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Things To Consider When Searching For A Business Phone System

Many businesses take their phone systems for granted. As long as a phone can make a call it’s good enough, right? This couldn’t be further from the truth, modern phone systems are generally cheaper to maintain and come with an assortment of productivity-enhancing features that practically pay for the cost of upgrading.
Here are a few things to consider when searching for a new business phone system:

Why Do You Need It?
Why are you upgrading your phones? Is your current system outdated? Do you need some specific features that your current system doesn’t offer? Do you need more phone lines because you’re growing your business? Are you unhappy with the quality of your current service provider? Knowing why you’re upgrading will help you focus your efforts on finding the system that best fit your needs.

What Is Your Budget?
There are a lot of phone systems out there, so having a budget in place beforehand can save you some time by narrowing down your options. If you’re not sure what you should be budgeting towards your phone system, you can call up some vendors and ask. Give them a list of the features you absolutely need and ask for a rough price range.

What Is Your Time-Frame?
Do you need this new system right away or can it wait? Generally, even if there is nothing pressing about your needs, it’s better to work quickly and lock in a decision. A new business phone system can greatly enhance productivity so the earlier it’s installed the more you benefit. That doesn’t mean you should rush your decision, but if you’ve found something that’s a great fit don’t keep putting it off just to “see what else is out there.”

Are You “VoIP Ready”?
Many businesses choose to go with Voice over IP (VoIP) phone systems. There are many advantages to a VoIP based business phone system, but before you switch you need to be sure that your network can handle it. In order to make the most of VoIP you need:

  • Bandwidth well in excess of minimum requirements
  • A router that’s optimized for VoIP
  • A redundancy plan

How much bandwidth you need will depend on your service provider and the audio codecs they offer. In general, the better the call quality the more bandwidth used per call. Some companies allow you to opt for lower quality audio to conserve bandwidth. Most routers will work with VoIP, but if it isn’t optimized for that type of traffic performance may be subpar.

Some businesses choose to forego redundancy with their VoIP system, but that is a mistake. With a VoIP system, any time your network goes your phones go with it. VoIP phone systems are very reliable, but they aren’t magic, so make sure you have a backup plan in case your network goes down.

It will take a little bit of effort on your part to find the right business phone system, but the results are well worth it. Keeping a legacy system afloat is often costlier than upgrading and that’s not even taking into account the potential increase in productivity. Just make sure you keep your requirements, budget, and time-frame in mind while you’re searching.

At Atlantic Communications our team has decades of experience as a full-service business phone provider. We’ll be there to offer you our expertise every step of the way, from choosing your new phone system to installing it. Please, contact us today to learn more or schedule an evaluation for your business.