Running a business is no easy feat. From understanding the market and hiring the right talent to making critical investments in technology and consistently meeting your customers’ needs, the pressure to make the right call is always high.
Technology – it has the power to drive efficiency and revenue growth if applied smartly. However, many businesses struggle to create a digital transformation roadmap and find a solutions provider that can meet their needs now and into the future. Technology applied for its own sake is a one-way ticket to financial quicksand and hampered business development.
In this blog, we talk about some key technological considerations businesses today are facing, and what you should be looking for in a technology provider to take your business to the next level.
Businesses Continue to Invest in Digital Transformation
With the COVID-19 pandemic, times have been especially challenging for businesses of all sizes. Over the past year and a half, millions of individuals have had to work, learn, and recreate from home. Even as we gradually reopen, a survey from Harvard Business School has found that 81% of respondents wish to keep working remotely either full time or as part of a hybrid work schedule.
From a technological perspective, this means a continued embracing of various communications and collaboration tools. Adopting and managing all these tools can get tricky fast, however. That’s where Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) platforms and services come into play. UCaaS platforms help businesses seamlessly integrate voice, presence, chat, SMS (text), video, meetings, screen share, and other collaboration tools for the most productive and efficient business communications. Cloud- native, they help businesses cut capital expenses on IT infrastructure, support employees working from anywhere and scale their systems easily as they grow their team and customer base.
As businesses grow and adapt to new cloud-native solutions, they also begin to require upgraded network connectivity and security solutions. Bandwidth, reliability and network resiliency become pressing issues that must be addressed in order to prevent the financial and reputational losses that come with unexpected downtime. It’s not just business processes that require special attention from a technological perspective either. Even the emergency alarms that keep your business safe, and the communication cables that send signals to your monitoring center, require consideration.
In a previous blog, we talked about how many building alarms (blue light emergency services, elevator lines, security) are still using analog copper Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) lines. We noted that telephone providers are drawing back their support for this aging infrastructure, leaving businesses to look for replacement solutions. Find out what makes the most sense for businesses to do in this scenario with our look at cellular LTE as your best choice.
As you can see, technology is an integral component of your business growth strategy and you’re not alone. A recent survey from Gartner found that, out of its 13 possible investment categories, digital capabilities “was the only area in which a higher percentage of CEOs would commit to increasing investment.” With this trend only continuing, finding the right solutions provider is mission-critical in ensuring your investments make sense and work for you at your growth pace.
What to Look for in an Ideal Partner
When it comes to choosing a technology solutions provider, there are three key considerations to consider:
- Performance and reliability
- Customer focus and customization
- Ability to support you as you grow
In many cases, businesses struggle to achieve the performance and reliability they seek from their solutions because they involve too many third parties in their digital transformation roadmaps. A single-source telecommunications and cloud service provider does away with this cumbersome, risky approach. In our case, Xtel is a geo-redundant facilities-based carrier. What does that mean? It means that we maintain, operate, and monitor our fiber optic backbone, voice platforms, and data centers. Each data center is part of a high availability, active-active network architecture, giving you 99.999% uptime protection against unplanned, costly downtime. Whether you choose a cellular LTE POTS replacement solution from us or hop on our UCaaS platform, we have your back – always.
No one likes being told what to do or being confronted with rigid proposals. Every business has unique needs and at Xtel, we account for this diversity. At our core, we believe that every leader needs a digital transformation pathway that is just right for them. Customers should never be seen as revenue generators. They’re real people with real businesses that face complex challenges. Our role is to listen and understand your vision and how you define success. That way, we can leverage our 25 years of expertise to take the complex and simplify it into customized service bundles that are exactly right for you and will let your business shine.
As a business leader, you also know that your company is constantly evolving. Nothing ever stays the same for long. That’s why single source providers can be extremely beneficial to you. Your business needs more than just another technical supplier in a transactional role. Having a partner that can also act as a trusted advisor in a consultative role is a definite edge in a very competitive landscape. At Xtel, we fulfill this and, since we are a single-source provider, we are constantly evolving our own roster of services and solutions to meet you exactly when and where you need us.
Navigating the world of IT solutions to procure vital telecommunications services for your business can seem complex, but it doesn’t need to be that way. Let Xtel guide you through the process as a single-source provider of the essential IT elements your business needs to thrive. Take confidence in leaving all telecommunications and cloud services to us, so you can focus on the things you do best.
Let us know what you need, and our experts will be happy to help!