businessinfomag.uk
magazine
22
Cover Story
Easy come, easy go
In the last few years, mobility has
gone mainstream. Once an option – a
necessity even – for sales people and
knowledge workers, mobile working
is now standard for employees at all
levels of an organisation and in all
departments.
According to a global Vodafone
study
1
, 75% of companies have
introduced flexible working policies that
enable employees to vary their hours
and use the latest technologies to work
from home or on the move. The trend is
most advanced – and runs deepest – in
developed economies like the US and
Western Europe. In a new whitepaper
2
,
IDC predicts that by 2018 three quarters
of theWestern European workforce will
be mobile.
Change on this scale is nothing
short of revolutionary. Even so, many
businesses (and suppliers) persist with
outmoded telephone systems that
limit their ability to harness all the
benefits that flexible working brings to
productivity and business efficiency.
WilfredWood, Senior Product
Manager at Samsung Electronics UK,
says Samsung is taking a different
approach. “We believe there is a need
for continuing development and
innovation. Businesses today have
specific requirements, such as easy
mobility, flexibility and low running
costs, that other communication systems
might struggle to deliver. The Samsung
Communication Manager Compact
(SCMC) is Samsung’s response to these
changing market requirements,” he said.
Foremost among these is mobility
and the seamless integration of mobile
phones into the voice network.
“Businesses today are down-
sizing their office space and adopting
hot desking. They are encouraging
employees to work from home and work
flexibly and that leads to the use of
mobiles rather than fixed desk phones
as the primary communication devices,”
explainedWood.
“The big challenge is to enable
customers to enjoy the power of
mobility without any loss of control.
How do you give the customer control
over mobile devices so they can do
things like record calls, keep call logs,
keep audit trails and so on? You have
to ensure that the business is able to
control communications rather than let
individual users do whatever they want.
The SCM Compact gives users the ability
to work anywhere, at any location, and
enjoy a completely seamless experience,
with the business retaining complete
control.”
With support for smartphones
running theWE VoIP mobile unified
communications app, the ability to
move calls from a desk phone to a
mobile in mid-call, and automatic hand-
over of voice calls fromWi-Fi to GSM –
without the user having to do anything,
the SCM Compact is tailor-made for
today’s more mobile workstyles. It also
meets the demand for flexibility and low
running costs.
Pure IP
The SCM Compact is a pure IP-based
VoIP phone system for 16 to 512 users.
It is a smaller version of the Samsung
Communication Manager Express
(SMCE) for up to 3,000 extensions, with
the same feature set, same look and feel
and same form factor.
It comes with many of the most
popular business applications built in.
This includes a powerful voicemail
system, expandable to 32 channels;
auto attendant; call recording; and
a full audio-conferencing suite that
allows users to configure and set up a
conference call just as they would with
any other conferencing system.
SIP trunks are the primary means
of connectivity with the outside world.
However, in the interests of flexibility,
the SCM Compact can be used with
optional gateway modules for ISDN
Primary Rate, Basic Rate, and even
analogue lines.
“The system has four universal slots
and a choice of modules that you can slot
in, including 60-channel ISDN, 30-channel
ISDN, 4-channel Basic Rate and 4-channel
analogue trunk cards. There is also an
analogue extension card, so you can link
in things like fax machines if you need
to,” explainedWood.
For handsets, the SCM Compact uses
Samsung’s existing range of IP phones, as
well as smartphones running the
SamsungWE VoIP mobility app.
Samsung’s new all-in-one IP phone system offers easy integration with smartphones,
including seamless handover fromWi-Fi to GSM and from desktop phones to mobiles.
Change on
this scale
is nothing
short of
revolutionary
1. Flexible: friend or foe?,
Vodafone, 2016
2. ‘Are your business
processes stifling your
market opportunity? Cost-
efficient print and document
management through smart
MFPs’, IDC, 2016.
