So your organization is finally planning on upgrading the old PBX, you’ve got a enormous project on your hands, and you are looking for the first things that you need to do to opinion this beast out. Well have no fear because I have been on the planning, design, deployment and support side of the assert over IP business for 10 years and will give you a grand picture overview of what the next 3 to 12 months are going to be like for you. The first thing that you have to know is what the reasons are for the deployment. It is important to keep the reasons for the upgrade in mind when planning and selecting the new system, so as not to get sidetracked into less important reasons during the process. Here are the most current good reasons ones that we run into:
-The old PBX is failing or breaking down all the time.
-People are complaining about how old the phone system.
-There are potential monthly cost savings by converting to SIP trunking.
-You are hearing about improved productivity from other companies using yelp over IP systems.
-There are a lot of new features available that you need.
There are, however, other benefits to upgrading the existing phone system that you may not have conception of and will come out during the process:
-Your old data network gets an upgrade as allotment of the cost of the recent phone system.
-There will be an ability to improve business processes.
-There are many ways customer service and vendor interactions can be improved.
-Faster handset moves, adds, and changes.
This guide assumes that you are looking at getting an on premise voice over IP-based phone system. The other options of getting in on premise traditional PBX system or a hosted voice over IP system are not discussed because they are a minor portion of the overall market at this point.
Planning the VoIP Upgrade
So, where do you start? Well, the first step is assessing your recent phone system and data network. You have to find out what the current capabilities are that you have, what people like about the system and what they don’t like about the system, and especially how the people that are big users of the PBX on the customer and serve desk interaction side make use of the current system and want to improve it. From a calculation standpoint, what it means you have to figure out a bunch of things for every site:
-How many analog and digital phones you have. Which analog handsets can be replaced by low end IP phones (usually all of them will be).
-How many outside lines you have in the effect of voice T-1’s and analog ports
-Number and type of data T1’s at every site. (A T1 can be old for voice, Internet, WAN, or a combination).
-Current wide area network per site bandwidth and utilization.
-Current local area network switches quantity and location; quantity of used ports per closet.
-Any special requirements for ACD, IVR, call recording, handset paging, and application integration.
If you want to catch funding benefit for this you have to get a handle on what your current monthly costs are. Current monthly costs include charges at every site:
-Internet and wide area network circuit costs.
-PBX lease costs.
-PBX monthly service costs. Average cost of additional PBX service on a monthly basis.
-Cellphone costs, since some of these can be offset using single number reach.
-Monthly conferencing costs.
-Monthly maintenance and support on all network hardware and software that may be replaced.
Once you related what your current monthly costs are you’re ready to figure out what the budget for your new project is. The best outcome to the new project would be that your original monthly costs are lower than your current monthly costs, after accounting for new equipment installation services and everything else to place the unique phone system in place, when financed over a 3 to 5 year period with a one dollar buyout at the end so you own the fresh system. You may find out during the course of this planning that it will be necessary to get a unusual Internet phone and wide area network connections in order to realize the desired return on investment so make sure you keep your monthly circuit costs and your financing of equipment, maintenance, and installation separate..
Choosing VoIP vendors and resellers
There are two choices to make next. One of the choices is to determine the manufacturer of the new phone system that you want to purchase, the other choice is to pick a local vendor who’s going to do the effect installation and support of the new system. To glean the best price and the best service on the fresh system you should go about this in a very specific way. Customers have found in many cases that it’s best to get a phone system from a manufacturer who has expedient local resellers that will do a top-notch installation of the system, a smooth cutover, enabling all the features that they want, and then support them well in an ongoing fashion afterwards.
The size of the reseller that you probably want to work with depends on the size and needs of your organization. I recommend that you work with the reseller who is colossal enough to handle your business but won’t be overwhelmed by it and is small enough that your business is important to them and they’ll bend over backwards to take care of you. So how do you find a reseller that’s the right size for you? This is where you go back to the phone system manufacturers to catch some options.
