A business buyer’s guide to VoIP

For many businesses or possibly even all of them, forgoing a phone system isn’t palatable. After all, competition for new customers can be fierce, and a business phone system can help your company to present itself professionally when contacted by phone.

However, for your company, there might remain a question mark over which type of phone system it should use. While traditional landline systems are still available, they are being deprecated as resources are poured into more future-proof systems – such as VoIP solutions.

What is a VoIP phone system?

This kind of system has its technical name as it uses voice over IP technology to enable phone calls to be sent and received over an Internet Protocol network, as explained on TechTarget’s website.

While phones have traditionally transmitted analogue telephony audio, in the case of a VoIP phone system, this audio is converted into a digital format possible to send over the Internet. The system can also take digital phone systems arriving online and turn them into standard telephone audio.

What is the chief benefit of a VoIP system?

Arguably, that you can make substantial financial savings. With our own VoIP service here at Planet Telecom, we have noticed that most users trim their monthly phone expenses by at least 75%. However, savings made with this service can even touch 90%.

That’s because many of our users have switched from more conventional landline systems – which, in any case, rely on increasingly outdated technology. While landline systems, including ISDN continue to perform well for corporate purposes, the software no longer receives updates.

Hence, if your company continues to use a landline system, you will miss out on many advanced features and capabilities as they are introduced for VoIP systems.

Should I choose an on-premises or cloud-based solution?

As you ready yourself to choose a VoIP system, you could quickly feel bewildered as you notice the terms “on-premises” and “cloud-based” (or hosted) repeatedly popping up. These terms are used for different types of VoIP system, but what are the meaningful differences between them?

The term “on-premises” is largely self-explanatory, as it is used for a system where all of the equipment necessary for keeping the system running is on your company’s premises. Hence, you would need to buy all of this equipment for a substantial capital sum.

Furthermore, once the system is up and running, you would need staff capable of servicing and maintaining it. If you run a small business with relatively f
ew staff, you may see greater appeal in a cloud-based system, where another firm would keep and maintain much of the hardware for you.

Good reasons to have your head in the cloud

If you have little or no experience of implementing an on-premises VoIP system, you might fear that setting one up would necessitate a significant upheaval on your company’s part. Another possibility is that your company can’t spare the financial expenditure necessary for maintaining such a system.

However, Business News Daily notes that a cloud-based system can be easily set up and configured. If you configure and order our own hosted VoIP service, you can generally anticipate it becoming available for your company’s use in five working days, if not sooner.

With this Planet Telecom system, your business could also continue using its existing numbers and switch on an array of services, like call queuing and call recording, from a single online dashboard.

Check that your Internet connection can handle the system

No matter what provider is responsible for the broadband internet on which your company routinely relies, you can seamlessly integrate our VoIP service. This means that you wouldn’t need to switch to a different ISP, though there’s still the option of contacting us to switch to Planet Telecom.

Before going down the VoIP route, you should verify that your business Internet connection is sufficiently strong to handle it. Though landline systems are being abandoned in rising numbers, some businesses might still rely on them due to a lack of access to high-speed Internet.

Hence, if you are mulling over leaping to a VoIP system, it’s worth testing your corporate Internet connection’s ability to manage the traffic that would be facilitated with VoIP. Should the connection become overloaded, calls are likely to stutter, says IT PRO.

That wouldn’t foster the slick image which you would wish to portray to customers. Fortunately, IT PRO points its readers in the direction of free online tools which you could use to test your company’s own connection.

Call us free on 0800 088 6886 to discuss moving your business to VOIP, or click here to read more.