10 Reasons Companies are Moving Communications to the Cloud in 2017

There’s lots of buzz around the cloud these days and cloud communications is no exception. But buzz isn’t always an indicator of a business case for technology purchases. Smart businesses are asking what’s driving the rush to the cloud—and they’re getting solid answers. So why are so many businesses moving communications to the cloud today? Here are 10 real-world reasons.

1. Cost

Predictable monthly costs. This may seem like old news, but many companies don’t realize just how much they can save by moving their communications to the cloud. By hosting a phone system over the Internet, businesses are charged on an “as needed” basis, paying only for what they use. That makes cloud-based communication systems especially cost-effective for small businesses—eliminating the need to pay for the installation and maintenance of a traditional phone system.

2. Management

Outsource IT support to the provider. The management of an on-premise solution can be very expensive. Because of the complexity of today’s communications systems, it can often takes an entire IT department to manage. Cloud-based communications can help alleviate the burden by eliminating maintenance, IT work load and some of the more costly internal infrastructure, including servers and storage systems.

3. Scalability

Scale up or down based on users. Anyone who has moved or expanded an on-premise phone system knows just how difficult it can be. Whether a business is growing, moving or sizing down, the cloud provides the flexibility and scalability the business needs now and in the future. And with cloud-based systems, businesses can access and add new features without any new hardware requirements.

4. Vendor management

One vendor for everything. With cloud communications, a vendor manages communication systems off-site, and IT departments are freed up to focus on other high-priority issues.  (Let IT get back to that email fix!)

5. Technology

Instant updates. With cloud communications, service is outsourced, and upgrades are deployed through automatic software updates. This allows organizations to stay focused on their business and leave the upgrades to the cloud communications vendor.

6. Quality of service

Maximize uptime and downtime coverage. For many businesses, uptime is pivotal. To keep things running, they rely on the ability to scale and leverage remote work teams or serve customers from anywhere.  For these kinds of businesses, cloud communications maximizes uptime and coverage through multiple, remotely hosted data centers, helping them avoid costly interruptions and downtime.

7. Affordable Redundancy

Leverage shared resources. With an on-premise communication system, hardware and software geographic redundancy can be challenging to deliver. But when multiple businesses share resources in a cloud environment, they get access to a level of redundancy that would be too expensive to procure with an on-premises solution.

8. Disaster recovery

Business continuity made easy. Businesses are using the cloud to protect themselves from the effects of disasters. With cloud communications, they can get up and running quickly after a disaster, or in some cases, continue running the entire time. Some reroute calls to remote locations and cell phones. Others rely on remote access to voicemail or use cloud-based auto attendants continue taking calls and providing information. It’s a hard-to-resist combination of reliability, resiliency and redundancy.

9. Access to customized cloud-based applications

When businesses are connected to a cloud communications platform, they get access to the latest communications applications and developments, like customizable business workflows. These applications help boost productivity and revenue streams for their businesses in ways that traditional communications programs cannot.

10. Future-proofing

Digital transformation is here. Most companies have started transitioning to the cloud in one form or another to future-proof their businesses, as most applications today are being constructed in the cloud. Making the most of new applications requires the ability to integrate fluidly with business communications system. Integrating cloud-based applications with a cloud-based communications system is significantly easier than integrating cloud-based applications with an on-premises one, so businesses looking to future-proof their operations are moving to the cloud.

Making your own call

Is cloud-based communication right for you? Maybe so. Maybe not. But it is right for the 1.6 million business people who rely on our cloud communication technology day in and day out. If you’re not sure, you can always check out our latest white paper on when cloud communications makes sense.

If you would like to learn more, contact Gregg Communications at 630-706-

8222 for a free consultation.

6 Ways to Calculate the Real Impact of Your Collaboration Software

In a global study on connected enterprises, Dimension Data found that only four percent of companies viewed return on investment as the main measure of success for collaboration technologies, while 25 percent of IT departments measure success of collaboration software in terms of ease of implementation.

Collaboration tools tout productivity gains as a no-brainer, and most of us take it for granted that our tools help our teams. But are you actually measuring whether your tools are helping or hurting?

