“It’s often the simple tasks that can have the biggest impact on productivity and boost the bottom line,” a CFO recently explained to me on a plane ride. “Sure, we all hope for the disruptive breakthrough – cold fusion or advanced AI, for example. Yet we often lose sight of improving the more tangible tasks that can deliver new efficiencies today. And that’s where you win the game.”

I had just explained our latest service offering — onPOINT — which automates the testing of phone and device status across an organization, including remote offices. His enthusiasm was highly encouraging. And the way he positioned this as a simple task for an easy business win made me smile.

It’s not that onPOINT isn’t ambitious. It will tell you within minutes which phones throughout the entire network are not working. It automates a relatively easy testing process.

It doesn’t require specially trained staff to determine a dial tone and place a test call. But assessing phone status is very time consuming and tedious. Exactly the kind of process that is well suited for automation. By automating this process, organizations can save money and redeploy IT resources to more strategic tasks.

As part of a continuous optimization strategy, onPOINT prevents employee downtime. Perhaps a broken phone isn’t so serious for a facilities worker or back office employee. But what if it’s your star salesperson. And she’s missing the call and potentially big opportunities. Imagine if a stockbroker’s phone is down. Or a doctor’s.

As an automated service, onPOINT can check devices regularly where a manual assessment would be costly and time-consuming. Plus in a dynamic work environment, we need to know when there is a problem so we can react quickly to fix it and keep business optimized.

Consider a communications software upgrade, hot fix or even a security patch. Every change could impact the whole system, causing interoperability issues. Once installed, perhaps the phones in the main office work, but what about other locations? That new office across the country that was part of the recent acquisition. The remote office or your locations overseas.

onPOINT identifies in near real-time which phones, office or regions are not working. Perhaps that service patch was fine for the Cisco PBX, but causes issues with the Avaya systems or Microsoft Skype for Business. onPOINT, combined with interoperability testing can prevent downtime and optimize communications.

As Internet of Things (IoT) solutions become more commonplace, the need to test and verify devices or endpoints will only grow. Given the sheer volume, that almost demands an automated solution.

And while a new technology that replaces the PBX or even the phone as we know it is likely in the works, onPOINT is the type of solution that can help companies today. As my fellow passenger, the CFO, indicates, it’s the solutions that save money and time while boosting productivity that grab his attention.

Learn more about onPOINT here