Now that your small business has grown it’s time to look at a more advanced and cost effective form of communication with clients. The biggest trend is companies moving to business class VoIP. A VoIP system lets your business easily add company phone numbers at a fraction of a landline’s cost. If your company is looking to cut costs on local and long distance calls, using a VoIP solution is the way to go.
In considering the upgrade many questions may arise:
- Can I use my old phones?
- Do I need to buy new equipment?
- How do I decide on a vendor?
- Can I use my current wiring?
- Is your system compatible with my network equipment?
- What about my fax machines?
- All of these questions are valid concerns in beginning this process.
Though you may have to come up with some upfront costs and make some networks changes it’s important to develop a detailed ROI to validate the project financially.
So, where do you start?
The first step is assessing your current phone system and data network In order to analyze your ROI, you will need to figure out what you need to buy and how big of a system you will need for your business. The other cost to add to your ROI model is the cost of the call processing, IP telephony handsets and voice gateways, as well as the services for designing and deploying the new network. Usually at least 50 percent of cost is made up by the handsets, and the rest by the support infrastructure. The best outcome to the new project would be that your new monthly costs are lower than your current monthly costs, after consideration of cost for new equipment installation services to put the new phone system in place.
A few other financial benefits you should expect with business class VoIP are reduced calling costs by up to 60 percent via routing inter-office voice calls over data networks. . Many businesses could save thousands of dollars on long distance calling too. Lastly, reduced system and support costs by constructing a united network and shared supervision staff to handle voice and data, rather than separate infrastructures for each.
Though saving money on monthly cost is a main concern. There are other ROI benefits to a business class VoIP. There are many features that can subsidize your professionalism and efficiency. For example Unified Messaging lets you merge voice mail, e-mail, video mail, and fax into a single interface. Mobile extensions make it easy to reach other employees that are offsite. You can also have calls go to desktop voicemails and then transfer to cell phones. Shared call appearance allows calls to ring on another phone so if the receptionist as gone, another employee can answer.
Individual mobility features including selective call routing, simultaneous ring, and sequential ringing to improve efficiency and customer service.
Businesses need to be as professional as they can be, whether dealing with customers, in-person or through phone and using VoIP can improve these areas. VoIP also enables users to participate in conference calls over the Internet and share photos in real time. Because of this, companies are even able to share presentations, documents, files and applications of board meetings simultaneously between offices that are located in different continents as well.
Between monthly savings on long-distance callings, and being able to have more professional phone features such as music on hold and voice mail to email, more growth should be made with a solution upgrade. Most VoIP solutions allow you to track call measurements and call time simply. This allows for not only an ROI but help with assessing and managing your call times. Therefore VoIP is also a great planning and calculating its cost savings by monitoring the quantities and locations of calls made. In some instances, companies that have deployed the technology are experiencing complete Return On Investment within the first year.
