For a lot of smaller firms, their telecommunications bill is a major drag on their overall budgeting.
As your business requires more robust communications, and continue to add employees to the roll, your telephone bill tends to shoot upwards rapidly.
In a globalized business environment, long-distance bills can become budget-killers.
It's no surprise that so many businesses today are looking for an alternative, and that alternative does exist. It's now relatively easy to move down a path towards true communications independence, and the vast savings that come with it.
In fact, it's really only a three-stage process.
The Three Steps That Lead To Unified In-House Small Business Phone Systems
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Invest In Modern Unified Network Hardware
This is, unfortunately, the expensive part. To be able to leverage modern Internet technologies to reduce your communications costs, it first requires an investment for small business phone systems. Most older networks, put together piece by piece over the last few years, are simply not compatible with these technologies. They require a distributed, virtualized network that intelligently spreads the load across all devices on the system.
The good news is, even if your business's budget might not be able to handle new equipment, there is a thriving ecosystem centering around certified refurbished network hardware. These refurbished and warranty-backed upgrades can bring modern networking to any business, of any size, at surprisingly low rates – especially when combined with trade-in discounts on your existing hardware. There are also some really great programs available that will subsidze the cost of the equipment for you and provide you with reliable service.
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Move Onto Voice-over-IP Communications Systems
Once your network is up to current standards, a new world of communications possibilities opens up. It becomes simple to move from standard copper-wire telephone service and onto a VoIP solution that migrates your voice communications into your Internet traffic. As an immediate benefit, this means you effectively pay no more long-distance fees.
For companies just making this transition, especially those with fewer than 15 employees or so, there are a wide variety of hosted VoIP providers that can quickly consolidate your communications while vastly reducing your telephone bill. Plus, for those first getting used to the technology, they provide a familiar centralized support service similar to that of a traditional phone company.
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Cut Out The Phone Company Entirely
As your business grows, however, you're likely going to want to take full control of your communications. Hosted VoIP service still brings many of the same drawbacks as traditional telephone companies, especially since you're entirely reliant on them to implement changes as needed. Also, many of these companies tend to have a steep upwards scale on their service prices, causing their affordability to drop as you add employees and lines.
Once a business hits this point, on-site PBX systems become a real possibility. Until very recently, on-site telephone exchanges were prohibitively expensive for all but the largest businesses. However, today, hardware such as the ADTRAN NetVanta 7100 can create a “telephone company in a box” solution that combines both network and voice switching, giving you 100% on-site control of your communications needs.
At this point, your only communications bill will be from your Internet provider, for your bandwidth. Everything else is done in-house, vastly reducing costs and overhead while increasing the flexibility and reliability of your voice traffic.
Take Control Of Your Communications
There are plenty of benefits to moving towards VoIP telephony, but the cost savings are easily the best argument for today's businesses. A relatively small set of network upgrades today will slash your telephone bill, while creating a platform that ultimately leads to even less-expensive communications over time.
When combined with the power you gain through in-house VoIP systems, it's easy to see why businesses are hanging up on their phone companies once and for all.
If you'd like to hear more about how VoIP can work for your firm, just let us know your needs, and we'll get right back to you!
