Business Phone Systems

Business Phone Systems are one of your Most Important Tools

One of the systems that almost every business has a need for is the phone system. The phone is one of those items we use in our every day life. The telephone allows communication with customers, partners, suppliers and more and is one of the most important business tools. Therefore, the business phone system is one of the most important business purchases and should be considered carefully.

Factors to Consider

There are other alternatives to purchasing a completely new business phone system:

• Get the benefits and cost savings of VoIP by using SIP trunking with your existing PBX.
• Smaller companies considering small business phone systems should also consider a hosted small business VoIP solution.

When purchasing a business phone system one should consider a few main factors:

• The first one would be capacity, making sure that the business phone system you purchase has enough capacity to meet your current calling volume plus room for growth.
• Phone system features are another important factor to consider. Features such as voicemail, auto-responders, music on hold, and conferencing capabilities must be considered. Ask if features you think you will need as your business grows will be available as add-ons.
• Don't forgot to include the cost of new IP phones if switching to a new service or make sure that your existing IP phones are compatible with the new hardware. New IP phones typically cost well over a hundred dollars depending on make and models.
• Consider you internal network connectivity
  1. Does your existing switches support POE (Power Over Ethernet) because it it does, you can avoid having to run power bricks to every phone.
  2. What is the speed of your internal network. If you have 10M ethernet then it is not worthwhile spending extra money buying phones that support 1G speeds.
  3. Do you have adequent backup power already installed for your network?
  4. Do you have redundant links (T1) to the internet to protect you if one link goes down?
  5. Do you have sufficient bandwidth on your broadband connection to support voice over IP?
  6. How can you ensure that the network is re-configured correctly for voice QOS (quality of service) and that voice and video traffic will prioritized correctly over non-mission critical traffic?
• Of course cost can be a major factor to consider. Complete our simple form to get FREE, no obligation price quotes from industry leading phone system providers and they will compete for your business by offering the best price and service possible.

Conclusion

Whichever provider you choose to go with, make sure they can support your future needs as well as your current needs. Also make sure they can provide the customer support to keep your business phone system up and running as it is one of the most important tools to the small business owner.