Phone Systems Featured Article

Have you made a significant investment in your phone systems? Are you leery about walking away from this investment just because a vendor promises you access to lower prices, better features and streamlined connectivity? If your answers are in the affirmative to all of these questions, you’re not alone. Despite the promises that VoIP can significantly improve communications, a number of businesses are afraid to walk away from current deployments.

At the same time, those who have adopted new technologies don’t even know what they’re missing simply because they haven’t taken advantage of training or simply didn’t know the questions to ask. Now, one VoIP vendor has released the results of a new survey pointing to the problem – the majority of small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) aren’t very aware of trends in technology and are therefore not using advanced phone features.

Conducted by Hanover Research, the survey uncovered a number of gaps in the SMB world. First, most are unfamiliar with terms such as IP PBX (News - Alert), hosted PBX, IP telephony, SIP trunks or even unified communications. It’s likely that they are relying on IT experts to know why these terms are important, but they don’t apply in their daily lives. And, while video, email and social media continue to increase in importance, 74 percent of participants said that voice communications are still extremely important.

The top five phone features that SMBs rely on the most include 3-way calling at 60 percent, intercom usage at 42 percent, conference call bridges at 41 percent, music on hold at 40 percent and calling other locations with extension use at 37 percent. Even with this seemingly dated list, there are features that SMBs would like to have in their phone systems, including voicemail as email attachments at 38 percent, remote desk phones at 25 percent, music on hold at 25 percent, 3-way calling at 24 percent and mobile client for the desk phone at 24 percent.

The good news is that nearly one in two SMBs do have plans to evaluate new business phones systems in the near future. In fact, 86 percent of them plan to do so within the next three years. The reason for this move is generally old or outdated voice equipment, as cited by 64 percent of participants. This opens the door for consideration of next generation technology and the move into hosted phone systems.

What this research really highlights is that hosted and VoIP providers have missed the boat on properly educating the small business on the benefits of newer phone systems and why they should consider making a change. With a little effort in this area, they could create significant opportunity for themselves.