Why cross-border connectivity is essential for DX

Organizations are moving toward cloud-based digital transformation for any number of reasons: to grow their business, to expand into new markets or to quickly react to market changes. In other words, to keep IT focused on business strategy rather than keeping the lights on.

This requires a new way of thinking about network connectivity and collaboration, and about what it takes to remain competitive. Voice and data connectivity are now mission-critical; you require a reliable, consistent and seamless experience for both your customers and employees.

But your legacy infrastructure might be holding you back, especially if you’re dealing with cumbersome CapEx-based solutions over multiple locations, in multiple countries, with different partners and different processes.

Embracing cloud-based communications

There’s already broad acceptance and adoption of cloud services for data or compute resources as businesses look to increase flexibility, boost speed to market and quickly respond to the needs of the business. But this also applies when it comes to your phone system.

Those who have embraced cloud for data or compute resources are starting to ask the same questions about their phone infrastructure: Is it better to run that as a service? Does it make sense to offload licensing, maintenance and upgrades to a third party?

Cloud-based communications can turn a phone system into a collaboration tool, helping to transform the way an organization runs its business — from unified communications with next-gen voice to
SD-WANs running on any mix of public, private or hybrid cloud.

It’s why more businesses are turning to cloud-based alternatives, particularly when they need a borderless solution to connect multiple office locations.

Why cross-border connectivity matters

Many business owners are frustrated by the fact they don’t have a common partner on both sides of the border; in some cases, they’re passed off to a reseller of telecom services in the secondary market.

Oftentimes, once the service provider crosses the border, they don’t invest as much in the secondary market; new products and services are rolled out in the home country first, and some features may not extend beyond the border. They also tend to be more dependent on carrier relationships, which require more daisy-chaining to put together a solution that works for a particular customer.

This lack of cross-border ease can slow DX efforts, particularly for those wanting to extend or expand their business across the border.

Real-world benefits

For us, it’s not a Canada-only or U.S.-only discussion. We have a foot on each side of the border, with half of our business in Canada and the other half in the U.S. That means an office location can extend their communications — voice, chat, collaboration, video and mobility — to another location across the border in a way that’s seamless to the IT department.

One of our clients, for example, runs their entire operation out of Canada, including their call center, and yet 100 per cent of their customers are based in the U.S. Cross-border communications, however, are completely seamless to those customers.

Another one of our Canadian clients is expanding, and recently acquired a company with locations throughout the U.S. They wanted to integrate their new locations ASAP and allow everyone to communicate seamlessly on day one. Their Allstream solution allowed them to quickly add new employees to their current Unified Communications solution, so their cross-border employees could quickly become part of one seamless organization.

Cloud-based, cross-border connectivity solutions not only reduce complexity and enhance productivity, they can result in significant savings to your overall communication costs. And, ultimately, they can move the needle on your digital transformation efforts.

Learn more about our solutions for cross-border cloud connectivity here.

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