Breaking Down the Walls — Improve Your Connection Outside the Office
Posted by Puneet Khurania |
In the modern business age, many companies are doing away with physical office space altogether. In fact, experts say that enabling employees to work from home is doing a 180-degree turn from the perk it once was, to a business necessity.
“Who says there will be an office at all?” says Tom Austin, vice president at Gartner, a Stamford, Connecticut-based technology research firm. “Already we work from Starbucks, in the car and at our kids’ softball games.”
Yet, there are still naysayers who poo-poo the idea — Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo! sent out an in-house memo last year stating that employees must come into the office — even as studies show those that have employees who work from home are, on average, more productive and have lower real-estate costs and better employee morale, which leads to less turnover. Supporting this trend is that nearly 6 million Americans work from home, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Further advancing this transformation in doing business, Switch (www.switch.co) is bringing a business phone system to organizations that use GoogleApps, replacing a company’s old phone hardware with new software built to enable mobility.
“Switch makes sense for anyone who realizes their business phone system that serves a desk is broken,” says Craig Walker, founder and CEO of the San Francisco-based company.
Switch is Walker’s latest project that focuses on modernizing the traditional phone call — starting with companies that use Google Apps.
Google Apps users are directly imported into Switch, enabling a company to get up and running in minutes. Users log in with their Apps account and have immediate access to their company directory. When on a call, Switch shows the latest Gmail messages, upcoming Calendar events and shared Docs.
“Who says there will be an office at all?” says Tom Austin, vice president at Gartner, a Stamford, Connecticut-based technology research firm. “Already we work from Starbucks, in the car and at our kids’ softball games.”
Yet, there are still naysayers who poo-poo the idea — Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo! sent out an in-house memo last year stating that employees must come into the office — even as studies show those that have employees who work from home are, on average, more productive and have lower real-estate costs and better employee morale, which leads to less turnover. Supporting this trend is that nearly 6 million Americans work from home, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Further advancing this transformation in doing business, Switch (www.switch.co) is bringing a business phone system to organizations that use GoogleApps, replacing a company’s old phone hardware with new software built to enable mobility.
“Switch makes sense for anyone who realizes their business phone system that serves a desk is broken,” says Craig Walker, founder and CEO of the San Francisco-based company.
Switch is Walker’s latest project that focuses on modernizing the traditional phone call — starting with companies that use Google Apps.
Google Apps users are directly imported into Switch, enabling a company to get up and running in minutes. Users log in with their Apps account and have immediate access to their company directory. When on a call, Switch shows the latest Gmail messages, upcoming Calendar events and shared Docs.