The workplace is undergoing a seismic shift as many of the smarter companies work to ensure their staff have access to a range of smartphones and other communication tools for anytime-anywhere collaboration.
With a recent IDC study suggesting mobile workers will account for three-quarters of the workforce by 2020, the ability to work remotely has gone from being a nice perk to an outright necessity. Underscoring the point, a similar study by a major IT solutions company found 74 percent of employees saying they would quit their current jobs to work for an organization that would allow them to work remotely more often.
“It has never been more challenging, or more important, for organizations to deliver exactly what employees want and expect,” says Steve Hong, Program Director, Activitel, a new Canadian company launching low-cost, easy-to-use voice services for smaller enterprises.
“Until recently, only larger companies with big budgets could afford to keep their communications systems close to the cutting edge. However, the usual barriers to entry, such as bandwidth cost, are becoming less severe, and with that, even the small guys can play with the big dogs. We’ve moved from an unfair advantage for bigger companies to what is now basically a level playing field.”
Activitel does not sell directly into the market, but works with VARs, managed service providers, integrators, and IT management companies to deliver value to the end user.
Hong says the growth in demand for unified communications make it lucrative for partners. He points to the 2017 Global Insights research report that suggests the global market for unified communications will be worth $96 billion USD by 2023. This growth, says the study, is directly attributable to an increasing need for efficient real-time communication that better facilitates the flow of information between organizations.
Activitel can meet the needs of SMBs across Canada through its cloud-based UC service. This service can support SMB expansion by helping companies:
- Move beyond the phone line. Business communication was until quite recently centered around the desk phone. Today, however, workers can also make use of laptops, smartphones, VoIP phones, tablets, and software (e.g., Skype). Activitel offers a truly unified communication platform experience.
- Streamline their IT. Activitel’s unified platform is easy to navigate and efficient, which means a reduced demand for IT resources. Organizations that can free their employees also free their IT group to dedicate more of its time and energy to innovation and revenue generation.
- Offer workers a truly mobile work experience. Through the Activitel UC platform, organizations can offer their workers the tools they need to stay connected and collaborate with colleagues and clients anywhere in the world. Being an all-in-one solution, the Activitel platform allows enterprises to avoid the issues that so often arise around multiple platform connections.
Activitel’s service comes at just the right time — as SMBs begin waking up to the benefits of an all-in-one communication solution outside the context of the sluggish, often higher-cost services offered by large organizations.
A partner relationship with Activitel offers many key benefits, including:
- A generous revenue sharing model with partners for the duration of customer contracts;
- A full marketing and lead gen program;
- No direct sales, meaning no competition between Activitel and partners;
- A national footprint built on enterprise-grade infrastructure;
- Low prices for cloud PBX and hardware; and
- A full end-to-end training and certification program.
Activitel trains, certifies, and supports only partners with a strong history of delivering quality customer experiences. Such partners are in an excellent position to take advantage of an expanding UC space in Canada.
As more and more SMBs see the traditional barriers to adopting UC disappearing, they will be seeking to make an investment commensurate to their employees’ demand for true workplace mobility. Activitel partners will be well situated as the trend among SMBs to adopt UC reaches critical mass.
To find out more about Activitel, or to find out how to become a partner, visit their website.
