Business VoIP Gives Smaller Companies an Advantage

Even in larger companies today, technology budgets are sparse. Corner office executives – many who are not tech-savvy – may be wholly disconnected from the tech needs of rank and file workers, or from abstract concepts such as potential future security breaches. (“No one has stolen our data yet! Why spend the money?”) They may have employees setting up conferences calls for them, or video chat sessions, and not understand the time and effort it can take to use substandard communications solutions.

Smaller companies don’t have the luxury of being “disconnected” from their core needs. People often wear many hats, and access to capital is regularly very limited. When it does come from loans or other sources, there is often a laundry list of very urgent needs, and enterprise software or communications technology sometimes falls far down the list. Today, however, there are communications solutions available via business voice over IP (or business VoIP) that require very little upfront investment and can offer smaller companies the same robust feature sets as larger organizations.

Let’s face it: traditional telephony is not only too expensive nowadays for smaller businesses, it’s pretty inflexible, according to a recent article by Laiza King, writing for Huffington Post’s Small Business section. They also require specialized equipment and can do only voice calls and fax.

“A small business voice over internet protocol, VoIP, on the other hand gives you a communications solutions that combines voice, data and video,” she wrote. “You will save money from travel costs by using collaborating tools like web and video conferencing. Your voice and data networks are more secure and you no longer have to pay for long distance and other phone charges. Other features like call forwarding, voice mail and caller ID also comes with the package at no extra cost.”

Don’t be afraid of the price tags that may be attached to VoIP solutions designed for very large companies. Today, a number of business VoIP companies cater to smaller companies with smaller budgets. Solutions providers such as Nextiva offer full-featured cloud-based communications solutions that provide clear communications and seamless mobility with much lower setup and monthly costs than traditional phone systems. It’s easily scalable – users can be added quickly with little effort – and the system can be managed by anyone with permission from anywhere…no specialty IT degrees required. Some solutions providers even provide an “onboarding” team to help smaller companies get their business VoIP systems up and running with ease.

A good business VoIP system for a smaller company can also reap benefits that were previously unavailable to them, according to King.

“Your employees can now work remotely from home or anywhere other than the office because they can easily access your network,” she wrote. “With the ‘presence information’ technology, you can tell which of your employee is available or not, see who they are on the phone with and monitor where they are working from - the office or otherwise.”