It might seem to some like a ridiculous question to ask, but many businesses are starting to take a hard look at it anyway:  Are wired desktop phones actually necessary any more?

Of course, for many businesses, the answer is "yes" and still will be for years to come.  However, for others, it's not so clear-cut.  Perhaps they have a workforce that's heavily invested in bringing/using their own devices.  Perhaps their workforce largely telecommutes, and the office itself is minimal.  Perhaps cloud solutions are taking the place of traditional phones.

So today, we wanted to take a look at some of the technologies that are disrupting traditional desk-based telecommunications.  You might not be in a position of ditching your desk phones today, but by 2018 or so...?  

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That could be a totally different story.

{{cta('fc89c5f9-0947-4232-ad54-7b2b14ee203c','justifyleft')}}6 Trends Quickly Rendering Traditional Desk Phones Irrelevant

1 - BYOD

Bring-Your-Own-Device is nothing new, but businesses are still discovering ways of taking advantage of it to cut their own costs.  When 100% of your workforce already owns a smartphone, and probably prefers using it for communications, why force them to use desk phones?  At the very least, it could end up making them duplicate efforts at maintaining contact lists and such.

After all, there are plenty of communication system back-ends which can take calls placed to a main office and intelligently re-route them to workers' smartphones already.  With a bit of clever programming, it's not that hard for companies to set up their own ad-hoc Unified Communications network without a heavily investment in new hardware.

2 - Telecommuting

There are certainly pros and cons to having a workforce that's mostly remote.  Scheduling meetings is difficult, and there are still those that say remote conferences lack the immediacy of face-to-face meetings, or are simply not as productive.  Then again, there are also still those that say vinyl sounds better than digital.

Either way, having a largely remote workforce certainly does cut down on overhead in office expenses, since your workers will be mostly or entirely using their own home equipment.  There's no point maintaining office phones when no one's in the office to use them.

3 - On-The-Go VoIP and Softphones

So, all your employees use their own smartphones, but you're concerned about security, centralization and call-tracking when they're all on different phone models, OSes, and service providers.  That's really not an issue either.  There are plenty of "softphone" software VoIP solutions that create a unified data-based communications network which is largely or entirely hardware-agnostic.  

Skype is, of course, the most well-known and popular of the softphone solutions, but there are plenty of other providers of similar services as well.  The best solutions out there are easily integrated into existing Unified Communications setups as well, which can -when implemented properly- create a best-of-both-worlds setup with all the benefits of UC but vastly less corporate infrastructure investment.

4 - Customers Preferring Non-Voice Communications

Here's a little factoid about Millennials a lot of older people don't know about:  On the whole, they prefer text-based communications to voice by a pretty large margin.  A survey last year showed that:

• 76% describe text/email as "more convenient"
• 75% would rather lose voice communications than text
• 63% believe phone calls are more disruptive than text

One-fifth even said they never bother to check their voicemail!

So a company whose target market is largely those under 40 may find their telephone systems going disused, simply because their buyers don't like making phone calls.  And given that the influence of Millennials on marketplaces is only going to grow for the next 20-30 years, this could signpost a major change in how business/buyer communications happen in the decades to come.

Speaking of alternatives...

{{cta('f202e668-5d28-446d-8b03-6d074a3eba81','justifyleft')}}5 - Video Calls and VideoConferencing

Let's not forget the other side of the "voice alternative" coin.  Video-based communications are growing rapidly, also driven by software providers like Skype.  It's now increasingly common for even everyday "phone calls" to be video calls instead, generally using VoIP-style systems.  The technology is right on the cusp of becoming truly mainstream, although it's still being held back slightly by problems maintaining framerates in lower-bandwidth environments.  But since bandwidth is expanding consistently, this is an issue which will lessen greatly in years to come.  

Given that desk-based video phones are extremely expensive and fairly limited in their functionality, it seems fair to assume the move to video communications will largely happen on portable devices.

6 - Cisco Collaboration (and similar ventures)

The final factor to consider is that even the largest of communications companies are starting to push away from desk-bound solutions.  Last year, Cisco turned a lot of heads by announcing a major collaboration with Apple with direct integration  of Cisco/Meraki systems into the iOS 10 operating system for iPhones and iPads.

Basically, a company with an existing Cisco or Meraki network and an install base of iPhones can already enjoy all the benefits of a fully on-the-go mobile Unified Communications system with virtually no additional expenditures or setup.  That sort of "plug and play" functionality would be attractive to companies interested in the tech discussed in this article, but hesitant to embrace ad-hoc solutions.

Plus, if Cisco Collaboration gains popularity, it's virtually inevitable that other similar deals will follow suit.  This is more speculative, but it's entirely possible that within a few years, all the major smartphone brands will carry software allowing them to directly integrate into cloud-based UC setups.

Towards A Phoneless Future...?

Overall, the trends point to communications simultaneously becoming more robust AND more mobile, with less and less emphasis on voice-specific communications.  The general Millennial distaste for telephone calls will undoubtedly be a major driving factor here, particularly if they pass on that distaste to their own children.

What do you think?  Are deskbound telephones officially in front of the technological firing squad, or are we jumping the gun?

In the meantime, if you're interested in modernizing your communications system in line with any of the latest trends, contact Hummingbird Networks for a full future-focused consultations on your options!