Business Phone Systems

Business phone systems play a major role in the effectiveness of a business enterprise. Without the ability to communicate with customers a business will not last long.  Instantaneous communications has sped up commerce by allowing verbal and non-verbal communication to take place without the parties having to be in the same physical location.

We live in the age of instantaneous global digital communication.  Modern business has come to rely on the availability of instantaneous communication; even take it for granted. It is a time and place where technology changes at a rapid pace.

Let's take a moment to observe the communications techno-landscape.

Everywhere we look is convergence.  Gone are the days when phones and computers existed in their own separately worlds.  There are a few of the small business phone systems that do not have convergent features, but the marketplace is changing even for them.

Converged communications technology began as the integration of phone system and voice mail messaging.  You could be notified when you received a message, and the notification could be at your desktop phone as well as remote notification through a pager. The automated attendant feature of the voice mail allowed businesses the option of routing calls to the voice mail system first, and giving the caller a menu of options that them enabled them to dial the person's extension without having to go through the receptionist.  This reduced the time and hassle of having to wait for the receptionist and the possibility of being put on hold, and it also reduced the amount of call traffic that went to the receptionist.  In some cases it eliminated a phone attendant all together. 

With the popularity of email came integrated messaging technology.  This business phone system technology allows voice mail to be displayed as email messages in your email client software (Outlook and others).  Messages could be played through the computer rather than having to play them through the phone only.  It opened up the ability to check voice mail any time you checked your email, and from anywhere you had access to your email.

The internet has opened up even more business phone system possibilities. 

The promise of IP telephony is to deliver many nice new features, such as advanced call routing, computer integration, unified messaging, integrated information services, long distance toll bypass, and encryption to business phone systems.  Because of its common network infrastructure, it is possible to integrate other media services like video.

One nice feature of VoIP is the follow me feature that allows the  user to be always reachable at the same extension regardless of the user's physical location.

VoIP allows users to travel anywhere in the world and still make and receive phone calls.  Users can make and receive local phone calls regardless of their location. For example, if a user has US phone number and is traveling in Europe and someone calls the phone number, it will ring in Europe. Conversely, if a call is made from Europe to the US, it will be treated as a local. The only requirement is an internet connection.

Another useful feature of converged communications is the ability of the system to integrate VoIP with computer software applications such as customer relationship management software that can use the calling number (Caller ID) to retrieve the caller's record from a computer database and display the information on a computer display.  Call center agents using VoIP phones can work from anywhere with a sufficiently fast Internet connection.

Digital T-1 and PRI (primary rate interface) circuits have been the technology to drive voice over IP. Bandwidth of your carrier circuit is what determines the quality of service.  Read about business phone systems and VOIP.

If you are interested in incorporating VoIP into your networking infrastructure you probably have T-1 or PRI service.  If you already have heavy traffic on the network you will have to do a network assessment to determine what configuration changes you will need to make.  It may be a case of having to add another circuit to support the additional traffic.  If you would like to shop for the best T-1 or PRI prices go here.