There is a common misconception that Cisco technology is only for large corporations. Today we want to change your mind on this. In the last few years, Cisco has been focussing much of their effort on developing a portfolio in Collaboration, Networking and Security built for small and medium-sized businesses. These Cisco small business solutions are designed to directly benefit the way that smaller businesses operate whilst integrating Cisco’s renowned and award-winning hardware and software. In this article, the second of the series, we will be taking a look at the Cisco small business collaboration solutions that are available.

The ability to implement affordable Cisco small business solutions has enabled thousands of firms across the globe to streamline operations, reduce costs, and rapidly grow their business.

There are several sectors of the collaboration market that Cisco is involved in such as calling, video meetings, and instant messaging. Year on year, Cisco is evaluated as the market leaders in many of these sectors by external organisations such as Gartner. What’s great, is these solutions are surprisingly affordable for small businesses and can greatly help them prioritise innovation and communication between team members. Here are some of the Cisco small business collaboration solutions that can help you achieve this.

You can find part one of this series, based on small business security, here.

Meeting with people is essential in business. However, with travel to-and-fro, it becomes extremely time-consuming and can have a big effect on the productivity of your day. That’s why businesses are investing more and more every year on meeting solutions that give you the ability to meet online over video. This saves a great deal of both time and money in the long run.

In the meetings solution market, there is one main player that is far ahead of any other competitor; Cisco.

Cisco Webex, their flagship meeting solution, enables users to meet virtually over HD video and high-quality audio. It’s as close as you can get to being in the same room. It features built-in AI functionality that performs a variety of helpful tasks such as background noise cancellation which is designed to pick up dogs barking, noisy eaters, or anyone typing and cancels the noise out to reduce distractions from the discussion in the meeting.

Fortunately, if you’re interested in trying Cisco Webex, we can offer you an exclusive trial absolutely free! Please click here for more information on this great offer.

Alongside Webex is Webex Teams, Cisco’s secure cloud-based instant messaging platform used daily by thousands of businesses around the world. Webex Teams gives users the ability to communicate with each other instantly over a highly protected connection. Through Webex Teams you are able to create ‘rooms’ which are essentially group chats in which members of a team can easily discuss ideas, collaborate, and share documents.

The ability to share documents is one of the best features of Webex Teams. Previously, in order to share a file, employees would have to either construct an email and attach a document to it or upload a document to a dropbox online. With Webex Teams this process couldn’t be easier. With just a couple of clicks, you can instantly send files to desired people in confidence that no one apart from them will be able to access it.

Click here to find out more about getting a free trial of Webex Teams, a perfect Cisco small business collaboration solution.

If your office is gradually becoming outdated in terms of technology, it’s extremely easy to fall behind your competitors who are investing in equipment designed to help them perform tasks faster and to a superior standard. One simple way of bringing your office back to life is by deploying a Webex Board, one of our favourite Cisco small business collaboration products.

The Cisco Webex Board is a revolutionary product that will benefit your businesses in more ways than you could imagine. Essentially it is a smart collaboration screen built to enhance meetings and the communication that occurs within these meetings. The Webex Board wirelessly connects to the device of your choice allowing you to instantly share files to the screen in full 4K resolution. Anyone in the room or joined to the meeting via Webex will be able to see what you have shared, and subsequently edit and draw on it with the Webex Board’s built-in whiteboarding functionality. As soon as the meeting finishes, a copy of all the documents and annotations is automatically sent to all participants.

There really isn’t another product available today that can drive innovation as well as the Webex Board can. Go to WebexBoard.co.uk to find out more about the Webex Board.

The next Cisco small business solution that you may be unaware of is the Business Edition 4000 also known as the BE4000. The BE4000 is a next-generation phone system designed for businesses with up to 200 users. Cisco leveraged all the expertise they gained when building their larger phone systems and managed to package it up into a smaller and more affordable system geared for smaller businesses.

It’s common knowledge that if you want prestige quality phones, you buy Cisco. They are ergonomically designed to be comfortable to use throughout the entire day, they are straightforward to use, and it’s extremely rare that you’ll ever have a problem with them. As with any other Cisco product, the feature set of a BE4000 is extremely vast. It is leaps and bounds ahead of its competitors in this market.

You might be concerned about the expense of a system like this, but there is no need. This phone system is extremely competitively priced and can be purchased with the handsets for as low as £11 a month per employee! If you would like to know where to find this deal please click here.

Although not yet released, we are expecting the Webex Share to become available to order very soon so we thought it would be useful to add to this list of Cisco small business solutions.

The Webex Share is a small, portable dongle that plugs into the HDMI port on any old television to transform it into a modern, wireless presentation screen. This will prove to be a great product for small businesses because of its affordability and the fact it will act as a fantastic entry level product if you’ve never bought Cisco hardware before.

The Webex Share will be a huge visual aid to your meetings and prevents the wasted time it takes to continuously plug devices into screens.

As you can see, Cisco has a great variety of solutions that will directly support and enhance your business communication internally and with customers/suppliers. Investing in modern collaboration solutions is a fantastic and straightforward way of boosting business productivity.

If you are looking to upgrade the communication portfolio within your business then we would recommend visiting My Cloud Voice, our partner site that offers a whole Cisco small business collaboration suite for an affordable monthly price.

You can find part one of this series, based on small business security, here.