Business VoIP Featured Article

Business VoIP Has Many Compelling Advantages

February 21, 2012

By David Sims, Business VoIP Contributing Editor

Business VoIP offers a large array of benefits to companies. Sometimes, however these innovative solutions are not fully understood. Some less than scrupulous vendors have made all sorts of claims for business VoIP, and you might not have seen all of them pan out. In fact, we’re willing to bet you’ve been oversold here and there.


Nevertheless, there are solid, definite advantages to using business VoIP:

For SMBs, business VoIP means you don’t have to add new phone systems when you want to expand, you simply expand your current system. It gives you the sort of sophisticated communications streamlining you probably thought was out of your budget.

Business VoIP also proves itself to be much more flexible to handle mobile employees than traditional phone systems. And if your business is growing at all these days, you’ve got more people working remotely – from home, on the road and maybe even trying to collaborate with other remote employees. You need business VoIP to connect them.

The bottom line is that a business VoIP system lets you keep employees and customers connected anytime and anywhere, since one number works no matter what device the person’s on at the time, or the system can be programmed to let somebody else handle the call.

Because VoIP uses Internet lines, you can get far more functionality at a lower price than with traditional phone systems. You don’t need (to buy) separate voice and data systems, and calls can be smoothly rerouted from a desk phone to a mobile phone. Let’s see your traditional phone do that.

Using such a system also lets you centralize administrative functions as well, which most small businesses find a boon, as well as the lower operational costs from having voice and data combined. Additionally, you can usually you can buy or lease equipment with business VoIP, whatever works for your budget.

Installation’s even easier with business VoIP, since you can perform a lot of the functions in-house, so you never again need to call the phone company to send a guy out who will be at your office next Tuesday.

Furthermore, as most good business VoIP systems have automated attendants, users can fully customize the system, reducing call handling and improving the customer experience.

One company with a comprehensive set of business VoIP offerings for SMBs and larger enterprises is Nextiva. One feature you probably wouldn’t expect is an online fax capability. Yes, you still need fax. Nextiva vFAX meets that need. It’s designed for small businesses, and company officials say it helps businesses save around 80 percent on their traditional fax service bills.

Nextiva offers all the features discussed here, and the company’s other great advantage is that its VoIP services are hosted, which means customers can change their extensions, forward lines, and even set up their voicemail in a few minutes. If you happen to change your location, you won’t need to move any PBX equipment or even change phone numbers.


David Sims is a contributing editor for virtual-pbx. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for virtual-pbx here.

Edited by Jamie Epstein

SHARE THIS ARTICLE

HOME
READ THE NEXTIVA PARTNER BROCHURE


Key Benefits

  Unlimited Calling & Faxing
  Number Portability
  Auto Attendant
  Voicemail-to-Email
  Instant Conference Calls
  HD Voice Quality



LEARN MORE