Cloud Telephony

Fonality (News - Alert) is a provider of cloud-based business communications and unified communications solutions for small, medium and enterprise businesses. As an innovator in the cloud telephony space, Fonality is always looking for ways for businesses to take advantage of the benefits and opportunities cloud communications has to offer. It identified a series of projects that were in different stages and came up with Fonality 5 Innovation Series, a series of announcements and improvements to cloud telephony.

The company recently announced the third installment, Fonality Screen Share, a cloud-based document and desktop-sharing service and a critical tool for SMBs to turn their Fonality business phone system into a streamlined meeting place environment. With just one click, users can instantly interact and share information in real-time with customers and employees from any location. The solution is perfect for sales demos, customer support requests, presentations, team collaboration and more.

The first two installments, HUD mobile and voicemail transcription, were released earlier this year. HUD Mobile is a fully featured mobile client that works on Android and Apple (News - Alert) tablets and smartphones. It is an extension of Heads Up Display, a unified communications application that connects your phone, your desktop and your organization by consolidating all communications into a single easy-to-use interface. Customers such as Allstate use HUD mobile to communicate with coworkers and employees when traveling or out of the office.

“It’s essentially full call center features running from his tablet,” explained David Scult, CEO of Fonality, in a TMC (News - Alert) interview. “You can chat, you can place calls; it’s fully featured. You can participate and see the queue status, you can join conference calls – anything you can do in HUD for the most part you can now do in HUD Mobile.”

The second installment, voicemail transcription, is a real-time machine transcription of voices messages that transcribes voicemail with about 80 to 85 percent accuracy. It’s ideal for execs and people that constantly need to be checking their messages.

“It doesn’t replace listening to the voicemail, but if you were in a meeting and you can’t sit there and take the call or listen to the voicemail but you can read it or look on it on your cell phone, you can get the general gist of that voice message. We find it to be very powerful and popular,” explained Scult.

Image via Fonality

The third and latest installment, Fonality Screen Share, is an on-demand meeting place that can be launched directly from the unified dashboard. With the ability to share presentations on the fly, demo products for potential customers or partners from any location and help customers with support issues through remote desktop management, this meeting place environment helps nurture the sales process, and promote customer engagement while enhancing employee productivity and mobility.

"Fonality delivers innovative features and solutions that help small businesses enhance productivity, communicate more efficiently and reduce costs,” said Rick Bushell (News - Alert), chief technology officer, in a statement. “Fonality Screen Share brings another dimension to the communications experience our clients have with their customers and coworkers. This productivity-enhancing service provides a secure and easy way to collaborate and share information, without having to pay a premium for complicated stand-alone alternatives in the market."

Features of Fonality Screen Share include one-click to create a desktop sharing experience, invite external guests using meetings IDs or meeting links, invite internal guests automatically using Fonality chat, secure streaming session, switch presenters on-the-fly, remote admin control over participants, share keyboard and mouse controls, unlimited number of meeting sessions and up to 20 participants per meeting.

“We have been using Fonality Screen Share to demo applications for potential customers and it’s very easy to use,” said Kevin Smith, president at eSmith IT, an IT and managed service provider for small businesses. “It’s an extremely intuitive tool and a great way to transition a simple call into a collaborative meeting. Fonality Screen Share accelerates our sales process and helps close deals more quickly. It’s also really great to have integrated into our Fonality HUD application because now we just have to click one button to start sharing.”

As a sneak peek into the future for what’s in store for Fonality 5, the company announced the beta release of the Fonality Web Client at ITEXPO (News - Alert) Austin 2012. Fonality Web Client incorporates the features and functionality of Fonality HUD and HUD Mobile, yet totally changes the user experience into a personalized social community. It enables an easy access point for SMBs to interact, manage contacts and streamline workflow anywhere, anytime, offering support for PC, laptop, smartphone and tablet integration (Android &Apple). The interface is designed to focus the user experience on building a community of people and conversations vs. functions and features — transforming the way SMBs communicate and conduct business.

Stay tuned for the fourth and fifth installments of Fonality 5. To learn more, visit www.fonality.com.