The major phone system vendors are the best source to find out the local resellers. The major vendors of voice over IP systems at this point in time are Cisco Systems, Avaya, Mitel, Shoretel, and Digium Switchvox. If you contact these vendors either online or through their local salespeople you can ask them for a recommendation of their top three resellers who would do a good job for you. After you get those reseller names from the vendor try to secure their recommendation of whom that you should really work with, then call that reseller, as well as the other two.
At this point you should have three equipment vendors three resellers for these vendors will have nine good options of a local business that will do a ample job for your voice over IP upgrade. Be aware though as soon as you begin this process of contacting vendors you are going to start getting phone calls because people know that you’re interested. Now, that may be a way that you can find out who’s the most involved to collect your business, but it also might just give you unprejudiced indication of who has the most aggressive
So be very clear to everyone your expected timeframe is going to be, that you can take your time and select the best vendor review, and if they bug you excessively that will put them on the bottom of your list. By the device, you should start this process at least six months before you want to have a new phone system up and running. It is going to you 2 to 3 months to seize a vendor, another month to figure out pricing and financing, and from when you say go it will prefer about two months to get the equipment then another month to fully set up and cut over to the new phone system.
Vendor expectations
What you should expect from these vendors is that they are going to want to meet with you determine what your needs are, do a walk-through of your existing systems and find out any special requirements that you have. They will then try to sell you on some specific feature that their system has that nobody else has and try to get you to see a demo of their system. I recommend that you see the demo of their system, don’t buy into any of their must have weird special features, then ask them for a list of reference customers about your size and requirements that you can call and talk to to see how things went. Definitely call these reference customers and see how the reseller did during the design phase, how competitive their pricing was, how they did during the installation, and what their support was like after the sale.
During this part of the engagement is when you have the most leverage and you can get the most things for free. By all means take the time to accumulate some safe lunches and get to know the people that are going to potentially doing work for you for. Furthermore find out who is actually going to be doing the installation for you, if they’re going to be coming from out of state, or if they are local and are going to be available for support after the installation. Don’t be afraid to ask this query as it is perfectly valid and definitely will have a bearing on the outcome of the project and should be a decision factor for you.
At this point you should have proposals from everyone of your vendors and you can start comparing them. Some phone system vendors will try to give you just a monthly cost with a summary description of the parts, then say hey that’s the way it’s done. Since most of the voice over IP vendors are coming from the data side of business they expect that you’re going to be wanting a line item pricing and a bottom-line cost. You can then exercise this to decide what you want finance or not. If you’re not getting this ask for line item pricing and the specific part and model numbers of equipment and a complete breakout of what the annual maintenance costs are going to be.
Annual maintenance is broken down into three areas. Annual product maintenance which provides for support and replacement of hardware and software, upgrade maintenance costs which allows you to upgrade the applications, and a local vendor support contract. All three areas of maintenance are valid. The first two are very important and should be bought in just about all cases, and a local support contract should be purchased if you are not going to have someone qualified to operate the equipment after it’s installed.
Since this is a allege over IP system you should expect that you’re going to be able to hurry the system over a new data network and not on a separate network that you keep in parallel to the existing one. This means that the company is putting in your state over IP phone system should have honorable networking capability and be able to demonstrate that they understand Quality of Service, which is tuning the network equipment to differentiate between different types of data and prioritize voice. This is easy to do on a local area network, somewhat challenging to do on a wide-area network, and difficult to do over a firewall connection to the Internet. If you are looking at doing SIP trunking make sure the vendor shows where they are going to apply quality of service on all the SIP voice paths.
Making a VoiP phone system decision
So at this point you should have your line item proposals with all the pricing, with all the installation and maintenance included, have seen the demos, and have gotten a chance to meet with the local vendors and contact their reference customers asked some basic questions. Step back and asked her steady basic questions at this point. Ask the vendor if there’s anything that you’re missing. Ask the vendor if any parts or over engineered. Ask the vendor if this is the best price, then go one step further and ask the reseller if there’s any method to regain better pricing out of the vendor. Sometimes there is an end of fiscal quarter or year coming up and it’s possible to gain a few extra points discount or some other concessions thrown in.
During the process you’ve probably eliminated some vendors from consideration, because you’ve been trying to narrow your list of nine vendors down to about three. For those six vendors that you eliminate call and give them a good reason so that they deathly know why they’re out of the running and what they can do about it in the future with other customers.
