Originally posted on Zoom Blog April 21, 2020. 3 min read.

With most on-premise and legacy PBX solutions, the use of a desk phone relies on being hardwired to the PBX and PSTN networks. But these outdated phone systems weren’t built to accommodate the large remote workforces that we’re seeing today.

Companies that don’t support a bring-your-own-device environment are extremely challenged right now in four key areas:

Security: The inability to secure these devices and workflows puts confidential company information at risk with each call, creating an IT administrator’s nightmare.
Functionality: Lack of key business PBX features for admins, sales, support, and managers can negatively impact the way a business runs in today’s environment.
Remote administration: Legacy solutions often are not easily managed offsite, making them difficult to update and troubleshoot.
Customer operations: Inbound calls to the main business number need to be answered from anywhere and calls need to be routed to the right employees, especially for sales and support.
Here’s how a cloud phone solution helps IT maintain security, ensures supervisors can manage remote teams, and enables employees to execute while working from home.

Limitations of on-premise systems

Today’s remote work environment has exposed many flaws with on-premise solutions. On-premise PBX systems, for instance, were built to run voice on the network and meet modern demands only through continuous modifications. They have serious limitations when your teams are suddenly forced to work from home:

• Many newly remote employees end up using their personal cell phones to connect with colleagues and customers, exposing their personal phone numbers.
• Managers aren’t able to see employees’ online presence or access call reporting and metrics for their teams.
• Executive assistants and their bosses lose their workflows, such as transfer, conference, hold, and directory access.

IT administrators can’t roll out updates, monitor usage, or troubleshoot issues.With all of these limitations, however, the fear of migrating away from these on-premise systems is still very real. Large businesses often don’t want to abandon their previous investments, and perceived risk in migrating to a new platform also causes hesitation.

However, to simplify management, save costs, and scale phone communications for a remote workforce, migrating to the cloud is the smart option.

Benefits of the Zoom Phone cloud solution

Zoom Phone was built from the ground up to solve these user and administrative challenges. With Zoom Phone as part of Zoom’s unified communications platform, organizations can:

• Customize their deployment strategy with on-premise and cloud peering
• Keep existing numbers and service providers
• Migrate legacy devices in a simplified, customized step-by-step process
• Leverage a single Zoom app for all their video and voice communications
• Provide a streamlined end-user experience

Additionally, Zoom Phone helps sales, support, and other customer-facing teams interact with clients through modern features that:

• Support native call routing and queueing
• Integrate with critical CRM applications, including Salesforce
• Give users presence, click to call, and external outbound caller ID options
• Can elevate calls to ad hoc video meetings
• Migrate to the cloud today

Adjusting to this new remote work environment could be the difference between your business growing or stalling, and a cloud phone solution will help you successfully adapt and maintain business continuity.

Connect with a Parallel representative today to learn how Zoom can help you manage a newly remote workforce with phone, video, chat, and webinar solutions on a single, integrated cloud platform.