Instead of measuring effectiveness by looking at success of implementation, which is backward-facing at best, we need to look forward, to the user experience and its ultimate effect on revenue.

1. Do you have a training program in place?

First things first: no matter what collaboration software you’re using, if there’s no consistent onboarding process for new technology (or new people to the technology, as in new hires), your employees are wasting time. To alleviate IT help desk tickets, establish a well thought-out training for your team to explain the ins and outs of your new software. It’s a good idea to provide both a training video and slide deck as well as a quick reference guide with enough detail to train video-resistant employees.

2. Are you using the right collaboration tool for the right purpose?

All collaboration tools are not created equal. Your audioconferencing tool may not be able to handle the load of videoconferencing add-ons, and your chat systems may not work when employees are operating in vastly differing time zones. Assess where, when and how your employees are communicating, and look at whether the collaboration tool you’re using was designed to handle that type of task.

3. How many external applications are your employees using?

Shadow IT is pervasive (not to mention costly), and some enterprises are adapting by allowing for consumer-grade applications at the individual and department level. While this may work for some companies, it poses a real security and productivity threat. How much time is your IT team wasting trying to learn how to fix bugs in user-downloaded applications?

Take a moment to survey some of your key user types, taking care to get feedback from your three categories of users:

• C-suite and upper management
• Middle-management and information workers
• On-the-ground workers, field representatives, etc.

Identify how many apps each level of user is implementing, and find out why they prefer these applications to the company-provided and approved ones. The feedback on app usage will vary dramatically between user types, and themes between these will help identify where you’re having .

4. Keep track of your IT requests.

This feeds off tracking external application usage: how much time is your IT team spending each day on requests for non-company-approved applications? How many requests are you getting about your company-approved ones? Get some hard numbers from your help desk tickets to determine whether your current collaboration system – or the range of consumer-grade applications your team are using – are costing your company.

5. Bring it back to revenue.

Linking the technology your team uses with revenue sounds complicated, and sometimes it can be. But for back of the envelope calculations, you can boil it down to a few key factors:

• What is your average office worker’s hourly cost to your business? In other words, how much is their time worth in real dollars?
• How much time is your collaboration system saving/costing an employee in a given day?
• Multiply the hourly cost by the time saved per day (in hours) and scale that back up to yearly figures.

For example, the average annual loss for companies with a poor mobile collaboration strategy is $36 million. We break down the numbers in this infographic on cutting costs and boosting profits with team collaboration.

6. Do you have a unified communications strategy in place?

With nearly 40 percent of businesses lacking a unified communications strategy, it’s not surprising so few attempt to connect their collaboration technologies back to ROI.

Having a strategy for unified communications helps shave off unproductive activities (e.g. does adding a consumer-level file sharing application fit the unified communication strategy for data security for a multinational enterprise?) and keep your team running efficiently. It also gives you a benchmark from which to make future decisions. Once you’ve created a strategy, year over year you can tweak and compare decisions, to help narrow down the real-life impact of your tech.

Bottom line

In today’s mobile workforce, collaboration technologies are a given. But that doesn’t mean that their impact on your company should be. With a unified communications strategy in place and hard numbers to support you, you will be able to quantify whether your collaboration tools are helping your business, or costing you time and money.

Looking for a few more ways to streamline your communications and make

your teams run smoother? Contact Gregg Communications at 630-706-8222

for a free consultation.

4 Valuable Cloud Communications Benefits You Should Know

1. How you can enable a mobile workforce with cloud communications

We’re all busy today. But we’re not always productive. For example, we spend several hours every week checking emails, schedules, text messages, and voicemails in multiple applications and on multiple devices just to make sure we’re not missing something. But ironically, managing multiple collaboration tools on multiple devices is a sure way to miss something.

Cloud communications opens up and unifies collaboration so businesses

begin thinking outside their inboxes.

It brings employees, customers, and partners into the conversation from wherever they are, on whatever device they’re on. And it lets them pick up the conversation quickly, by organizing everything into a single cloud‐based application where voicemails, videos, chats, and more can be stored and easily accessed whenever they’re needed.

