If you’re looking for a business telephone system, you may believe at a first glance that you’re going to have an excess of choice.
While that may seem great initially, in practice it may cause you some difficulty. The sheer volume of different types of technology and solutions may make the selection process bewildering. So, what can you do to make it all a little easier?
Preparation
It’s typically a good idea to avoid diving-in headfirst and contacting lots of suppliers, as you may find that you just get inundated with confusing brochures and annoying sales calls.
Before you start looking around, it’s important to think-through your basic requirements in terms of supporting your business operations. For example, do you need:
- multiple concurrent external calls;
- heavy internal extension-to-extension dialling;
- a human voice to receive all incoming calls or direct-inward dialling to specific extensions;
- fax connectivity;
- internet connectivity;
- etc.
Once you have all that clear in your mind, it will position you to better understand the offers and proposals in the context of your given business needs.
The systems
There are now so many competing options that it’s not easy to outline what is a typical business telephone system. Typically though, business telecoms phone systems fall into one of several basic categories:
- one or more direct external lines (numbers) with multiple extensions and faxes connected onto them – this is the classic very small business and possibly most economical solution;
- keyed systems (KTS) that again provide a number of lines coming in which are distributed to the extensions, which can pick up calls and outside lines via a variety of buttons on the handsets – a classic smaller business telecoms solution but now becoming superseded by other approaches;
- PBX (private branch exchange) – essentially a computer that performs all the functions of what was once called the switchboard giving multiple outside lines and full internal extension connectivity;
- VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) – a method of receiving and making your calls over the internet and likely to be an area of huge growth in future.
Integration
In fact, these distinctions are rapidly becoming a little artificial when talking about a business telephone system. Office telephone systems in general are coming together with things such as PBXs not being easily distinguishable in function from a PC network router.
That’s why understanding what business functionality you need to support your operations is more important at the outset than trying to grasp all of the technical implications of the wide range of business telecoms systems out there.
For example, if all of your staff are on PCs that are internet connected then perhaps a VOIP solution may be more practical and economic than having entirely separate internet and business telephone systems. Yet in terms of risk, an internet delivery problem would not only disrupt your PCs but also your telephone communications!
Advice
In the end, selecting your business telephone system will require a balancing of cost, functionality and risk, all against a backdrop of your business needs. Getting professional advice and help in selection will, in due course, probably be highly advisable.