For the other three, let them know that they made the shortlist and given the timeframe for when you’re going to construct the evaluation and the decision. Go through whatever decision-making process your organization uses and settle on one vendor. As you go through the final contract negotiation with this vendor, the other two on the shortlist who haven’t made it are going to be calling you nonstop unless you let them know that you have placed the order with somebody else and that they’re out of the running. This is a diminutive industry and there are not a lot of companies that do a good job in this space; I recommend next you let them know that they did not make the cut in a nice professional way and that you appreciate all the hard work that they did on your behalf. At some point in the future you may be calling them for assistance, and you want to make clear that you parted on good terms.
Finally, as you start the installation with your vendor of choice, make positive you work closely with her project management team and get them all the information that you’re looking for as speedy as possible. This is going to accomplish your installation go much smoother, faster, and successful. Hopefully this guide has been helpful to you in describing the process of how to go through and choose a voice over IP solution vendor, as well as give you some conception of what to expect.
Please let me know if you have any questions or comments on any parts of this. If you have specific questions about your status, please ask them at Geeknick.
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Filed under Small Business Pbx by on Jan 25th, 2012. 
For a business that is just starting out and has a limited budget, an Internet-based phone system will save money, provide maximum flexibility and make a great first impression on customers. In the past, businesses that have wanted a sophisticated phone system have had to use thousands of dollars to purchase and install hardware, only to be locked into equipment that quickly becomes obsolete. By using an Internet-based phone system (sometimes called a virtual pbx) the business owner can be up and running within minutes for very little upfront cost, and will always have the most up-to-date technology at his or her disposal.
There are many companies that offer Internet-hosted phone systems. In choosing one, you will want to consider the features offered, any set-up charges (which are typically less than $100), the monthly account charge, and any charges for calls made and received. If you already have a phone number, you will want to check if it can be ‘ported’, or transferred to the new provider. Most companies offer both toll-free numbers and local phone, so if you are getting a new number, you’ll need to decide. You may also want to check if you will own the number, which will allow you to transfer to a different provider in the future.
The central feature of a hosted phone system is the auto attendant. When callers dial your number, the auto attendant will answer the call and exhibit a list of extensions and other options. In addition to listing available extensions, many auto attendants include dial-by-name capability. Once the caller chooses an extension, the auto attendant will either send the caller directly to voice mail or else ring one or more physical numbers for a space amount of time before sending unanswered calls to voice mail. It is up to you to program the attendant to follow the sequence of actions you wish, and this can vary by extension, time of day, and day of the week. The sincere phone can be located anywhere – in your office, across town, or in another county.
Although a hosted phone system can be set up using standard phone lines, the most flexibility and cost savings are achieved when you consume the system with VoIP phone lines (calls are transmitted via the Internet), and IP phones designed to budge directly into your local status network. While this will increase your initial cost, it is well worth the investment.
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Filed under Small Business Pbx by on Oct 23rd, 2011.
Are you a freelancer? Are you currently working an in house job, while doing freelance work on the side hoping to some day compose it your full-time gig? If you are, you should seriously consider starting/establishing yourself as a small business in order to procure tax breaks, increased profit and an organized system for earning money.
One of the first things you should do in order to establish yourself as a professional, and get your services out there among the others, is to get a website. I don’t mean “blog” I mean professional website, your own domain name, displaying your work, portfolio, services, credentials, etc. Most people are not impressed initially with a blog of your work, sorry to say. While blogs are fantastic, they’re not included in what I call a business website.
If you’re used to blogs and want complete control over the content on your website while collected having a professional web design, you HAVE to check out Websitenabox.com. They offer free hosting, free domain name, unique design packages and their own custom software that lets you log in to your site and update/edit/add content and menu items.
Establishing any freelance gig(s) as a small business of some kind is almost always a good idea. Why? Because depending upon the type of small business you establish, you will profit big time at the end of the year for tax season, by doing nothing more than filling out a few forms that establish your freelance work as an actual “business.” Also, contrary to what you might think, it is not very hard and well worth the small amount of effort.