The key to better collaboration is through your mobile phone. If you’re like most of us, it’s the first thing you check in the morning, the last thing you see at night, and it goes wherever you go. That’s a far cry from where most legacy phone systems are today, which were designed well before the mobile era and handle mobile communications as an afterthought.

The rise of the mobile workforce has challenged modern perceptions of what

a traditional office environment should be.

Gone are the large spaces filled with wall‐to‐wall cubicle farms. Instead, they’ve been replaced with functional work spaces where people collaborate and are more productive, and mobile working, once seen as a major hassle for organizations, is no longer considered a compromise for businesses trying to accommodate unique work situations like flexible working schedules and office closings due to severe weather. Today, everything is digital, and remote employees—equipped with the right communications tools—can be as productive outside the office as they are in the office.

Consider the following mobile workforce trends:

•  Nearly 70 percent of employees use their personal device for email
•  26 percent of employees are productive while outside the office or home
• 36 percent of employees use up to three mobile devices to do their work

Cloud communications also means no mobile app gets left behind. Your business apps are integrated into the communications fabric so you can share information, ideas, and images from a single screen without constantly opening and closing apps or worrying about interoperability.

Regardless of how your organization compares with other forward‐looking mobile organizations, your business is constantly moving. Work is done while eating breakfast at home, riding in a car, walking to lunch, sitting in a hotel lobby, or waiting in line at the airport. Your employees work remotely—blasting out emails and text messages, and answering calls from customers and clients (or prospective customers and clients) at all hours of the day and night, whenever and wherever they’re needed—regardless of whether they’re “at work.”

Life is mobile, and your communications system should be too. You should be able to be as productive on your mobile phone as you are at your desk.

2. Supporting multiple locations with cloud communications

In addition to supporting mobile workers from any location, modern business communications systems need to support remote workers from multiple locations. Unlike mobile workers, remote workers perform their work from a fixed location—it’s just not located at your main campus or headquarters. Perhaps it’s a branch office located in another city or country, or a temporary office setup to support a new project, or even a home office for a teleworker.

Regardless of the specific situation, remote workers all have unique communications requirements that are often similar to deskbound workers at your main office location, but without the same resources—equipment, connectivity, and support.

Legacy private branch exchange (PBX) systems are usually cost prohibitive for

smaller remote locations consisting of fewer than ten users.

For this reason, remote workers at smaller locations are often equipped with Centrex phone systems, analog lines, or residential phone services that lack the features and functionality of a business communications system. They may also be required to connect to the main office over a virtual private network (VPN) connection, which can negatively impact voice quality.

Cloud communications effectively creates a virtual communications system across all remote locations for an organization, extending the solutions available for both mobile and remote workers, to include:

• Mobile phones
• Desk (hard) phones
• PC (soft) phones
• Contact center agents

Both on‐premises and cloud communications systems support mobile and remote workers. However, on‐premises systems treat these workers as the exception: Mobile/remote access has to be approved and set up, a VPN or other similar security measures need to be configured, and additional network bandwidth may need to be provisioned (for remote access).

Cloud communications treats office, mobile, and remote workers all the

same.

It completely eliminates location from the equation and provides users with the same set of features that they have in the office, regardless of their location.

3. Reducing costs with cloud communications

Not all dollars cost the same. A dollar invested in a technology project that has a low return on investment (ROI) has opportunity costs that may amount to far more than the initial investment itself. Similarly, many technology projects require ongoing commitments—sunk costs—that further erode profitability for a business: the proverbial “throwing good money after bad.”

Large investments involve risk.

Not only is there a heavy financial stake, but also the organization is essentially placing a series of bets on the investment:

• Is this the right technology for our business? How will the technology change over the next three, five, and 10 years?
• Is this the right vendor to partner with for our business? Will they be around in three, five, or 10 years?
• How quickly will our business grow over the next three, five, and 10 years? Will this investment scale to support that growth?

Capital budgeting is always a very subjective process. A capital expenditure (CapEx) is usually defined by a minimum investment threshold, for example one thousand dollars, and the investment must have a valuable life of more than one year.

CapEx may, in some cases, include bundled equipment, installation and project management costs, implementation services, freight expenses, and initial training costs, among others. Businesses can depreciate a capital investment, typically over a five‐ or seven‐year period, but they must also pay property taxes and maintain fixed asset records on all capital investments throughout the useful life of the investments.

