A lot of businesses these days find themselves faced with tightening budgets and outdated phone systems deployed 10 or more years ago. I speak with these types of businesses everyday; owners or IT administrators looking at exploring whether or not a VoIP system is a good fit for their organization and how to approach putting a system together or approaching a service provider.<\/p>\n
While hybrid solutions exist and the use of a VoIP gateway can allow many companies to deploy VoIP using their existing infrastructure, most people I speak with these days are interested completely replacing their existing phone system.<\/p>\n
For this there are two ways to approach this project:<\/p>\n
Each of these solutions bring with them benefits. How substantial these benefits are to you, will of course depend on your situation.
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\nLet’s look at the three main points to consider when looking at how each solution could best benefit your business.<\/p>\n
The benefits of going with a hosted VoIP phone service include a lower entry cost and the ability to let your IT Staff be your IT Staff and run your network, not your phone system. Your features are relegated by the plan that you select when you choose your service provider.<\/p>\n
The majority of organizations using hosted services receive support from the provider. If you are a business without an IT staff you have the opportunity to \u2018point the finger\u2019 back at your hosted provider for some help with any configuration issues or if something were to ever go wrong.<\/p>\n
The benefits of a premise based VoIP phone system include a lower total cost of ownership and the ability to pick and choose what features you would like to implement and develop on your phone system. Many businesses that are looking to go this route are integrating an ERP or CRM system together with the phone system<\/a> to allow for a smoother work flow and increased level of customer service.<\/p>\n You are typically supporting yourself with premise based systems, but many of the manufactures offer very good phone and email support options. If you are running asterisk or a variation of asterisk you have more limited support options, and should probably count on having your IT department spend a little more time setting up and managing the phone system.<\/p>\n