more common across all aspects of business. Agile project management, for example,...

By 2020, fully half of the workforce will be millennials; yet a Gallup poll recently found that 60% of all millennials are open to new job opportunities. Dovetailing neatly with that statistic, 55% of millennial workers are not engaged in their jobs, while 16% are actively disengaged, meaning...

As an IT manager, your objective is to manage your entire IT budget, including telecommunications, against what’s best for the organization. If you are considering updating the telephone system, you should take into account multiple factors before moving ahead.

“Free” doesn’t have quite the same ring that it used to, pre-internet era. BFB (Before Facebook) it was honestly possible to revel delightedly in the notion of a wonderful free software that would organize your contacts, sort your messages, iron your underwear and keep an eye on the kids while...

The millennial generation is probably the most scrutinized, analyzed, and commented about generation on earth. Communications about millennials could fill libraries. This fact itself has certainly impacted their collective psyche in ways yet untold. Stories about their supposed narcissism seem...

April 28 is National Superhero Day, the day when we celebrate the iconic characters who are such a fixture in our collective imagination. Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman; and also Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Daredevil. Where did these heroes get their powers, and why do we admire them so much?

Software continues to eat the world, including telecom. Telecommunications company Avaya filed for bankruptcy this January, shaking the sector. Though the legacy giant will hopefully emerge stronger, the trouble underscores the difficulty facing companies as they move out of hardware and into...

Business communication evolved out of the classic office setting, which was designed around the executive suite. Whether the top brass inhabited the penthouse or the corner suite, the administrative apparatus was built around this core office.

Employees reported to their bosses in a very literal...

Have you ever gotten off the phone with an employee or customer after resolving an ongoing problem, and wondered why it took you so long to pick up the phone?  Voice-to-voice communication is effective and powerful. But if talking on the phone is simple, choosing a business phone system isn’t so...