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What do you consider when looking for a business telephone system? I suffer from angst on a regular basis when talking to my clients and prospects about this. I really do care about my clients and have studied long and hard to make sure that the products that I offer are good products.
What questions do I ask when trying to determine what I need? What do I need? What is too much? I'll break it down into a few areas.
Phone Lines Supported - Ok, so now you have a number of phone lines coming into your business. Small business probably has analog lines today. Usually if you have 12 phones you may get by with 5-6 phone lines depending on the number of calls your company does. Larger business will most likely use something called a PRI line (holds 23 calls at the same time). Nobody can tell you how many lines you really need UNLESS you can provide them with some kind of call reporting from your current phone system. Most companies don't opt for the call reporting so the number of lines should be an educated guess. Allow yourself some room for growth and to even add different and newer technologies. If you have 6 or 8 lines today, make sure you can get upgraded to 12 or 16 lines. Also, if you have analog lines today make sure that the system can support PRI or a newer technology called SIP trunks. Analog lines will be going away some time in the future. On the way out they will get more expensive every year so if you can switch to a different technology you will have more reasonable choices in the future.
Phones and Number of supported phones - You know what you need today, and what you hope to need in the future. Your best bet is to be educated about what you buy and put any limitations in the back of your mind. You'll want to know those when you are thinking about adding staff in the future. My rule of thumb is to allow about 30-40% room for growth.
Bells and Whistles - Do you need voicemail - email integration? Do you need to be able to administer the system yourself? Do you need the ability to have remote telephones (Boss's house, home office workers, remote sites like warehouse)? Do you need call accounting? Do you want to record calls? Those things may not be important to you today, but what about tomorrow? It's expensive to retrofit systems with reporting, new voicemail systems, call recording, and other new features. It is just a bit more to get them from the beginning. Call reporting, in particular, is an important item. You do not need it, until you need it. Once you figure that out, you've probably already missed what you wanted to capture. Check to see if it is included, even if you don't need it today.
Phone System Brands - Do these phrases look familiar? "You can never get fired for buying IBM", "You can never get fired for buying Cisco". Those were accepted as a good rule of thumb because they were safe. Not necessarily the best, but the choice that seemed to be the industry standard. The fact is now that there are hundreds of different phone systems and manufacturers. The market is made up of many choices and many of these systems work together or with "standards" that allow them to use other equipment. Think back to when computer networks came out. In the beginning IBM talked to IBM and Wang talked to Wang. At some point, other manufacturers started to recognize standards and the industry was radically changed. That is now happening in the phone system world. A standard called SIP is taking over, and many manufacturers have adopted this as a good cross-platform answer.
With all of that being said, I've got some preferences that I want to share.
For phone lines, my #1 choice is a PRI for anyone that needs more than 6 lines. It will be close in cost, give you all kinds of room for growth, and will give you features like direct numbers.
VoIP is great where it makes sense. I don't like to use it between the carrier and your office UNLESS you understand that you may have some quality issues from time to time. For your office phones and the odd work-at-home situation it is great. At this point, you cannot make the blanket statement of "we are not going to go VoIP." Even if you have analog service today, your calls are going VoIP at some point in their progress. VoIP where it makes sense is my mantra.
Phone Handsets are an important part of the system. That is where you should spend the money. It is your interface tot he system and what everyone sees. If you are going to cut back somewhere, try to avoid getting low quality phones. I used to think differently. For a time, it looked like everything would be computer based and that the handset would be less important. Microsoft thought so as well. They tried to market a phone system that used your PC as the primary device. They have since changed direction on this idea. The PC is an important part of things, but the basic truth is that you are going to talk to the people that you serve. Your customers. You want your phone to just work - not to be a distraction to you. Get a good phone!
Manufacturers - you've got many choices. I'm concerned about the long-term viability of some of them. The fact is that the market has gotten more and more competitive in the last decade. Many companies have been acquired and absorbed by others and it looks like the trend will continue. Make sure that the company has a number of support channels for you, that there is more than one service partner in your area, and that you are not the first customer! Some companies make their living based on long-term support for telephone platforms and equipment. Get an idea of what the ongoing maintenance costs will be for your system. Can you afford to have your phones out for a few days? Most companies cannot so plan ahead! My company sells Toshiba, Avaya, and Asterisk. I like them all, and recommend them all, based on the particulars of each situation.
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