We get a lot of questions from potential customers about what it means to have a hosted VoIP phone system. They typically get the VoIP part – voice-over-IP phone technology has been around long enough for both business and personal use that the average business owner understands the basics. Your inbound and outbound calls are delivered via the Internet to instead of over copper wire.
It’s really more the ‘hosted’ aspect of the service that is relatively new to the world of business communications. Today I’ll cover what it means to have a hosted VoIP PBX, and why a managed phone service is so incredibly valuable for small and medium-sized businesses.
Your PBX in the Cloud
The easiest way to think about hosted VoIP is to understand it as a cloud technology. Cloud just means that the resources, equipment, and technical expertise required for the technology to run are not kept at your location. Instead, the service is typically delivered to you via the Internet by a remote service provider. Your provider is responsible for monitoring and maintaining the service, taking on this responsibility so you can focus on running your business. Your provider also usually employs enterprise-grade hardware and software, redundant equipment for fail-overs, and off-site co-location in order to ensure highly-reliable service.
What does the cloud mean for you?
Right off the bat, this means a hosted VoIP phone system doesn’t carry the burden of a traditional, wall-mounted phone switch or pricey call switching server. Not only is this going to save you a lot of capital upfront, this means you’re not going to have to worry about investing in equipment that’s going to quickly become obsolete or devote valuable in-house IT resources to learning how to run a PBX. More than that, having your PBX in the cloud means a lot of “-ility” starts coming your way…
Scalability
One of the biggest drawbacks of a traditional phone system is its fixed provisioning at installation. You’ve got to make a choice between paying for what you think you’re going to use short-term, or investing in bigger and better (read: more expensive) technology to give you room to grow.
But with a hosted VoIP PBX, scalability is a breeze. Since the number of phones in your network isn’t restricted by some archaic, clunking piece of call switching equipment, adding a new employee is just a matter of plugging their phone into your broadband connection and watching it boot. It connects via the Internet to your PBX in the cloud, and can be fully active with rich dial tone in just minutes. This way, you’re only ever paying for what you need but have unlimited room to grow.
Flexibility
The ability to add new phones at your office at any time is great, but what if I said you could also add those new phones anywhere and connect seamlessly to the same phone network? That’s the real beauty of hosted VoIP. Since the service is all managed via the Internet, there’s no limitation on the geographical layout of your FreedomIQ system. You can have your main office in Boston, a remote office in Florida, and run your customer support out of San Francisco, and all of these locations will operate effectively and efficiently through the same hosted VoIP phone system.
Even if you don’t need to support multiple large offices, the flexibility of hosted VoIP paves the way for you to develop a strong, reliable telework program. Telecommuters can connect with your office via a VoIP phone at their home and your callers would never know the difference. Beyond simple connectivity, advanced VoIP solutions like FreedomIQ also offer a wide array of remote employee management tools, such as visual call reports with performance metrics and the ability to record and review live calls. These tools help you keep telecommuters on task, so you can enjoy the benefits of a telework program without worrying about productivity.
Mobility
Brace yourself for the obvious: in today’s fast-paced business world, people move around a lot. With this in mind, what good is a call coming into the desk phone at your office if you’re hundreds of miles away? Or even just down the street getting coffee?
With a smart hosted VoIP phone system like FreedomIQ, that call is not just going to give up and go to voicemail when you don’t answer at your office. Since the call is routing through us to you via the Internet, we can automatically check the list of phone numbers you’ve provided online for your extension and keep hunting until the call lands on your cell phone. Or better, when you know you’re going to be out of the office for an extended period, you can easily have calls delivered straight to your cell. That means better connectivity while mobile resulting in fewer missed business opportunities.
