Chad Whaley's Blog

The days of being stuck with an antiquated business phone system is becoming a thing of the past.  As recent as three to five years ago, call routing options and advanced call features were only found in larger corporate phone systems.  This is not the case in today's market.  The Small to Medium sized Business (SMB) market now has plenty of options and affordable telephone system solutions, thanks largerly in part to the commercialization of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phones systems.

Several Indiana Telecommunications Providers offer their own varieties of both premise based and non-premise based solutions.  Both options have their place and the following factors should be evaluated with your VoIP Specialists when looking into purchasing a new business phone system:

• Number of physical locations serving
• Quantity of users and stations per location
• Are remote worker solutions required
• Are call center features required
• Business Phone Support options

There are several affordable premise based phone systems available.  Microsoft's Unified Communication has been getting a lot of publicity, but we prefer ADTRAN's NetVanta 7100 solution for systems serving less than 50 users.  There are also some great Open Source solutions, but again it must be the right fit for your organization.

As VoIP Specialists, we've been integrating a Hosted PBX VoIP solution since 2005 which is based on the Broadsoft Softswitch platform.  Although the Hosted PBX platform lends itself very well to multiple premise companies, it also provides these key benefits:

• Lowered Total Cost of Ownership
• Feature Enriched Call Routing Options
• Superior Business Continuity Features
• Remote Web Based Administration

If your company is in the process of moving to a new location or perhaps your old phone system is working against you versus with you, then now is the perfect time for you to review the options available in today's business phone systems.  I would recommend working with a VoIP Specialist to determine the right solution for your company.

Since business phone systems are no longer separate from your IT network, I would recommend engaging your IT Department from the beginning of the process.  Significant cost reduction may be realized if the new business phone system allows for blended voice and data Internet connectivity.