And of course, most technology today is obsolete well before its five‐ or

seven‐year depreciation period.

It all gets extremely complicated, extremely quickly.

For these and many other reasons, most businesses prefer operating expenses (OpEx) instead of CapEx. OpEx costs—like utilities, rent, perpetual licensing fees, and software maintenance—are typically lower (in the short term) than CapEx costs. This is particularly true in terms of upfront costs required, which frees up cash for other projects that drive revenue and growth for the business.

OpEx costs are typically more stable and predictable than CapEx costs and

provide more flexibility for a business should requirements change.

For example, a service provider will usually charge a known recurring rate for a given level of usage, a per‐user (or per‐seat) fee, or a monthly subscriber fee.

The original thought behind premises‐based communications systems was to keep costs down by owning the solution. But as those systems have aged, businesses find themselves owning the problem of maintaining, upgrading, and expanding those systems.

The cloud offers a better path for growth.

It not only saves you money through economy of scale, but also it scales cost-effectively as you grow. You never have to worry about adding more servers and switches as you add more employees. You simply add another seat in the cloud at a fixed monthly cost and have the assurance that new employees are connected into all of your business communications from day one.

If you’re looking to reduce communications costs, cloud communications can save you money:

• No costly, upfront investments in servers, switches, and PBXs
• No budget “surprises” with consistent or predictable calling plans
• No costly, across‐the‐board software upgrades as new features and versions are released — you get the latest versions immediately, automatically
• No wasted money on overprovisioned trunks or underutilized hardware
• No high energy and cooling costs to run a roomful of equipment, and rent to store it all

As part of your ROI analysis, you should compare the total cost of ownership

(TCO) of cloud‐based and premises‐based communications solutions.

Remember, a cloud‐based solution consists almost entirely of OpEx costs, whereas a premises-based solution requires both CapEx and OpEx (in the form of ongoing software assurance and upgrades).

4. Focusing on business, not infrastructure

Technology has the ability to transform your business and drive innovation. But it can also drive you crazy if all you’re doing is putting out fires to maintain the status quo. Think of it this way: Would you rather have your engineers fixing the phones or finding new ways to delight your customers?

Cloud‐based communications solutions are exactly that: solutions. Fixing bugs and repairing hardware are the cloud provider’s problems, and most of them make sure it never becomes a problem for their customers—even going so far as to guarantee systems uptime and availability in their service level agreements (SLAs).

While you never have to worry about losing dial tone, your IT department can

focus on making sure you don’t lose your competitive edge in the market.

Innovation is the key to continued growth in today’s business environment. Cloud‐based communications ensure your business is on the leading edge and in tune with the millennial workforce that will drive your business into the future.

Learn more about our cloud communications systems.  Contact Gregg

Communications at 630-706-8222 for a free consultation.

What the ShoreTel Acquisition by Mitel Means to Your Business

The very foundation of running a business is to believe in the product you are offering. That's why we, along with 40,000 end-user companies worldwide, are proud to be in a “true” partnership with ShoreTel.

Gregg's partnership with ShoreTel has helped the company grow in the telecommunications industry by offering services that put value for its customers and a commitment to staying at the top of the industry a priority.

Since 2005, Gregg Communications has been a ShoreTel Partner, and was the first ShoreTel Partner in the Chicago area to earn ShoreTel’s Certified Gold Champion Partner status.  Gregg was also the first Partner in the Chicago area to be contact center/call center certified, having installed more than 800 call centers nationwide. We include extensive ShoreTel system training for end users and administrators, offering unparalleled ShoreTel system ongoing support.

Gregg Communications CEO, Tom Rickert, has served as a member of ShoreTel’s Partner Advisory Council.

“We have promoted ShoreTel as the last telephone system a company would need to purchase because the ShoreTel product grows with you and does not become obsolete,” Rickert said.

For instance, included with the ShoreTel support agreement, all customers are entitled to software upgrades, which Gregg normally provides for clients at least once per year without any additional charges. This enables our company to keep our customers up to date with the latest enhancements to their communications systems.

