6 Reasons to Upgrade Your Business Phone System

WSI Comandix on January 7, 2022

Businesses replace their desktop PCs about every five years. Mobile devices are replaced more frequently, especially for companies that allow employee-owned devices, because many consumers upgrade their smartphones and tablets as soon as they qualify for carrier discounts.

Yet many organizations tend to cling to old phone systems for 10 to 20 years. To give you a sense of how old that technology is, the iPhone was introduced 10 years ago, and the founders of Google purchased the google.com domain 20 years ago.

Why don’t organizations upgrade or replace their phone systems? In many cases, the business value of a new phone system is grossly underestimated. If the old phone system still works, there’s no sense of urgency to replace it. Or is there?

Here are six reasons why you should consider upgrading from a legacy phone system to a leading Voice over IP (VoIP) platform.

1) A New Phone System Provides Cost Savings

This is the slam dunk of a selling point for a new VoIP business phone system. A VoIP system eliminates the need to maintain separate voice and data networks and can help reduce telecom costs. With a cloud-based voice system, you can choose the features you want and pay for the service as a monthly subscription, with minimal upfront investment.

2) Valuable New Features

Today’s VoIP platforms give users access to conference calling, call presence, call routing, “find me, follow me” and many other features through an intuitive interface. All of this functionality can boost productivity and enhance customer service.

3) Application Integration

Unified communications platforms allow users to instant message, schedule and hold virtual meetings, and share files from their desk phone or softphone. Customer relationship management and other business applications, such as SalesForce, AMS 360 and NetSuite, can also be integrated with the phone system to streamline workflows.

4) Mobility Issues Resolved With New Phone System

With today’s VoIP phone systems, calls can be automatically forwarded to a mobile device, where the user can access the same tools and services they would find on their desk phone. This is far more efficient and reliable than expecting a caller to leave a message and wait for the recipient to retrieve the message and return the call.

5) New Business Phone Systems Offer Simple Scalability

As your business grows in terms of personnel and remote locations, a new phone system built on a VoIP framework makes it easy to add users, offices, devices, numbers, services and capacity without reinventing the wheel.

6) Elimination of Obsolete Technology

Old phone systems may still work, but the technology will eventually fail. When that happens, good luck finding parts and someone to make the repairs. Repairing outdated technology is a slow, expensive process, and every minute of downtime will cost you money. Invest in a new phone system now before the old system breaks down.

Why the Right Expertise Matters

Anyone can buy or sell a phone system. Choosing the right system for your organization and getting that system to do what you need it to do is a different story. That requires collaboration with data networking and communications experts. What features do you need? Would a cloud-based or on-premises system make more sense? Will your infrastructure support a new system? How will you keep your data secure?

Eastern DataComm will walk you through the planning, design, deployment, adoption and support phases of your phone system implementation, answering these and other questions to help you maximize ROI.

Let us show you how a new business phone system can help you reduce costs and do business better.

7 Ways Unified Communications Benefits State and Local Government

WSI Comandix on November 15, 2021

Many government agencies at the state and local level still rely upon legacy phone systems or Centrex-type services leased from carriers. These older systems are difficult to manage, expensive to maintain, and lack many of the features of a modern communications platform. Designed when most workers sat at desks throughout the day, they are incapable of supporting today’s remote and mobile workers.

Unified Communications for Public Services

Legacy phone systems aren’t just frustrating for government employees — they make it difficult for agencies to meet the expectations of their constituents. As consumers we have grown accustomed to seamless communication via a variety of channels, including phone, email, text and online chat. We are used to having ready access to accurate, up-to-date information. We demand this level of service from businesses, and expect nothing less from government agencies.

An IP-based unified communications (UC) platform can help state and local governments enhance both their operations and the services they deliver. UC brings together voice, video and collaboration tools in a single interface, eliminating communications silos and enabling seamless transition from one channel to another. “Presence” lets users know whether someone is available and their preferred means of communication, eliminating phone tag. UC solutions can also be wirelessly integrated with other applications and data to streamline workflows and provide one-click access to powerful communications tools.

Unified Communications for Government: 7 Benefits

  1. UC makes it easier for constituents to reach the right person to answer their questions and solve their problems. UC supports personalized call handling and routing, as well as auto-attendant and contact center capabilities.
  2. IP communications creates a common platform across multiple sites and agencies. (ex: Borough Hall and the police department, DPW, town library and/or the fire department.) By enabling real-time collaboration, it helps boost productivity, speed response times and facilitate decision-making.
  3. Many government agencies are using telework programs to reduce costs, provide for continuity of operations, and give employees greater flexibility. A UC system can be extended to teleworkers so they remain connected and have access to the tools they need when working remotely.
  4. Many municipal administrators and other key personnel are frequently out of the office. The mobile device integration enabled by a modern UC platform gives them secure access to the communications environment — anytime, anywhere. With mobility, administrators can make and receive phone calls just as if they are at their desks.
  5. Because IP communications leverages the data network for voice calls, it is more cost-efficient and easier to manage than legacy platforms. Web-based administration tools simplify moves, adds and changes across multiple locations. Teams can access comprehensive features and functionality without draining vital resources. With a short amount of training, most anyone can easily access this information and make these changes – saving costs with a limited IT team that many municipalities have.
  6. Whether on-premises or in the cloud, today’s UC platforms have a fault-tolerant and redundant architecture that helps ensure continuous availability for disaster recovery.
  7. An IP communications system can also be integrated with physical security systems. UC becomes the communications platform for emergency notification systems. With the LENS solution, a municipality can notify everyone inside and outside the building as well as other sites that an emergency event has commenced. The UC platform enables the solution to call the local police, 911 and key administrators simultaneously as well.

