As a small company owner, you know how important it is to juggle many tasks at once. Depending on your business, the same can be said for the rest of your team. To stay competitive, you and your team will need to stay in constant communication with each other as well as clients. This is especially true when the team needs to be mobile and able to conduct business from just about anywhere.

In the past, companies relied heavily on separate systems to keep in communication with each other, as well as to keep projects coordinated and on track. Email was used to send attached files to multiple team members. Attachments in varying levels of project completion that could get lost in a long list of other emails. Cell phones were as important a tool as they are today, but contacts and other phone records were kept separately from project records. And project management systems that were often only semi-productive because they were disconnected from other systems and over-dependent on time-wasting manual user input.

All of that was fine but the next step in the evolution was to bring all of these separated elements together, and in a way that have them working well together. That evolution led to the integrated communications systems we use today.

Just as Important for Small Companies

While many believe a robust integrated communications system is the realm of large companies, that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, a small company benefits just as much, if not even more, especially if the small company depends on the efficient operation of a mobile team.

As previously stated, small mobile teams need to be especially productive if the company is to compete in the marketplace. Integrated communications systems combine all sorts of document management systems, email, voice, video and web conferencing, file storage and more in one well running system. Contact management and workflow tools that can operate seamlessly with email, document management, calendars, conferencing and much more. And, most importantly, since it all operates through the cloud, the entire system is far more cost effective than separate legacy systems that also need to be maintained by expensive in-house maintenance crews. Integrated communications systems usually operate through a subscription pricing model with all upgrading, security and storage done off-site by the third party integrated communications service. Besides the low cost of maintenance, there is no need for large and expensive in-house hardware or square footage.

Integrated communications systems, when used routinely as part of a company’s workflow, will establish a project and client record on the fly and have it evolve through the different phases of a project. Imagine collaborative systems that contain database tools which allow the team to create simple workflows while pulling contacts from a CRM and into the workflow without needing to do it manually. True automation that benefits a small company’s bottom line directly.

The Great Equalizer

A small company that adopts an integrated communications system as the hub of the company’s communications and workflow management needs may be surprised at how competitive that company becomes. With so many systems working well together, a small company can often be mistaken as being larger than it is. But more importantly, the efficiency of a robust integrated communications system on behalf of a small company cannot be overstated.