Additionally, ShoreTel has recently introduced a totally new platform called Connect, which ShoreTel has also included as part of customer support agreements.  Existing customers can migrate to this new software at no additional cost.  Most other manufacturers in our industry would require a “forklift upgrade” which would carry a significant cost for replacing equipment, installation, business process changes, and training staff.

Come late September when ShoreTel officially transitions to Mitel, Gregg customers will continue to receive excellent products and services that are backed by an all-star reputation.

“ShoreTel is the number one player world-wide for small to medium size businesses.  They have been a fantastic supplier for us and for our clients," Rickert said.

As ShoreTel transitions into Mitel, we will continue to provide the same level of unified communication support and service to our clients for which Gregg has been well known and recognized over the past 50 years. You can count on our commitment to improved business communications and customer satisfaction for your business without interruption.

Independent surveys and client feedback agree: our obsession for satisfaction sets the industry standard for customer care. Contact Gregg today to learn more

ShoreTel Honored with Industry Accolades

September 21, 2017

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Sept. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ShoreTel® (SHOR), a leading provider of communication solutions that make interactions simple, was recently honored with multiple awards recognizing the company's senior leadership, go to market approach and innovative technology solutions.

Mark Roberts Named Top Midmarket IT Vendor Executive by The Channel Company for Fourth Consecutive Year

The Channel Company annually recognizes influential vendor executives who have demonstrated a strong commitment to the needs of CIOs and IT leaders in the midmarket, one of the IT industry's fastest-growing sectors.

ShoreTel chief marketing officer, Mark Roberts, was named a 2017 Top Midmarket Vendor Executive for the fourth year in a row.

"It is an honor to be recognized again by The Channel Company and to represent ShoreTel's focus on the midmarket," said Roberts. "Midmarket organizations often need more than just an off-the-shelf solution but don't always have the resources to support excess complexity. The simplicity of ShoreTel Connect paired with the flexibility of our ShoreTel Summit CPaaS solution really creates an ideal combination for this market."

ShoreTel Takes Back-to-Back Awards for Best Vendor Spotlight at Midsize Enterprise Summit

Midsize Enterprise SummitTM is an event for midmarket IT executives, offering IT decision makers access to top vendors, seasoned analysts and peers. At the event this week, the ShoreTel team took home the Xcellence Award for Best Vendor Spotlight, which honors the top-performing technology solution providers based on IT decision makers' perceptions during the event.

ShoreTel also received the Best Vendor Spotlight at the spring Midsize Enterprise Summit earlier this year.

ShoreTel Connect CLOUD Wins Hosted VoIP Excellence Award

The INTERNET TELEPHONY Hosted VoIP Excellence Awards honor services that have demonstrated innovation, unique features and noteworthy developments – improving functionality and usability for their customers.

For the second year in a row, ShoreTel Connect CLOUD was named a winner for innovation in IP solutions.

ShoreTel Honored with Award for Best Telecommunication Website

ShoreTel also recently received top honors for its digital marketing with a 2017 WebAward for Outstanding Achievement in Web Development from the Web Marketing Association. ShoreTel's corporate site won for Best Telecommunication Website.

Winners in the WebAward Competition are chosen by independent judges based on seven criteria – design, ease of use, copywriting, interactivity, use of technology, innovation and content.

Gregg Communications comes highly recommended via Net Promotor Score®

It’s easy to choose which cafe to go grab coffee, and which office supplies vendor to restock printer cartridges, or even which company to purchase new computers. But, when you’re a company looking to install phone systems or call centers, where do you go? How do you choose what company would be right for you to bring your business?

That’s where the Net Promoter Score® comes in. Consider it like a Yelp for businesses. It’s a useful way for customers to state their overall satisfaction.

Gregg Communications, a Chicago-based telecommunications company that has been serving customers in an extensive range of industries for 50 years, has a Net Promoter Score® of 92. This kind of score is not only difficult to achieve, but also to maintain—and Gregg has done so for the last 12 years, placing the company in the top 1% of partners world-wide for customer satisfaction.

When looking for additional resources, it’s important to look to fellow customers and peers for recommendations on which company to choose. For businesses looking to implement VoIP telephone systems, call centers or the many other services Gregg provides, well, the choice is easy.

