Welcome to the latest issue of Telecoms Business, the newsletter designed to keep you up to speed with business telecommunications.

In this issue, we explore ways to enhance the profitability within your organisation through better handling of your calls; some of the benefits of holding meetings over the phone and a way to improve communications without costly investment - Why not give us a call to find out more about the surprisingly low cost ways in which we can help boost your business?

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Business efficiency Audio conferencing: save time and money with meetings on the phone

There are so many times in business when several decision-makers need to get together to finalise a project - but when trying to co-ordinate everyone's diaries for a meeting involving everyone is just too much of a nightmare. By enabling everyone to get together on the phone from their own desks, home office or the site where they are working, employees, suppliers and customers can share information, make decisions and improve their productivity without incurring the costs, time wastage and hassle involved in attending a face-to-face meeting. Audio conferencing is a great aid to training new or inexperienced employees. They can easily 'join' meetings by phone and learn about how the business works without taking them away from their core role. What many people don't realise is how easy it is to set up an audio conference - you don't need any special equipment and you don't have to go through any complicated reservation process. Companies are also surprised by how cheap dial-up audio-conferencing can be - you pay for it through your normal phone bill from us, and you only pay for the time spent on the phone by each participant. You can choose whether you wish to pay the full cost of each conference (through an 0808 number) or whether you wish to share the cost with participants (by using an 0870 number). In fact, many organisations have found that they can recoup the cost of dozens of audio conferences through the money saved on one single meeting. Click on the enquiries email address on the right or call and ask us for more information about dial-in audio conferencing.

Business on the move Empowering flexible working

Recent changes in employment legislation mean that parents and those who care for elderly or disabled relatives can now request to move to a more flexible way of working - and to have those requests seriously considered. Provided businesses choose the right type of communications services, flexible working can yield huge benefits for both employers and employees - provided that people who wish to work from home or from a site nearer their home have access the same information as their office-based colleagues. Employees also get to keep the same personal settings and features on their home phones as they would have in the office. Using Internet (IP) technology to carry voice and data calls gives organisations the ability to route calls to people working at different sites free of charge - without reducing the quality of service or functionality of traditional telecommunications services. It also provides far more flexibility in terms of adding new sites to the company network, as these can be added with the touch of a button, instead of the traditional provisioning processes traditionally needed to expand a company's network.

Cost Control Cutting costs in site to site calling

Many people in business spend much of their day talking to other people elsewhere in the same business: production needs to talk to stores; the warehouse needs to talk to logistics and customer-facing staff need to talk to everyone! Unless businesses like yours take action to stop these calls mounting up, you could find that they soon add up to a significant - yet completely unnecessary - overhead. The new generation of hosted IP telephony packages provide free calls between sites - either via a dedicated network or through a broadband Internet connection. And because the service is hosted by your telecoms provider, there is no major capital investment to make in equipment or product maintenance. There are different levels of service according to the size and particular needs of your organisation - in fact IP telephony is suited to businesses with two or more sites employing anywhere between three and two hundred or so people. Another advantage is that these services are easily scalable, so you can add new employees or new sites extremely easily. Talk to us and find out how IP telephony can help you keep your business costs down.