As anyone who lives in the UK knows, when snow arrives, the majority of the country comes to a standstill. For some reason it’s impossible for many of us to get on with everyday business. Whether the roads are too icy to use or the train companies shut down their services, it’s inevitable that millions of employees will not make it into work. Recently we saw the so-called ‘Beast from the East’ causing mayhem up and down the country. The Centre for Economics and Business Research calculated this cost the UK around £1bn per day, which I’m sure you’ll agree, is a huge amount of money.

So what can businesses do about it?

We can’t prevent snow falling but what we can do is proactively prepare for it, meaning if staff have to work from home, communication with colleagues and access to the network is uninterrupted, minimising the impact on productivity. This is now possible by implementing one or several of the few revolutionary Cisco Collaboration products that will be discussed in this article.

Cisco WebEx is a powerful meeting tool that enables you meet, communicate and video conference with individuals or groups using the internet on almost any device of your choice. Along with crisp audio quality, WebEx also features a HD video mode so it really does feel as if you’re in the same room. You can also share your screen with participants for demonstrations so people can easily follow along during the meeting.

WebEx is one of the most widely used business collaboration tools across the globe and hosts over 20 million meetings per month. Cisco Collaboration, and Cisco in general, are renowned for their security-focussed approach to collaboration, so you can be assured that confidential information will stay confidential.

One great aspect of WebEx is the Call Me feature, where WebEx will call you at the chosen time of your meeting. To use this feature you can simply add Call Me to any Premium Plan and let your meeting call you at the scheduled time, wherever you happen to be. Just answer and you’re in. Your attendees can do the same, free of charge. With WebEx, there’s no need to be in the office to get your work completed.

WebEx is available as a monthly or annual subscription based on the maximum number of users per meeting. For more details you can Contact Us here.

Cisco Spark is an instant messaging app that does so much more. It was created to overcome the challenges that arise when people are collaborating on work from many different locations.

Along with secure private messaging, you can create rooms for multiple people to share ideas, thoughts and documents so that everyone can stay on the same page as efficiently as possible. Keeping track of everyone’s progress can often be so difficult. Cisco Spark solves this.

Cisco Spark is essentially a business Whatsapp with additional productivity features and enterprise-level encryption and security.

If you would like to know more about Cisco Spark and look at ways you could implement it into your environment then please get in touch here.

Cisco Spark Board is a fantastic piece of hardware from Cisco Collaboration. It is a digital whiteboard, presentation screen, and video conferencing device all in one. It’s the ultimate business collaboration tool. Its capabilities and sleek design mean it will fit into any office seamlessly.

You can video or audio conference, and annotate on shared content. It h+as everything you need for team collaboration, all at the touch of a finger. And you can use the Cisco Spark app to connect to your virtual teams outside the physical room, through the devices of your choice.

The spark board comes in two separates sizes, 55” and 70”, so you can choose the one you want based on the space in your office available. They feature 4K cameras and high-resolution 4K screens that show detailed content beautifully allowing for easy reading and high quality images. They also have a built-in 12-microphone array which amplifies sound quality as if a microphone has been extended to each speaker. What’s more is that no wires are even required to share a presentation from a laptop, whether you are local or remote.

The Spark Room Kit is very similar to the spark boards. The Room Kit is designed for businesses who would like to continue using their existing monitors but benefit from all the great features of a Cisco Collaboration product. The Room Kit is essentially a camera and microphone that fits on top of your monitor so you can video conference.

Conclusion

Implementation of these tools is a great way to ensure that productivity remains high even when the snow rolls in. Remaining capable in these periods is also a great way to prove your superiority over competitors and reinforces your reputation with stakeholders. For example, if you can continue providing customer support when your competitors cannot, people will remember the quality of your service and opinions of your business will improve even further.

If you would like to know more about Cisco Collaboration or any of the products mentioned then please do Get In Touch. We would love to have a conversation with you and answers any of your questions about how these collaboration solutions would fit into your work environment.