"Gregg Communications' score exceeds what is considered a world-class level of professionalism and customer care in the industry," Don Joos, CEO of ShoreTel said. “Gregg's consistent performance in delivering an exceptional all-around customer experience is a tribute to its dedication to customers. It is Partners, like Gregg, that ensure customers are not only satisfied, but delighted with ShoreTel products and services."

The Net Promoter Score® is an index ranging from -100 to 100 based on customer surveys that reflect their desire to recommend a company's products and services. It is calculated by a simple, two-question survey that is circulated and distributed.

1.     Customers are asked to choose a number on a scale of 1 to 10 of “how likely is it you would recommend this company to a colleague?”

2.     Then they are asked “what is the reason for your score”--an open text field where they can submit comments.

It's simple, yet straightforward and highly useful to companies looking for goods and services, especially a complex solution like a phone system. A small amount of time submitting your feedback can go a long way for companies looking to attract new clientele and customers. And it helps companies who are looking for independent feedback before choosing a new solution for their business.

Tom Rickert, CEO of Gregg Communications gratefully stated, "Earning this distinction for the 49th consecutive quarter is a tremendous honor, and a testament to the commitment and dedication of our entire staff to provide the best possible customer experience for our clients. We look forward to continuing with our quest to make each and every interaction with our client base fulfill our vision of e3 - experience excellence from experts."

Gregg Communications is one of the nation's premier suppliers of premise based and hosted VoIP business telephone systems with offices in Chicago and Lombard, IL.

Gregg has been recognized for the quality of the experience and expertise it provides to its clients from the consultative sales process, through the implementation, training and on-going support of its products.

For more information, go to http://greggcomm.com.

Gregg Communications looks forward to 50 more years in telecommunications

Imagine showing up at work and having no computer and no phone at your desk. You reach into your pocket and pull out your smartphone, but there’s no service. Actually, there’s no smartphone either.

Can most of us even imagine what life would be like today if we had to give up technology? That's like the adult equivalent of monsters under the bed.

Thankfully, there’s a solution to making sure that bad dream never becomes a reality. It’s all-star companies like Gregg Communications, who have been supplying telecommunications services nationwide since 1967 – well before the days of Internet and technology we know today.

And, while the days of products like Code-A-Phone and Carterfone are long gone, they paved the way for Gregg to evolve over its 50 years in business. This required Gregg to adapt to meet customer demands and stay one step ahead of technology.

For many years, the telecommunications industry was monopolized by AT&T. In 1968, one year after Gregg Communications started in business, the Federal Communications Commission made a landmark ruling known as the Carterfone decision, which allowed equipment from other manufacturers to connect directly to AT&T telephone lines. After this ruling, the market opened up to include numerous devices, i.e. answering machines, fax machines, telephone systems, etc. These and other products could now connect directly to telephone lines which was a game changer for companies like Gregg Communications.

That’s when business really took off.

“From the time our founders, George Gregg, Dick Glennie and Jim O’Donnell started, they built a solid foundation, and we have continued their legacy,” reflects Tom Rickert, CEO of Gregg Communications.

This strong legacy has resulted in thousands of telephone systems and hundreds of call centers installed for Gregg Communications’ customers nationwide.

Today, Gregg Communications provides a wide array of innovative communications services ranging from network assessments, project management, system implementation, training and ongoing support, and everything in between to clients in a range of industries. Rickert says there have been a lot of highlights over the years, but the thing he's most proud of is the company’s longstanding commitment to customer satisfaction.

Gregg’s customer satisfaction is measured by the globally recognized Net Promoter Score index and is based upon annual surveys conducted by an independent third party.  As of December 31, 2016, Gregg’s Net Promoter Score is 92 on a scale in which a score of 50 or greater is considered to be providing “world-class” customer satisfaction. The commitment that Gregg has made to comprehensive training for its sales, technical support and customer service teams has enabled Gregg to exceed the stringent platinum status certification levels, resulting in the outstanding NPS results.

“We have just recorded our 49th consecutive quarter of significantly exceeding the ‘world class’ customer satisfaction level,” Rickert explains. “Our commitment to the customer is something we cover with our staff on a continual and consistent basis in our meetings and our performance, and we're very focused on making sure our customers have an outstanding experience.”

