The hybrid work model is here to stay. Research from WeWork on the hybrid workforce reflected that 79 percent of C-Suite employees surveyed plan to let their employees split their time between corporate offices and remote working. The same survey noted that employees prioritized a hybrid work option so much that 75 percent would give up at least one benefit to have the freedom to choose their own work environment.
In response to these employee preferences, organizations are shifting and restructuring to support a more long-term, permanent distributed workplace model. A fundamental way to accommodate both in-person and remote employees is to have a solid communication stack in place. Organizations are moving toward upgrading to a modern communications portfolio that enables employees to converse and collaborate efficiently in real-time – no matter their location.
Businesses seek communications services that provide flexibility, reliability, and enhanced voice quality. These requirements are causing many decision makers to move away from legacy systems like primary rate interface (PRI) and migrate their communications services to session initiation protocol (SIP) trunking.
As organizations set their budgets for the coming year, many chose to reevaluate IT and software investments. With this in mind, it’s essential to distinguish the differences between PRI and SIP Trunking. Let’s dive in below:
- A PRI is the legacy method of providing telephone services to businesses with a digital private branch exchange (PBX). PRI operates within the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) for transmitting voice and data between a network and a user.
- On the other hand, SIP trunking is an application layer protocol similarly used to transmit voice and data between a network and a user. SIP supports the standard call processing functions found in the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) for IP-based networks.
So why are so many organizations moving toward adopting SIP trunking? Well, first, a key benefit of SIP trunking is its crisp and strong voice quality, helping to make a phone conversation reliable, more intimate, and engaging between colleagues in different locations. SIP technology reduces the latency and minimizes any jitter of a call so that coworkers can collaborate on projects in real-time easily and without distracting disruptions. This solution is especially beneficial to employees located in different time zones or even countries who rarely have the opportunity to collaborate in person.
Another top benefit of SIP trunking is it’s a more flexible alternative to PRI. It enables businesses to configure their own system to meet their specific workforce needs while also simplifying the management of their telephony environment. The ability to have this customized approach is critical for organizations that are restructuring internally to support both remote and in-person employees, and even more so as some may have to be continually shifting to accommodate the ever-evolving workplace environment.
With its increased flexibility, customizable model, and top-notch voice quality, SIP trunking is becoming a highly sought-after service to meet business’ modern communication needs. And we have been at this communications movement from the beginning – Flowroute has an established history in the SIP trunking space, being the first pure SIP trunking provider to receive certification as a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) in the US. We have been providing enterprises with enhanced reliability and more control over their communications for years. Flowroute helps make the migration to SIP trunking as seamlessly as possible, so organizations can continue to easily adapt and support their evolving hybrid workforce.
