VOIP and the Small Business, Saving Money and Increasing Efficiency
Owners and managers of small business always need to look for ways to save money and increase efficiency
. VOIP telephony is one of those tools which can really help.VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol. It's been around for more than ten years, but it's only just now becoming a main stream business technology. The reason that it's taken so long to catch on is that it's only now really that people are starting to get decent quality internet connections to support it.VOIP can definitely save you money. In our company we don't have a single phone line coming into our office. That means no line rental and no waiting for technicians to come to pull in more physical cables/lines when we want extra "lines". We have a good quality internet connection, with a VOIP phone service that has multiple VOIP lines and includes hundreds of untimed national landline calls a month.With this service you can setup new phones in any location where you can get access to a decent internet connection and have free calls between them. Think of what that means to a business dealing with interstate clients and suppliers or setting up a remote office, or even putting an extension into your home office. You could be saving thousands of dollars every year.Another benefit of VOIP is that you can use telephone handsets that aren't proprietary and tied to an expensive PBX unit that's bolted onto your office wall. There are plenty of makes and models of handsets available and if you're not happy with the VOIP PBX you use (if you need one), then you can simply sign up to a different service or buy a different software PBX and keep your handsets.When it comes time to relocate your office, you won't need to have the phone people come back in to set things up again either.VOIP phones use the same cabling as your office computer network, so that saves more money and increases your flexibility because you can very easily move phones around the office and add new ones with minimal setup.The VOIP service provider provides you with your phone numbers and lines, trunks or ports to allow you to make your calls. They're the modern equivalent to the traditional telecommunications provider. Be careful to choose a provider that has a business leaning so that you get a business grade service.If you have more than one or two people in your business and you need to be able to transfer calls, use voicemail or other such features, then you're probably going to need either a soft PBX or to use an equivalent service with VOIP provider.A soft PBX is the equivalent to the traditional PBX box that you probably currently have bolted to your wall. The big difference being that it'll be installed onto any decent PC. This will give you your voicemail, your interactive voice response system and other PBX features. The downside to this is that you have to look after it yourself. The big benefit is that you control it and very importantly, you aren't tied to your VOIP service provider should you decide to change.The alternative to the soft PBX is to use the equivalent service with your VOIP service provider, if they offer one.Lastly, another benefit of VOIP phones is that they're more likely to be able to cheaply be integrated to your PC so that you can make calls directly from your software systems and potentially to be able to log those calls automatically as you make them.That's pretty much all there is to it. The next step is to look at your internet connection to see if it's of good enough quality to do the job. If it is, then you can dip your toe in by just buying one VOIP handset, or using a VOIP soft phone on good fast PC. You'll need a VOIP line to test with, which you'll be able to get for minimal cost without entering into a contract.
VOIP and the Small Business, Saving Money and Increasing Efficiency
By: Andrew Marcroft
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