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Hosted Pbx Is The Inexpensive, Feature-Rich Solution For Small Business |
Article Submitted by: T. Ireland
Thursday, 08 October 2009
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I recently had to help clean up the mess at a company that had gotten itself into a real mess while trying to upgrade its telephone system. The problem is actually a fairly common one, especially in small to medium sized businesses. These companies outgrow their basic telephone system and feel they need to improve their telephone capabilities in order to compete. That makes perfect sense as anyone who calls to place an order and gets a busy signal is likely to have second thoughts about how capable this place is.
Where things tend to get murky is after the initial sales visit by the telephone company. There's typically a huge case of sticker shock when management realizes how expensive the systems the telcos are peddling can be. A multinational corporation may not care about this kind of expenditure, but for a company with twenty or thirty employees, it's a major investment. Then the IT guy (or IT department, if the company is large enough to warrant one) will step in. The usual speech goes something along the lines of "I can install Skype on every PC so we get free calling and I can download open-source add-ons so we have the full suite of functionality those guys were trying to sell you, but it costs nothing."
Free is always an easy sell and so they go down the path of software installs, configurations, buying headsets off eBay, ordering phone numbers and generally driving all the staff crazy with software installations and downtime. In most cases, it doesn't go well. The hobbled together freebie solution doesn't easily scale (it works just fine for someone's home office, but gets immeasurably more complicated when you try to deploy it for thirty people), the IT staff need to know what they're doing to get the components playing nicely together and they spend so much time hand holding and tweaking the phone system, they aren't available for other critical operations. In most cases, they never get the entire network off the ground, just parts of it. And then they give up.
Which is where I come in. I'm an advocate of saving money where possible, but I also draw the line at jury-rigged solutions. There are very intelligent VOIP solutions available that offer all the features of a full-scale PBX system but at significantly lower prices. Going with a hosted solution also moves the maintenance requirement out of the office. The company gets the professional communications system they want, with the features their customers expect at a price they can afford. Article Source: http://www.ArticleBlast.com |
About The Author:
Caroline Ash is a Small Business Phone System consultant based out of Atlanta. She frequently finds herself helping companies as they recover from an attempt to manage communications themselves using open source telephony packages. In most cases, a Hosted Pbx system has everything they want, with minimal maintenance and an attractive price. Contact Caroline using the following info: Address: 730 Peachtree St. Suite 1100 ATLANTA, GA 30308 Phone #: (877) 862.2562
Caroline Ash is a Small Business Phone System consultant based out of Atlanta. She frequently finds herself helping companies as they recover from an attempt to manage communications themselves using open source telephony packages. In most cases, a Hosted Pbx system has everything they want, with minimal maintenance and an attractive price. Contact Caroline using the following info: Address: 730 Peachtree St. Suite 1100 ATLANTA, GA 30308 Phone #: (877) 862.2562
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