VoIP: worth the investment for SMEs?

Many SMEs have reservations about migrating to VoIP, according to a recent Ofcom report. That’s despite the many benefits of VoIP in reducing costs and increasing flexibility. Unsurprisingly, the report concluded that UK small businesses don’t have a good understanding of what VoIP actually is – and what it could do for them.

Could you be missing out on its benefits? Let’s set the record straight.

What is VoIP - and what's so good about it?

VoIP essentially uses the internet to make and receive calls – just like WhatsApp and Skype compared to using a landline (or Public Switched Telephone Network). It offers:

• Call recording – which is particularly useful if you’re in legal or financial services, for example
• Call forwarding – ideal for staff that work from home or on the move
• Reduced maintenance costs and infrastructure – as it relies on your existing network connections
• Unified and simplified communications, tying together voice calls, email, chat, SMS and other channels
• Significantly reduced call costs – particularly if you regularly call internationally
• Increased flexibility to match the pace of your business – including an almost unlimited number of phone lines, so you can scale up or down when you need to
• Enterprise features, including softphones, contact centres, reporting and analytics, instant disaster recovery, and collaboration tools.

Aside from the cost savings, the biggest benefit lies in future-proofing. The internet is a much more efficient channel for communication, and telecoms operators are pushing towards getting everything online. In 2018, BT announced that they plan to phase out landlines (the PSTN and ISDN) by 2025 and switch to a single IP network.

The old issues associated with internet calls – lagging, poor audio quality, calls cutting out – are no longer really relevant as internet speeds continue to increase across the globe. More than ever, VoIP is an opportunity for small businesses.

Hosted, cloud or VoIP phone systems use cloud computing – using remote servers to manage, store and process data. Rather than investing in your own infrastructure, another company (we’re one of them) comes in and provides VoIP as a service.

There are then the benefits of having a service provider handling your telephony. We free up our small business clients to focus on the nitty gritty of growing their business, looking after call routing and maintaining software and hardware.

But is it a headache to migrate?

It’s not that bad. We’re experienced VoIP service providers and our team knows how to make the transition as painless as possible for your business. We’ll ensure you see minimal disruption during installation, and we’ll work with you throughout to make sure the new system meets your needs, and then provide support to keep things running well.

With our fully managed VoIP system, you’ll benefit from reliable service, with 99.9% uptime guaranteed.

Contact us to find out how we can support your business.