6 Q's to ask when researching business VoIP phone systems (Part 1)

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A phone system is ultimately a tool for communicating. Depending on what you need to say, hear, and know... there are a ton of different options when buying one.

The days of spending lots of money just because you can are (thankfully) behind us. That is relevant to our discussion because it doesn't make sense buy an expensive phone system if you don't need to...and believe me, not all of you need to.

The other side of that coin is that for some businesses, a business VoIP system will be a critical component to your growth and development as a company. If you think that may be you, then here are 6 questions you must take the time to think through and answer.

1. What do I need my phone system to do?
2. Do I need VoIP to acheive my communication goals?
3. Do I have enough bandwidth to implement VoIP?
4. Is my network ready for a VoIP system?
5. Will I need any analogue lines?
6. What is Unified Communications...and do I need it?

Question 1: What do I need my phone system to do?

This question seems straight forward, but depending on the size of your company, focus of business, and stragtegic goals for your employees, it can have some nuances that affect what phone system(s) you consider. Here are a couple things to think through when answering this: (in no particular order)

• Are my phones important to sales?
• Is it important to know where people are...immediately?
• Who do I call? (and how often do I call them?)
• Will I have a call center?
• Do I need my receptionist to have a high level of control over calls?
• Is there benefit to having my phone system integrate with my CRM?
• Do I want to be able to record calls?
• Do I want a record of my calls?
• Do I need conference calling capability?

Question 2: Do I need VoIP to accomplish my communication goals/needs?

Most business phone systems have a range of features today that are similar...at least as far as the basics go (Auto-attendant, call transfering, voicemail features, etc...). Which phone system has the features you want/need is certainly a relevant issue - but do you need a business VoIP system? Not necessarily. Here's how you know if you need VoIP:

• Do you have mulitple locations?
• Do you have remote workers?

As best I can tell, for now, those are the two best reasons to use VoIP. Almost every other phone system need, feature set, etc... can be found on digital business phone systems. In fact, most - if not all - new phone systems today are built on a VoIP platform that will allow you to use VoIP or to use regular digital business phone service. In many cases, the issues of bandwidth and network allocation are significant enough that it would make more sense to just use a digital phone service - and frankly with prices continuing to plummet, you may be able to get a screaming deal on a voice PRI or even dynamic T1.

Tomorrow we'll look at questions 3 & 4 for what should prove to be a slightly more technical discussion...

Any thing you want to add to this? Please do! Use the comments below...