The outstanding experience doesn’t just apply to customers. The average tenure of Gregg Communications’ employees is greater than 10 years, and the sales staff average is over 18 years. This longevity is a true testament to their passion, commitment and customer satisfaction of the services they are providing.

“We’re always trying to be on the leading edge of technology, not the bleeding edge,” Rickert says. “So, we're always looking, listening and talking with customers about where they see things going, and what we should be reviewing for their businesses. We work diligently to build longstanding relationships with our clients.”

Gregg Communications has offices in downtown Chicago and suburban Lombard. Gregg is an integral part of the communities in which they are based.  Gregg supports various local organizations like Horizons for Youth Scholarship Mentoring Community, Pillars, Seeds of Hope, Dream to Reality, Chicago Lights, Mustard Seed Community, The Chicago Community Trust, Bright Pink, The American Cancer Society and many more.

Gregg Communications is looking forward to the next 50 years in business. It’s sure to be a very exciting time as the communications industry explodes even further.

Find out more about Gregg Communications’ services, background and commitment by visiting http://www.greggcomm.com.

Still Not Doing Anything? Chances Are Your Competitors Are

So you’re considering making the move, and you know that your competitors may already be ahead of you, but did you know 74% of companies are already evaluating Unified Communications (UC) in the cloud? Additionally 51% of companies plan to increase their cloud spending in 2016. It’s not just any cloud phone system that you need - you need a cloud system and provider that gives you the speed and agility to drive more business, gives you advanced capabilities, and isn’t complicated.

Well, that solution is at the tip of your fingertips, and all you need to do is reach out and grab it.

Staying competitive is inherent in what you do with your own solutions. Now it’s time to advance your competitive position through your phone system. You’ll increase employee productivity, have an OpEx model with predictably low monthly fees, agility, advanced capabilities, and enterprise mobility.

Here are 3 mission critical reasons that you should be doing something:
1.     Speed and agility matter.

Being a leader means many things, but especially agility and speed. Smart shoppers, who are ready to purchase, are contacting multiple providers, often making a purchase decision before you have a chance to respond. Don’t let an unanswered call, the fact that a sales rep is out of the office, or a whole slew of other reasons cause you a lost sale. Bottom line, speed and agility drive business.

2.     Your competitors are adopting change and growing.

From faster decision making to fewer blocked calls, the cloud gives you the power to succeed. What if you could determine who is immediately available, in the office, or on the road? Further, what if you could connect that person to the customer seamlessly? Insights into call hold times, and calls that couldn’t get through keep you informed and ahead. Think about it – how are you going to run a business if your customers can’t reach you because your phones are down?

3.     It’s really not complicated.

Do you remember moving to Office 365 or hosted email? Probably not, because it wasn’t difficult. Moving your phone system to the cloud is not like opening an online storefront, which even these days, isn’t that complex. Move now – you won’t look back or regret a minute of it.

The solution that’s in the palm of your hands is ShoreTel Connect CLOUD, and here’s why:

Maintain your leadership position                                                            

ShoreTel’s end-to-end solution gives you easy provisioning, business continuity, security, bundled with premium customer service. ShoreTel’s streamlined, all-in-one, communications solution is a convenient, intuitive, low-maintenance solution that end users will quickly adopt.

Drive growth through advanced capabilities

Get a complete end-to-end solution, with phones, software, security, unified communications applications, contact center, and mobility. You also get a dedicated expert – someone with rock-solid IP phone experience. ShoreTel Connect CLOUD is an enterprise-class solution that is stable, and gives you visibility into any service interruptions, outages, and operational information.

You have superior security and control built in

With ShoreTel’s brilliantly simple service plan and a simple user interface, your cloud UC solution is more secure than any other option available today.

By moving to ShoreTel’s Connect CLOUD you won’t be left behind - possibly losing deals, and your competitive advantage.

Shouldn’t you explore through us, as a trusted partner, how ShoreTel Connect CLOUD can transform your business? Give us a call today, and learn why moving your phone system to the cloud is the right choice for your business. Call us at 630-706-8222.