Check Your Plan to See If You're Ready for Business VoIP

When selecting the right phone system to support your business efforts, where do you start? Do you evaluate your current needs and then reach out to vendors? Do you ditch the landlines and implement a new VoIP solution? Do you get rid of internal phones altogether and have everyone start using their mobile devices?

The last option may not be your primary focus, especially if yours is a growing company. But, considering the opportunities in business VoIP to streamline communications and keep everything on the same network at a lower cost, ditching the landlines may not be such a bad idea. Before you dive in, however, it’s always good to know how you should go about the process.

A recent PC Mag piece highlighted what you should and should not do in the world of business VoIP. Among the list of what you should do is a focus on mobile. Your employees do have smartphones and they likely aren’t in the office at all times. Why not put a solution in place that supports mobile? This may or may not include a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program. If it works in your environment and the business VoIP system you’re evaluating can support it, consider making the move.

Trends we’re also seeing in the VoIP space include hosted offerings so as to avoid the costs associated with on-premise VoIP infrastructure. Why not shift the burden of the implementation, support and upgrades to the vendor? Just be sure the quality of the usage is on par with what you need in your business environment. As a technology, VoIP can deliver. It’s up to the vendor to ensure they offer and recommend the right bandwidth to support demand.

Even following these tips is not enough to ensure implementation and ongoing success, however. You do need to avoid a few things if you want to see optimal success with your business VoIP implementation and operation. For one, don’t make the setup more complicated than it needs to be. If you’re working with a proven provider, they can help with this step. Make it seamless and simple to ensure easy adoption.

Overcome resistance to change in your organization by bringing your employees on-board before implementation. That also means you need to deliver on your promises. If you promise quality interactions, be sure you have enough bandwidth. If you promise scalability, avoid steep-scale pricing or you’ll avoid scaling. At the same time, vet available vendors according to proven support. If they can’t deliver in this area, they aren’t worth the investment.

If you want to experience the benefits promised with business VoIP, you have to be willing to take the plunge. Just be sure you do it with a plan and you’ll realize success.