It’s even easier with websites that offer Books, Kits, Software and Forms
for easy and do-it-yourself business launch up forms. Check out their Small Business/Startups Products
In addition to saving you money, starting a exiguous business has many other benefits. First of all, you will organize your work more thoroughly ensuring that you keep track of all profit, income and expenditures. Second of all, establishing yourself on paper and legally as a business leaves your business entity commence for investors. Now, you might be thinking…”Investors? Yea apt!” But, you’d be surprised at the amount of money someone is willing to invest in a decent idea. Look at it from the investor’s stand point…
Put my loads of money is a savings account and fetch 5% or take a chance on a business owner, who has already proved they would invest in themselves and likely salvage 10 times that in 5 years less or more.
Alright, now I’m just about threw convincing you to commence a small business if you are currently solo gig freelancer. Now, I will give you some tips on how to do it RIGHT.
Read my article on Tools for starting a dinky business for some more mammoth information!
-Write a business plan. It might seem redundant, but trust me, it will organize your thoughts, organize your “business” and give you a better idea of how to truly earn a profit.
-Buy Quickbooks Simple Start. It’s the simplest of the quickbooks exiguous business accounting programs, it’s very inexpensive, has limitless capabilities and is also incredibly easy to work. Just think, if you could really document and track the amount of money you make vs. the amount you spend, give yourself a budget and organize your earnings, how much easier will it be to turn a higher profit? Considerable EASIER. You’ll know exactly what you need to earn to break even and/or fetch a profit, while planning for the coming months/years.
-Fill out the forms, and win it done! Go to the Small Busines Administration website and see how easy it is and research what you’re doing.
-Once established, keep ALL reciepts. Depending on the type of business you start, almost everything can be a write off.
Gas money to discuss the company plans with your family
Software
Computers
Hardware
Pencils
Office supplies
Electricity for the room that you do your work in
Phone bill
Internet billYou get the drift, make yourself a business entity and relish the benefits of it.
Last tip, an LLC (limited liability corporation) is objective about the best route for any new business. Check out the basics of what it is, and see if it’s right for you!
Read my article on Tools for starting a runt business for some more immense information!
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Filed under Small Business Phone Lines by on Jul 9th, 2011.
I’m not real big on television commercials, but even I find that commercial where the two cops arrive to gain a dead clown and a monkey, but are only impressed by the internet phone service, to be funny. Of course, I had to watch it about five or six times before I was able to remember what product it was actually trying to procure me to buy. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) promises to chop your monthly phone bill, especially for the small business who see pages and pages of long distance charges on their bill every 30 days. Anyone who makes many long distances charges might want to consider the potential of switching to a VoIP plan, but if you’ve got a business that depends on calls out of the area code to either customers or employees then it can be quite a boon to your cost reduction plans.
VoIP works by allowing you to place phone calls through an already existing internet line, but involves the purchase of a voice and data connection that is sizable enough to afford efficient handling of voice and data packets. This connection is referred to as a “pipe” and the pipe is typically a T1 line. The benefits of a T1 line over your standard broadband pipe is that it is capable of allocation of that bandwidth that is necessary to successfully transmit either suppose or data, depending on what is needed. Besides sending both voice and data through the pipe, this setup arrives with another advantage that is especially helpful for business use. A VoIP setup allows you to facilitate your message handling capabilities. In other words all your messages-both e-mail as well as voice messages-can be managed from the same program.
After you’ve set up your VoIP pipe, the next decision is finalizing the kind of program that best suits your needs. For instance, VoIP PBX, which stands for private branch exchange, is a good starting program for business needs because it can help you manage all your calling traffic with extraordinary ease. Unfortunately, if your business is still growing you may soon reach the point where you actually move beyond the capacity of the PBX software to handle your needs. In that case, you might take to look into VoIP PBX that offers on-site control designed to give you significantly more power and control over how you administer the system.
