Small Business: How to Prepare for Bad Winter Weather

With winter weather fast approaching, businesses, especially those in the northern states, must prepare for the possibility of poor conditions ahead. Weather recently has been erratic and unpredictable, with a high of 80 in Dallas on Wednesday and a low of 20 just one day later, a state of emergency declared in Oklahoma, and schools and events canceled across the country.

Many companies are also forced to close at times during the winter season, losing sales because of events beyond their control. Employees might be stuck at home, unable to get to work. Power might be out at the office, reducing the capability of the business to do anything important.

But as technology improves, the ability of businesses to stay open through natural disasters improves as well.

An outstanding example of this is the introduction of hosted VoIP phone systems in the past two decades. Since the technology requires only an internet connection to connect to your phone system, the flexibility of your business to deal with bad conditions is taken up a notch.

Is power at your business location out? As long as you can find another place to work with an internet connection, you still have access to your business phone number and can continue many of your functions as normal. You can speak to customers, clients, business partners, whomever: it’s almost as if there isn’t even a snowstorm outside.

Are your employees stuck at home? That’s not a problem either. As long as they have an internet connection, they can access your phone system and make inbound and outbound calls. What if they’re both stuck at home and don’t have any power? Even in this case, the portion of employees who do have access to power will still have complete access to their phone system. But for those stuck in such a bad situation, calls can be automatically routed to a cell phone instead.

The reliability of VoIP has that extra something during events like these. Don’t just sit at your chair, depressed with the inevitability of your business closing. Take a stand and get VoIP.

Photo Credit: WanderingtheWorld (www.ChrisFord.com) via Compfight cc