Many businesses in Oneonta and around the surrounding area are still using phone systems that are outdated and therefore hinder their capabilities and growth potential. Cloud-hosted VoIP—Voice over Internet Protocol—is a much better option for businesses to utilize, with many benefits to make the switch a no-brainer for our fellow organizations.
Traditional Phone Systems Have Considerable Limitations
What follows is a brief sampling of the shortcomings that the telephone systems of yesteryear present to businesses.
Traditional Phone Systems Lack Scalability
- More traditional phone systems are limited in the number of lines and extensions that they can support, restricting your company to the capabilities that its phone system offers.
- It can be costly to add or remove additional lines in a traditional system, potentially requiring expensive and challenging changes to the work environment.
- These systems are inflexible, while business flexibility is now seen as a key feature.
Traditional Phone Systems are High Maintenance
- More traditional phone systems are prone to hardware failures, leading to downtime and other negative impacts.
- This failing equipment subjects you to costly repairs and replacements, often with little to no warning.
- These systems also require specialized technicians to maintain them, making it more challenging to ascertain their upkeep.
Traditional Phone Systems Offer Limited Features and Functionality
- A traditional phone system only offers very basic call handling features.
- These systems also lack any integration with your other business tools.
- Remote work becomes more challenging with a traditional phone system, as there is no means to transfer calls to follow the user.
What Advantages Do Cloud-Hosted VoIP Solutions Offer?
VoIP Provides Significant Cost Savings
- As VoIP can be supported by hardware you already have, there are no upfront hardware costs required.
- Many VoIP providers offer lower monthly service fees as compared to their traditional counterparts.
- Repairs and maintenance are less often required, and less expensive for the business.
VoIP is Far More Scalable and Flexible
- The plug-in-and-play nature of VoIP makes it easy to add or remove phone lines and extensions as needed.
- It becomes easier to enable business growth, as these lines can be added and moved easily.
- The flexibility of VoIP makes remote work and otherwise operating from multiple locations far easier.
VoIP Comes With Advanced Features to Leverage
- VoIP simplifies call forwarding and call routing options, along with many other common phone features.
- Incoming voicemails are transcribed and sent directly to your email inbox.
- Key business tools, like customer relationship management software, integrate with VoIP for increased data and insights.
VoIP Allows for Better, More Productive Collaboration
- VoIP includes the capabilities to conference, both through voice and video calls.
- Instant messaging capabilities and presence indicators allow team members to keep in touch with their coworkers.
- VoIP simplifies your interdepartmental communication, enabling teams to collaborate seamlessly
What You Should Look for When Selecting a Cloud-Hosted VoIP Provider
Your choice of VoIP provider should be dictated by a few considerations, including:
The Provider’s Reliability and Uptime
You want to be sure that your choice of VoIP provider is in a position to deliver their services and support as they are needed. Therefore, you should examine the service level agreements (SLAs) that your prospective providers offer, as well as their customer support availability. All-hours support should be your baseline, with redundant data centers there to ensure that they can maintain their operations on your behalf.
The Provider’s Security and Data Protection
Security should always be a priority for yourself and every business you work with, so you’ll want to be sure that you check that your VoIP provider is doing everything they can to protect the data you’re funneling through their systems. Check their encryption protocols, ask about what kind of firewalls and other intrusion detection systems they have, and confirm that they are keeping regular data backups.
The Provider Offers Integration With Other Business Tools
VoIP is a tool that plays nicely with a variety of other business applications and solutions, allowing various automated capabilities and customizations, as well as providing APIs and other development tools to expand upon these capabilities further. In this way, VoIP not only provides its foundational business capability as a communication tool, but also has the potential to prove its value in other ways.
The Businesses of Oneonta Would Highly Benefit from VoIP
Cloud-hosted VoIP can bring the businesses in our community a huge amount of value through a combination of its communication enhancements, the boost it can give productivity, and the very considerable cost savings it has to offer. It’s time to leave your old phone system in the past and embrace today’s communication technologies… and we can help.
Reach out to us today to learn more about implementing VoIP with the help of AREASERVED’s leading managed service provider. Call us at PHONENUMBER to get started.