The current storms and travel disruption – forcing so many people to stay away from the office – highlight how important it is to invest properly in remote working technology, says business-to-business telecoms and data services company Maintel.

For some organisations, remote working is the norm where employees are regularly out meeting customers or chasing new business etc.  But in others, there is very little in place for weather and travel crises that prevent them getting into the office.

As such, both companies and employees will – for the sake of all-important business continuity – need to be able to rely on remote working telephony, IT systems and Internet access that will allow them to work as efficiently as they would in the office itself. Such solutions will allow them to meet their own customers’ needs and expectations.

Chris Daffin, Network Solutions Director at Maintel, said: “Investment in high quality remote solutions is vital to business continuity.

“With modern IP-based telephone systems, we can equip staff with phones at home that become part of the main office telephone system over a broadband connection. That means they can work from home exactly as if they are in the office and nobody will know the difference.

“Alternatively, you can ‘twin’ your office extension with your mobile phone so that you can take calls on your mobile, or download a client on to your smartphone that allows you to make and receive calls using your office telephone number. That’s really important to the professional image of your business.

“We can also provide full access to a range of communication services and functions including voice, data, email, video conferencing and diaries. Plus, the ability to access sales and ordering systems, so that staff are never isolated or unable to work because they are travelling or waiting for meetings.”

As an alternative, Maintel can provide a hosted PBX solution whereby the telephone system is housed in the cloud and accessed from a range of compatible devices from any location. This solution replaces legacy telephone systems but with a much lower degree of capital cost as our hosted PBX solution is based on an OPEX, pay per user per month model.

If replacing existing telephone equipment is impractical Maintel also provides Inbound platform and SIP trunking solutions. This allows clients to manage how and where incoming calls are handled so that, in the event of staff not being able to get in to the office, calls can be quickly and simply redirected somewhere else – to another branch office or to mobiles, for example – so that they can still be handled by appropriately trained staff.

Maintel is recognised as a leading independent reseller of telephony systems, offering Unified Communications (UC), Contact Centre (CC), Mobile solutions and Data.

Maintel’s highly-skilled UK-wide engineering team enables it to install new systems and maintain and upgrade legacy systems competitively, whilst providing an excellent level of aftercare.