In the modern workplace, the mobile phone is considered an indispensable tool. In a 2016 study conducted by research firm Frost & Sullivan and reported by Samsung, employees estimate that their mobile phones make them 34% more productive.
However, mobile use can have very different implications in a business context than elsewhere, shedding light on why you should seriously consider enacting a business-specific mobile service rather than simply settling for a personal mobile plan.
What’s wrong with putting a personal plan to corporate use?
If you’ve only recently given birth to your business, you might have thought nothing of simply using your personal plan for purposes related to running your business, too. Indeed, if you work alone or with just a few employees, this might be a genuinely practical strategy.
However, it can become significantly less so as your company grows, with more and more staff joining its payroll and, therefore, to be covered by your plan. A personal “friends and family”-style plan might suffice for an extremely small company, Digital Trends acknowledges – but, if you have more than two employees, you should really turn your attention to a bona fide business plan.
Why? There are quite a few reasons – but one simple reason above all is that the plan will be specifically tailored with business needs in mind. For example, the plan might be able to accommodate firms that grow unexpectedly quickly and especially heavily consume data.
Business plans are cheaper than personal plans
As a business owner, you are probably more cost-conscious than you are as an everyday consumer – in which case, you will be grateful to know that companies pay much less than consumers for each line with their mobile service plans.
Whereas a plan for unlimited voice and data would likely cost a customer over $70 per month, it may be possible for large enterprises to negotiate per-line rates of half that price.
Nonetheless, often, an enterprise-level mobile service contract will not offer voice minutes and data on an unlimited basis but instead pool these minutes and data and set caps on the cumulative volume that the firm’s whole workforce consumes.
This system is convenient for businesses with power users or when workloads get particularly demanding. You could even find that your provider lets you use a network dedicated to businesses, meaning that consumer traffic does not clog it up and slow it down during work hours. This is the case with the voice, data and mobile services by Gamma, one business-focused provider.
Network coverage that suits businesses
Naturally, a mobile service should be exactly that – mobile. Therefore, you should opt for a plan where the network covers not only your brick-and-mortar premises but also the locations where your staff are set to travel.
Your chosen service should enable your staff to continue working uninterrupted while on the go, ensuring that they can capture customer calls even on occasions when your company’s competitors are suffering from faltering signals and so have to fall back on voicemail.
