TMCnews Featured Article

Communications services available to the small business today can make it challenging to decide on a platform or strategy. Do you select hosted or in-house, softphones or mobile devices, purchased or Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)?

The good news is that once you decide on your strategy, there are a number of options available for execution – especially where hosted communications are concerned. And, if VoIP is a priority for you, hosted VoIP options are extensive, giving you the benefit of multiple providers to choose from at competitive rates.

Leveraging hosted VoIP and a hosted softswitch takes a number of challenges off the table, including system maintenance, application updates and hardware investments. Working with reputable vendors also allows you to select the solution you need, configure the settings to meet the needs of the business and then focus on your core competencies.

A recent Host Review article explored the impact managed hosted services have on the small business as the economy continues to rebound. The biggest draw for companies everywhere is the ability to purchased managed services instead of making a significant investment in equipment and internal staffing to man the phone system. The per-usage fees are much easier to stomach than large upfront investments.

Once deployed, however, can a hosted softswitch really solve business problems? One customer believes it can as her insurance company adopted hosted VoIP with great results. She leveraged TDS Telecommunications’ managedIP Hosted to help her business with great results. Now, TDS is working to build on the concept that managed services can be of value to the small business, solving real problems.

The provider is so sure, they offer customers the opportunity to purchase the VVX 500 business media phone for just a penny when upgrading to managedIP Hosted. The phone offers a number of great features designed to work well in the business environment. In other words, it’s designed to support multitasking, click to answer and even old fashioned answering by picking up the phone. If the user is on another call, they can simply send the call to voicemail with the click of a mouse.

The key here is the user gets to decide how to handle the call whether they are on the phone or not. Why does this matter? In a busy office environment, such as a call center, deciding what to do on each call is a split second decision. The easier the steps involved in making that decision, the more time the user has to spend on the interaction itself.

Regardless of the hosted VoIP solution selected, the point is that the capabilities, flexibility, cost efficiency and even creativity enabled with the platform really can solve business problems and streamline business communications. These benefits alone make it worth checking out.