What to ask when shopping for small business phone system?
As the small-to-medium sized business market in the US continues to grow in no uncertain terms – any such company serious about being a player, will need to invest capital in a reliable, enterprise-grade small business phone system. After all voice communications still holds a big piece of the business communications pie – therefore, a reliable, affordable system is a must for ensuring quality communications between your employees, customers and other stakeholders.
Phone system technologies have evolved over the last two decades without a doubt. Fortunately, for the SMB market, gone are the days of legacy, expensive phone systems that many Fortune 500 companies spent millions to buy, install and operate in-house. This was the only choice. In the past, this meant that in order to operate, you had to have deep pockets to invest in these expensive phone systems and a greater manpower budget to pay skilled, internal telecom staff to manage the whole system. Is this still the case today? Not anymore.
The picture looks completely different today, in favor of small-to-medium sized businesses. The good news? There exists now a number of new generation small business phone system equipment geared to the SMB market that come with the same functionalities/features offered under the legacy systems of yesteryear – at a fraction of the price! A popular way that this is being rolled out – is for system vendors to actually offer these systems on a “hosted” basis. So whether you are a sole proprietor or have 100 employees – you’ll have the option of saving on capital and human resource costs.
There is a caveat to this development however. Not all systems are the same, so it is important to evaluate each vendor’s offering in its entirety and determine which system will meet your overall business communications objectives.
To choose the best vendor, ask them the following:
- After purchase, will they offer set-up, configuration, maintenance and ongoing change support as your business evolves?
- Do they offer a fully-featured phone system that rivals a Fortune 500 legacy system in terms of feature availability and reliability?
- Due to Internet ubiquity, do they offer a VoIP-based platform enabling you and your employees to work from anywhere, at anytime – resulting in better collaboration? Is this possible on desktop, laptop and mobile devices?
- What resources do they have in place to file trouble tickets and provide general technical support?
- What will all of this cost?
There are many things to consider during this important purchase – but success will prevail if you do your homework. Thanks to the wide array of offerings today, you will have greater choice – just make sure you choose the right vendor partner who not just promises but also delivers.
To learn more about how we can help you tailor the best solution for your company,contact us.