The ShoreTel Unified Communications platform is a proven solution that connects people and information while reducing total cost of ownership. It is highly secure and reliable, with failover capabilities that are essential to government agencies for both day-to-day operations and during emergency situations.  You can ensure high quality services with enterprise-class availability to meet the demands of your employees and constituents.

At Eastern DataComm, we are proud of our history serving the communications needs of state and local governments.

Let us show you how we can enhance the quality of your communications infrastructure to help you increase efficiency and better serve your constituents.  Contact us today!

When Disaster Strikes: Looking to the Cloud for Business Continuity

WSI Comandix on April 6, 2015

It’s a Monday afternoon. Calls are rolling in, there are countless voicemails to respond to, and business is humming along. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Paul the sales manager knocks on your door with a perplexed look on his face.

“Do you know what’s wrong with the phone system?” he asks. “There’s no dial tone, no access to voicemail, and no calls coming in.”

Ah, yes — the feared phone system failure. Whether caused by a clumsy utility worker, a big storm, or some other unpredictable problem, phone system issues can create enormous headaches. In fact, if your company hasn’t implemented any kind of disaster or redundancy plan, those failures significantly disrupt business continuity and productivity.

You can’t afford that kind of stagnation. So, you close your laptop, pull out your cell phone, and call your telecommunications provider. An hour later, you finally get someone on the line. Two hours later, you’ve diagnosed the problem. And, right around closing time, the phone system is finally working again. Problem is, you and your team have lost a day of productivity. And your customers aren’t happy.

A Simpler (and More Effective) Way to Manage Disaster Recovery

Until recently, the only way to ensure this scenario didn’t happen to you was to duplicate all of your systems and implement a complex disaster recovery plan. Both of those require significant investments in equipment and infrastructure, which is why many businesses have instead chosen to roll the dice and hope for the best.

Today, there’s another solution that is cheaper and much more efficient. Cloud-based phone systems have greatly advanced system recovery and business continuity in the face of an outage.

Because cloud systems are hosted virtually, there’s no need to worry about the types of disastrous scenarios that used to disrupt on-premise or landline phone services. If a phone line is cut, cloud-based systems are totally unaffected. If Internet service goes down, phone calls can be re-routed to backup cell phone numbers or other business offices.

Simply put, recovery and continuity is a non-issue.

3 Key Business Benefits of Switching to the Cloud

While that kind of peace of mind is pretty compelling on its own, there are a handful of ancillary benefits of the cloud to consider, as well. Here are three particularly important ones:

  1. Cloud-based phone systems are less expensive up-front than on-premise solutions — and that’s with built-in disaster recovery and redundancy planning.
  2. Unlike on-premise solutions, cloud-based phone systems are totally scalable. If you need to re-direct call flow from one site to another, it’s very easy to do without any disruption in call quality or service
  3. If a total outage strikes, wiping out your office’s power and Internet service, cloud-based phone systems allow employees to connect from anywhere — their home, a coffee shop, or wherever they can tap into power and a data connection.

With these benefits in mind, the question, then, is why you wouldn’t switch to the cloud.

Truthfully, there are still compelling arguments for on-premise phone systems, and it’s important to consider your goals before making any major change. But if connectivity, business continuity, system redundancy and reliability are important to your company, employees and customers, you’d be wise to take a closer look at the benefits of the cloud. If nothing else, it will help you better plan for network disruptions you can’t possibly anticipate. Contact us today for the best cloud solutions.

Virtual Reality: How to easily establish consistent communications with anyone, anywhere

WSI Comandix on March 2, 2015

When the London Business School hosted its annual Global Leadership Summit in June 2014, the school surveyed attendees about a variety of modern business issues and challenges. While the results of that survey covered a variety of topics, one of the really interesting findings was that respondents believed that half of their employees would be working remotely by 2020.

Think about that for a second. In just six years, 50% of your organization may be working from somewhere other than your business’ corporate or regional office. That figure may sound like a stretch, but a recent New York Times article revealed that telecommuting grew by 79% between 2005 and 2012 — and that number is expected to rise even more over the next decade.

So, what does this mean for the future of business?

