Welsh rail commuters faced chaos this morning as they were hit by a major power outage during rush-hour, Wales Online reported.

Electrical supplies were lost between Swansea and Newport, with Pontypridd, Caerphilly, Bridgend and Barry also affected.

Commuters in Wales had to face delays of around 2 hours, with knock-on effects causing further delays to rail services throughout South West and some London trains. The impact was felt by businesses all over Wales and the South West (we had a few of the Gradwell team stuck), but the pain the commuters suffer could be softened by capitalising on internet technologies.

If you enable your employees to set up an office in their own home and create a backup plan when disruption strikes, you can save your business time (employees won’t be late) and money (no lost business due to absences).

But what if an important client calls?

They will be able to answer it! Using Business VoIP, phone numbers are not tied to a physical location. For example, the Gradwell office has an 01225 area code. If an employee lives in Bristol, say in the 01179 area code, and needed to work at home, they can. They simply take their VoIP phone home, plug it in and their 01225 number rings through to their 01179 location.

All you they need is a broadband connection and VoIP phone. This is all possible because the number is tied to the account on Gradwell servers, not the physical connection like BT lines. As an added benefit, your business will also reduce your bills on calls charges and line rental.

But what about their emails?

Not a problem. Use a Hosted Exchange service and your employees have ‘anywhere access’ to their email, contacts, calendar and tasks, whether that be through Outlook, a web browser or on a smartphone like the iPhone. They can send and receive mail as if they were at their desk! All the information is held in ‘the cloud’, so anything you do when away from the office is synced with the servers, so you only ever have the most up-to-date information.

But what if they need access to files on their computer?

There are two options. Your employees can either use a remote access service, such as LogMeIn, to access and control their computer from their home PC. Or they can use a sharing service like Dropbox that allows you to share folders (and the files within them) on your computer with colleagues. You can then either install a Dropbox folder on your home computer or access the files from a web browser.

If you add all the simple and affordable services to your business, your employees won’t be among the thousands losing working hours when stuck at home.

And those stuck members of the Gradwell team? They simply turned around, went home and did exactly as suggested above, worked from home using our internet technologies.

Talk to our sales team about how Business VoIP and Hosted Exchange can help you and your business decrease commuter stress and enable home working on 01225 800 808.

(Image by John Seb Barber)

Telephone numbers are a key part of your business. Without it, communications with your company are limited to email which can be impersonal and take too long. Therefore you need to ensure that you are making the most of your telephone system.

There are many things to consider, such as call groups, recorded messages and caller ID routing, but something simpler can have a much larger impact: your phone number.

Before they call you, a lead can form an idea of your business thanks to your digits.

Memorable numbers offer a wide range of benefits to a business, including: Read the rest of this entry »

As the UK heads into a pre-Christmas cold snap and we prepare for a heavy winter snowfall at the end of this week, thoughts turn to the chaos UK businesses faced at the start of 2010 thanks to the white stuff.

However, current technologies mean that businesses do not have to feel the impact of widespread disruption across the UK. By utilising services such as Hosted VoIP, Exchange email, instant messaging and cloud computing, and creating virtual offices for employees, businesses can carry on as normal while the rest of the country grinds to a halt. Read the rest of this entry »