Business Phone Systems Put Money Back on the Bottom Line

You’d be hard pressed to find a business that is still using a traditional telephony system these days. Considering the reliability, efficiency, clarity and not to mention cost-effectiveness of a good telecom system, it’s no wonder many businesses have ditched the plain old telephone system (POTS) and have gone IP with their business communications. Whether it’s VoIP or using a PBX (News - Alert), businesses have options when it comes to choosing their business phone systems.

VoIP has become pretty conventional as far as communications technology goes, and it has cloud telephony, hosted UC and SIP trunking to thank for that status shift. A report earlier this year from the folks at Infonectics revealed that VoIP is rather mainstream now, noting that in particular SIP trunks jumped 83 percent in 2012 from the previous year. The combined business and residential VoIP services market is forecast by Infonetics (News - Alert) to grow to $82.7 billion in 2017.

Those are rather impressive statistics.

A lot of businesses are getting theses service from various VoIP providers such as Ring Central and Nextiva. One major reason for this is that monthly costs can go as low as $8 a month. VoIP sends your voice signals to call recipient through digital signals via the Internet. Because VoIP systems do not need to rely on the public switched telephone network (PSTN) nor require extensive equipment, they are not as expensive as regular lines, making this an attractive choice.

No matter what your business does, voice communication is a critical element of success. Your employees need a secure way to communicate with customers, contact prospective clients and conduct business. Installing a dedicated telephone system or PBX in your business can provide a number of important competitive advantages for your firm.

A PBX in its hosted form is a great solution for a business that has plans to move or expand physical locations.

When you rely on a hosted PBX system, moving can be on your own terms, not on someone else’s. You can worry about more important things, like the layout of the office, or hanging that brand new meeting room dry erase board.

Hosted PBX means your company can easily connect remote offices together and maximize the power of IP telephone systems. Callers can remember one number but be directed to employees around the world without any extra effort.

An on-premises PBX system is probably the most recommended telecommunications system for a business with more than 40 workers. Reliability is a sure 100 percent as long as the wires are intact, and features are guaranteed top notch with PBX systems.

The major benefit for small and medium-sized businesses is the ability to add features that have only been affordable or available to large businesses. VoIP and Internet telephony are usually also more cost-effective when looking at long-term operating costs due to lower monthly fees and much lower costs to connect and complete calls.

Business phone systems are also scalable when it comes to growing right at the home office. Starting with a small dedicated phone system that fits your needs is a good way to control costs during the critical start-up phase. Then, as your business grows, you can move to a larger system that can accommodate additional employees and newer features.

Most modern telephone systems include features such as voicemail, caller ID and automatic call forwarding. These features can be very valuable to the small business; the ability to forward an office call to a cell phone or pager can be especially valuable for the mobile workforce.

Once businesses have gone IP, it’s time for SIP trunking. We hear a lot about it here, but what are the advantages that come with SIP trunking? We know that SIP is simply a means of using Voice over IP (VoIP) over multiple trunks with the SIP protocol.

SIP trunking is the use of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert)) to set up communications over the Internet between a customer location and an Internet telephony service provider (ITSP), which transfers the SIP calls to the PSTN. Thanks to SIP trunking, voice and data are no longer separate connections, all calls are considered local and PSTN gateways are no longer necessary.

SIP trunking is a preferred technology thanks to its cost effectiveness and hosted capabilities. SIP trunking technology is the perfect solution for customers who already own a phone system but want to reduce their monthly phone bill.

With SIP Trunking, businesses purchase only the trunks needed based on the maximum number of concurrent calls the business requires. SIP Trunks are significantly less expensive than analog lines, further helping businesses reduce costs.

With all of these options, it makes sense for businesses to ditch the legacy telephony system and invest in a solid, stable and cost-effective business phone system that uses the most cutting edge technologies available.