Crucially, VykeBusiness also provides the finance office with an online management tool, called Business Manager, which enables real-time visibility of call costs and control over how the service is used. The application is designed to reduce the cost of making international calls by up to 95% for businesses.
The VykeBusiness smartphone app is available to download for Apple iOS, Google Play and Blackberry. Despite half of all adults now owning a smartphone (51%) and IDC predicting that ‘total business use smartphone shipments will reach 639.3 million units in 2017 at a CAGR of 35.6% for 2012–2017’, VykeBusiness believes that companies are not making full use of this popular and powerful device, yet the barriers can easily be overcome. Many organisations encourage the usage of desktop phones over mobile devices for making international calls due to fear of costs, however VykeBusiness enables employees to make low cost international calls on their smartphone while offering the finance office to have real-time visibility of those calls thereby maximising workforce productivity.
Once a company signs up for VykeBusiness, the systems administrator, or office manager, will have access to Business Manager, where they can add employees to the service. Once an employee’s details are added (phone number, email address, name and title) they will receive a text with their login credentials and a link to download the application. Users can then use the app’s Colleagues Directory, to call each other free of charge if both parties are connected to the internet.
The administrator can establish default connection settings at a company-wide, or individual, basis. The finance office can run analytics to see how much is being spent on calls, and where. This can help pinpoint anomalies and may prompt credit limits to be set for each user, to help prevent bill shock.
The VykeBusiness app home screen can also be personalised with the company’s own banner message, logo or newsfeed.
Mark Egginton, Sales & Marketing Director at VykeBusiness, said “Companies need to ensure that they can mobilise their workforce, without losing control of call costs, quality or security. VykeBusiness enables companies to strike this balance by providing an intuitive smartphone app for employees and an easy online management tool for the systems administrator, or finance office, to use.”
Johan Ludvigsson, Head of IT at DNB Luxembourg, said “It is now possible to use modern technology to call at a fraction of the price worldwide, without having to compromise on quality. All our international calls are now made through the user friendly VykeBusiness app.”