For starters, it means that organizations must find ways to empower their employees to work effectively and efficiently from any location. Thankfully, cloud-based technology is making that a reality — allowing employees to access virtually any file, application, network, or communication service from any place with a secure Internet connection.

What are the challenges of modern communication with traditional equipment?

Modern phone systems are critical to making sure remote communication operates functionally and effectively – be it an employee working from home and feeling connected to headquarters, or communication across multiple office locations. Imagine for a moment that you operate a healthcare system with teams of physicians who operate out of multiple offices and hospitals. In order to effectively manage patient care and billing, those physicians and their staff must be able to easily communicate with each other (and their “main” office), regardless of where they are or what equipment (landline, cell phone, etc.) they’re using.

With traditional on-site phone systems, creating that kind of network connectivity and flexibility would be incredibly challenging. And even if you managed to make it work, it’s very likely that you would still deal with a handful of other issues.

  • Quality of service: While it might seem like on-premise phone systems would be more reliable, the issue is with the quality of the equipment and network across all remote offices. If the “pipe” from one remote office to the corporate headquarters isn’t big enough, it can lead to significant call and system quality issues.
  • Cost of service: Over the life of your phone system, on-site solutions cost just as much (if not more, when you factor in long-term maintenance costs) as cloud-based managed phone solutions. As a result, you often end up paying the same amount to set up a less flexible, less feature-rich network. Meanwhile, your competitor will be paying less to flip a switch and tap into a VoIP solution with much greater functionality and system integration.
  • Scalability and flexibility of service: Every time you open or expand an office, onsite phone systems require significant investments in additional hardware and installation services. And if staffing levels change, traditional phone systems often aren’t flexible enough to adapt on the fly.

Traditional communication systems deliver fewer features and less flexibility, but can cost you more when you factor in the equipment needed for each remote office, and the support costs of setting up and managing each of those private networks.

Regardless of the vertical your business operates in, that math doesn’t makes much sense.

Cleaning up the way a modern business communicates

From a data and communications infrastructure perspective, there’s little doubt that cloud-based phone systems can improve the speed and capability of your company’s remote offices. There is much less effort required, and, ultimately, much greater functionality available to your staff.

And while all of that will no doubt lead to greater organizational efficiency and effectiveness (not to mention fewer technical headaches), it’s important not to forget that 50% of your workforce could be remote in six years. To prepare for that possibility, your company’s systems, processes, and applications must be incredibly scalable, flexible, and reliable.

If those are not words you’d use to describe your existing phone and communications systems, then it might be time to consider making a change.

Remote Control: How your phone system may be stifling remote employee productivity

WSI Comandix on February 16, 2015

Imagine for a moment that you’re a sales manager at a growing company and you’ve just been tasked with building a remote team of 40 sales reps. Your company’s headquarters is in Hackensack,NJ , but these reps will primarily work out of their home offices and much of their time will be spent on the phone — either initiating conversations with prospective clients or engaging existing customers.

While most of your sales reps have personal smartphones they can use on the go, you know that business calls are better conducted on a private line that provides more reliable call quality. Your sales reps will appear more professional, while the features of a business phone system also allows them to be more productive.

But here is the issue: How exactly are you going to set up each of those sales reps with their own phone lines and all the tools they need to be as productive as possible?

The challenges faced with remote workers and on-premise phone systems

With traditional onsite phone systems, business owners or in-house IT experts would need to take several laborious steps to get remote workers’ phones connected to the company’s internal network.

First, they’d have to purchase an expensive phone for each employee — typically through their TelCo provider. Next, they’d need to do some circuit work to ensure that the company’s on-premise system could manage the additional call load. And lastly, they’d have to perform regular monitoring and maintenance of the onsite equipment to ensure its ongoing reliability.

Then there’s the issue of system features and functionality.

Generally, the benefits of legacy onsite phone systems are limited to reliability, caller identification, and voicemail functionality. Modern VoIP systems, however, allow employees (including remote workers) to easily link their phone to CRM and ERP applications, leverage click-to-dial technology, and unleash powerful call analytics.

If your business can’t provide those tools to remote employees, then it’s likely limiting your remote staff’s efficiency and productivity.

Is a cloud-based phone system the answer?

The emergence of cloud-based VoIP technology has largely rendered each of the challenges and obstacles listed above moot. With a cloud-based phone system, getting a remote employee up and running with a phone system is as simple as purchasing a phone, connecting it to the Internet, and downloading some software.

There’s no added setup, maintenance, management costs, or headaches, and your remote employees can immediately tap into the same functionality that in-house employees have access to. Even better, cloud-based phone service providers ensure the system is constantly upgraded and protected, which improves uptime, call reliability, and customer experience.

In a word, a cloud-based phone system just makes things easier.

If your business has a legacy onsite phone system that’s failing to deliver that kind of connectivity to your remote staff, or if you just think there’s a more effective way to sync remote workers to your company’s network, then you may want to consider moving to the cloud. Your remote employees — and their customers — will thank you for it.

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