Been thinking of making a move to VoIP? This blog post will explain the pros and cons of VoIP.
Here at EBS, we have been providing VoIP solutions to our customers for years, so we know a little bit about what we are talking about when it comes to VoIP. Hera are some advantages of VoIP:
Successful businesses understand that reducing costs is a critical part of managing a company. VoIP adoption is one way to save a lot of money on something that is just about an absolute necessity.
An average on-premise PBX phone system running over conventional phone lines can cost in excess of $50 per line. An average VoIP system can cost as little as $20 per line.
Who wouldn’t want to trim their telecommunications costs by more than 50%?
Of course, those kinds of savings are not typical. But it’s easy to see that converting from a PBX-based system to a VoIP system will more than likely save you some serious money. Cost savings generally fall into two buckets:
Conventional business phone systems have significant upfront start up costs. The main driver of this initial cost is the cost of the PBX.
PBX stands for Private Branch Exchange. A PBX is a specialized piece of hardware that sits in the office environment and controls the phone system. PBX units tend to be proprietary, meaning that they only work with a particular vendor’s system. You can’t just plug Company A’s handsets into Company B’s PBX and expect it to work out of the box. They can also cost in excess of $10,000 and have a relatively short technological half-life.
VoIP networks do not require a PBX as they are connected through a regular internet connection. Therefore, VoIP systems will be less expensive when it comes to start-up costs.
VoIP systems allow users to operate their phone systems without having direct copper wire connections to the phone company. Because modern networking systems can handle both data and voice packets on the same channel, all VoIP needs is a reliable connection to the internet, just like a computer would.
Power over Ethernet (PoE) takes modularity to another level by carrying handset power over the same line as the voice and data signal. PoE also reduces or even eliminates the need to make expensive electrical upgrades to your office space.
Because VoIP systems transmit voice data over the same lines as your computer data, there is typically no hard cost associated with making calls. And because your voice data is not being carried over aging, legacy copper phone lines, there is less costly maintenance overhead to carry.
These hard costs which tend to be much higher with a PBX system, make VoIP telephony an appealing option for Small and Medium sized businesses.
Soft costs are more difficult to calculate than hard costs, but that doesn’t mean that soft costs are always less than hard costs. On the contrary, soft costs can be extremely important to a small to medium sized business. Here are some common soft costs:
VoIP allows employees stay connected to the corporate network while working remotely. A “work from anywhere” model is one of the ways that companies can save money by downsizing their real estate commitments. Less office space means less money spent on rent, utilities, parking fees, and other miscellaneous expenses associated with maintaining office space. New technology such as Zoom and other collaboration software allows for more connectedness between remote workers, and greater productivity.
A typical small business can save $10,000 per employee per year by merely letting them work from home half of the time, according to a recent study by Gartner Research.
Most VoIP systems include an auto-attendant feature at no additional cost.
With the auto attendant feature being free and just a click away there is no need for an additional person to answer for you.
Enhanced access is one of the biggest benefits of VoIP for business. Nowadays, most cloud-based VoIP services allow calls to be placed or received from anywhere..
One great feature of VoIP systems is when you're unable to answer the call, you can forward calls or even have your voicemails emailed to you as an attached WAV file.
VoIP fits the way your employees work. They don’t need to be at the office. They can work on their smartphones, tablets, or laptops from anywhere. This is how Millennials and GenZ employees prefer to work!
Scalability is another VoIP feature that makes it a no-brainer for SMB’s. When you hire a new employee or open a new location, all you have to do is load the VoIP software on a computer. No need for a new expensive desk phone!
VoIP offers built-in multi-party calling capabilities. Companies sometimes need a standalone conference calling service with PBX-based phone systems. Many VoIP services offer video conferencing similar to Zoom or Teams built in at no additional cost.
Early instantiations of VoIP service had pretty limp call quality. They had lots of dropped calls, echoes, weird noises, and other annoying problems.
Nowadays, with the wide availability of fast and reliable internet service, those problems are a thing of the past. Most routers and internet services also feature QoC (Quality of Call) adjustments that allow voice calls to take priority of bandwidth when sharing the connection with data transfers.
Other advancements such as audiophile-level headphones with noise cancellation, input filtering, signal compression, and top-notch microphone quality make VoIP calls like being in the same room with other callers!
VoIP can reduce security threats by using features inherent in IP technology such as 256 bit or higher encryption and anti-virus and anti-ransomware running on their