by Richard Barrington
With the evolution of Internet-based telecommunications over the past decade, business phone systems are no longer simply passive pieces of equipment. Used correctly, a digital phone system can directly benefit a company's bottom line in a variety of ways.
Office phone systems today offer a range of different features. These features can help a company reduce costs, enhance customer relations, or improve employee productivity. Choosing the right phone system starts with identifying the needs and goals of the company, and then selecting the system that can help the company reach those targets.
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Getting Started
For example, take a company in its start-up phase. This is the most challenging phase of the business life cycle. Revenues are not yet up to speed, so resources must be spent with great care.
At the same time, if preserving resources means cutting corners, the company's hopes of getting off the ground could be sabotaged. A business phone system which does not efficiently deliver customer calls and project an image of professionalism and permanence could doom a start-up company.
The challenge is to obtain high-level telecommunication services without a huge upfront investment. At this stage of the company life cycle, a so-called hosted solution may be the best answer. Because digital phone systems deliver service over the Internet, all the routing and switching, extension management, and voice-mail infrastructure can be hosted by the vendor rather than being acquired in-house.
The result? An office phone system which delivers high-level quality and image without requiring an extensive upfront investment in infrastructure. This will help leverage a start-up's precious resources.
Using a Phone System to Expand the Geographic Footprint
Beyond the start-up phase, the next challenge for a business is efficient expansion. Sustaining a target growth rate often requires geographic development, but opening and staffing a new office in each new target market can require repeated investments that are almost like going through the start-up phase over and over again.
Instead, the right business phone system can expand a company's geographic footprint without a substantial investment in each new market. Internet-based telecommunications can make 800-number service cheaper. Virtual phone numbers can give a company a phone number in each market's local area code, while calls to those numbers are fed seamlessly into one central location.
For customers, these capabilities make location a non-issue. When they pick up the phone, there is no sense of a geographic barrier to doing business with the company.
Breaking the Chains to the Desk
Once a company has survived start-up and achieved geographic growth, leveraging employee productivity is often essential to sustaining bottom-line expansion. Digital phone systems can help with this goal as well.
Digital phone systems can be used to provide "follow me" call switching, which allows employees to travel freely, knowing their calls will be routed automatically to the number at which they can currently be reached. Also, Internet-based telecommunications can make it efficient to link a series of home-based offices, lowering commuting and daycare costs for employees while reducing the overhead for the company.
Overall, a state-of-the-art phone system can redefine the office at any phase of a company's life cycle. It does this by breaking down barriers of cost, distance, and immobility, adding to the return on investment in multiple ways.
Sources:
BusinessWeek, Spring 2005: Talk Gets Cheaper
Mitel
Packet 8
PC Magazine, December 24, 2002, Dial IP for Business
PCMagazine, August 15 2007, Virtual Phone Systems for Better Customer Service
PC Magazine, September 4, 2007, Expert View: Boundless Business Telephony
Speakeasy
Vocalocity
VoIP News, May 3, 2006, Why Customers Prefer Hosted VoIP
Richard Barrington is a freelance writer and novelist who previously spent over twenty years as an investment industry executive.
