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OTTAWA -- Despite having three different telephone numbers, teleworker Helen Midwood used to miss calls from customers wanting to order organic foods from her employer, Nature's Path Foods Inc.
And to make matters worse, some clients weren't impressed that Ms. Midwood, the company's Canadian sales manager, was working from a home office in Surrey, B.C., rather than at its headquarters in nearby Richmond.
But since late December when Nature's Path Foods added the Mitel Networks Teleworker Solution to its telephone system, she has just one phone number, rarely misses calls and her clients have no idea she works remotely. She also feels more connected to her fellow workers at head office.
"It means better customer service because some customers say 'how many numbers do I have to phone to place an order?' " Ms. Midwood says. "The last thing you want to do is tick people off." Ms. Midwood is among a growing number of teleworkers taking advantage of robust new communications technology from companies such as Mitel Networks, Alcatel, Nortel Networks and Hewlett- Packard that extend new features and capabilities to teleworkers and road warriors and revolutionize the way they connect and work with counterparts at the office.
At least one company, Nortel Networks, claims the latest generation of communications products can boost teleworkers' productivity by up to 10 per cent.
Ms. Midwood may well be a case in point. Since Mitel's teleworking product was installed, she no longer plays telephone tag with customers who before tried to contact her at telephone numbers that rang into her home office, cellular telephone and the Nature's Path headquarters, which she visits several times a week.
That's because whether she's at home, at the corporate office or on the road, Teleworker Solution routes all calls to her through a single head office phone number. It also enables her to take advantage of a host of services available to her office-bound colleagues, including conference calling.
In addition, she can contact her head office associates by dialling a four-digit extension rather than their entire phone numbers. And whether she' s working at home in her jeans, or on the road in a business suit selling the company's organic cereals and breakfast foods, customers think they're contacting her at head office.
Mitel's teleworking solution consists of a gateway server added to Nature's Path's existing Mitel Networks 3300 Integrated Communications Platform and Internet protocol (IP) telephones, which operate on the Internet rather than using traditional phone lines.
Once the server was installed at head office, Ms. Midwood simply plugged an IP telephone into the ethernet cable and router at her home and her office phone and cellphone became an extension on the Nature's Path Foods phone system.
"There is less chance she will miss customers and all of her long-distance calling is routed through our telephone system, which means her calls get the 30-per-cent company discount," says Ron Boucher, technology manager for Nature's Path Foods, who is planning to connect other remote workers to the system in the near future. "It's a money saver for the company and it's a time saver for her because there is no need for her to expense her phone bills back to the company.'' Mitel Networks CEO Don Smith says his Ottawa-based company's Teleworker Solution is designed to be cost effective, easy to use and efficient for doing business.
"It is up to us to make the technology simple, easy to use and a secure extension of a company's network. It's great for teleworkers because all features available on the office phone system are available to people who work at other locations. It makes life easier and better for business.''
Here are a couple of other communications offerings that make life simpler for teleworkers:
Alcatel OmniDesktop Reflexes and e-Reflexes line of digital and IP telephones. Available in a range of models, they offer more than 500 features that streamline information flow and simplify communications for all users, says Jeanne Bayerl, director of business development for the company's communications server business unit in Calabasas, Calif.
Digital models can be converted to IP phones without the need to replace existing equipment and once they are plugged into the wall at a home office, the phones provide teleworkers with all of the features available at head office, including defining a selected list of callers who can reach them without the need to go through an assistant, sending mini text messages between callers during a phone call, and using a keyboard built into the phone to dial external and internal calls by name, rather than by searching a phone list and keying the number into the phone.
"The idea is to focus on the overall business process," Ms. Bayerl says. "If you can speed up the process, you speed up the productivity of the whole enterprise.''
Multimedia PC Client. Developed by Nortel Networks, this software is installed on a personal computer or laptop, and later this year will be available for use with handheld devices. Using an Internet connection and a headset, it enables teleworkers to talk, send instant messages, send and receive video, share text and images, and collaborate on projects in real time, all while chatting on the phone, says Tony Rybczynski, Nortel's director of strategic enterprise technology in Ottawa.
It also lets users keep personal directories of people they call regularly, initiate calls by clicking on a name, view call logs, and conference-call with up to 16 participants. They can detect whether contacts are on-line or on the telephone, choose whether to answer a call, play recorded greetings, send the call to another number or voice mail, redirect it to e-mail or a Web site.
Mr. Rybczynski says various studies indicate that Multimedia PC Client can improve mobile users' productivity by 8 to 10 per cent because employees can manage phone calls more efficiently, collaborate better with fellow workers and eliminate travel by using the video conferencing feature.
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