Remote Workers Take their Office Communications on the RoadRemote Workers Take their Office Communications on the Road

Chances are that more of your workers are mobile than those of your larger competitors. Consequently, it is important that your employees are able to access company resources in a seamless, easy-to-use manner as they travel.Mobility has become a watchword in small and medium enterprises. A recent study from the Yankee Group, a market research firm, shows that 44 percent of all employees at these firms are mobile. Of this traveling workforce, 49 percent are mobile professionals (senior executives, managers, IT workers, consultant), 31 percent are field workers (sales, technical support, and other field-related services), and 21 percent are specialty workers with varying degrees of mobile job functions.

To improve the productivity of these employees, XO Communications launched XO Anywhere, a service that extends unified communications features to these employees. The services goal is to let employees mobile phones mimic those found on their desks. A Remote Office feature enables employees to make or receive calls from any device, display their office phone numbers on the caller ID screens, and charge the calls to the companys XO service. A Simultaneous Ring capability allows up to 10 different devices to ring at the same time, so employees can pick up calls with the most convenient devices. This function lowers the likelihood of telephone or email tag. A Click to Dial function provides integration with Microsoft Outlook and web browsers, so users can select any contact or phone number by clicking on an icon. XO Anywhere is an option for companies with the XO IP Flex, XO IP Flex with VPN, or XOptions Flex services.

XO has been trying to carve out a viable niche in the highly competitive telecommunications services marketplace by focusing on delivering premium data services at reasonable prices. Because market competition has been so intense, the service provider has experienced mixed results. To date, it has struggled to establish its brand and build a viable business as it spars with larger, better known service providers. While the new service has some attractive features, small and medium businesses need to be cautious about relying on a company whose long term future may be in doubt. Using it as an adjunct to a small and medium businesss existing telecom services may be a better option than fully committing to XO as ones primary service provider.

How many of your employees are mobile? How do they connect to the enterprise network? Would you feel comfortable relying on a service provider, such as XO?