A small business that uses VoIP will have to purchase a new IP phone in order to take complete advantage of all that the system has to offer. IP phones are preferred due to their significantly more impressive sound quality, and also because of the size of their screen for use in displaying vital contact information. Prices on these IP phones have been falling like a lead zeppelin since they were first introduced and what would have set a $500 hole in your wallet just a few years ago can now be found for under $200 in some cases. If you objective happen to love your older PBX phone, or just don’t want to take advantage of the upgrade, there is also the possibility of buying what is known as a trunking service. A trunking service is basically just a synthesized voice and data pipe that you can connect through an integrated access contrivance. The upside of going down this road is that it costs less than an IP phone, but the downside is that you also don’t get to enjoy most of the benefits that come with the newer technology. If you don’t mind missing some of the features, even using a trunking service can cut your overall monthly phone bill by as much and sometimes even more than half.
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Filed under Small Business Pbx by on Mar 11th, 2011.
Do you really need to take time away from creating a business conception, a marketing scheme, a personnel hiring strategy, and other really fun stuff in order to evaluate your options for the steal of a phone system for your small business? The simple answer to this question is yes if your business will need an efficient and effective way to initiate and maintain contact customers, vendors, employees, or any other members of the business population who may impact your bottom line. Sources including Gartner and the VOIP Resource Center suggest particular guidelines that will wait on your efforts to ensure the effective communication by your business with the world at gargantuan.
1) Identify both your novel and long term requirements. Experts suggest that a 3 year planning horizon is appropriate for most businesses. This time frame will ensure that you avoid the mistake of planning only for your immediate requirements rather than for the growth of your business that will occur during the 3 year period. This longer time frame will also ensure you benefit from more economical pricing for your phone system in that the duration of the service contract is a major factor used by the service provider in the calculation of your company’s rate. You should select care to stay within the 3 year planning horizon to ensure the flexibility to upgrade your system to avoid technological obsolescence. You will want the flexibility to change your phone system if required to gain access to any unique technological advances that will help your company grow.
2) Gain an understanding of the methods used by the various phone systems to add additional ports, lines, and phones to an existing system. A PBX system is designed to accommodate a particular number of ports rather than the number of outside lines and number of extensions. The number of lines and telephones that can be accommodated by the PBX system is determined by the system’s number of ports. For example, if the system is configured with 45 ports, the system can accommodate any combination of lines and extensions that in total equal 45. The true number of lines for the phone system is determined by the manufacturer during the construction of the particular circuit board.
3) Determine the specific phone system features that will be required by your business. Most phone systems incorporate a particular set of features. Therefore, be sure to compare the features that are required by your business model with those features of the systems offered by various vendors. The features worthy of consideration include:
a) Voice mail. Voice mail records messages from business partners in the event you or your employees are unavailable to accept the call personally. Each employee or department is assigned a mail box which serves as a receptacle for incoming messages. The phone system you select should be configured with a sufficient number of ports to accommodate the maximum number of simultaneous incoming callers that may select to record a message on your system in addition to the maximum number of employees that may select to simultaneously access their messages.
b) Call Hold. The call hold feature enables an employee to place an incoming call on hold in order to perform a related task.
c) Call Forward. This feature enables one employee to transfer a call to another employee, a voice mail box, an auto attendant, or to what is known as a hunt group which is a logical collection of employees with the responsibility to acknowledge to incoming calls on a first come first aid basis.
d) Conference Calls. The Conference Call feature enables the simultaneous communication of a group of individuals at different locations. This one system feature incorporates a number of separate features such as the number of users that can participate in the call as well as the particular function of the conference call itself.
e) Speed Dial. This function enables the user to select a code of one number or a combination of numbers on their phone set as a representation of a phone number that they frequently dial. They can then dial their business partner using this code rather than being required to enter the entire 10 digit phone number.
f) Redial. The Redial function is used to dial the last phone number entered by the user on the system.
g.) Auto Attendant. The auto attendant plays a recorded message to a caller and provides them particular service options in the event an employee is unavailable to accept a call personally. The ability to route the call to a specific employee or a specific mail box are examples of such options.
h) Paging. The paging feature is former to broadcast a message using the speaker of another employees hand position.
i) Location features. This feature enables seamless connections between the systems of local employees and those in another dwelling on either a temporary or permanent basis.
J) Computer Telephony Integration. The CTI feature allows the interaction of software applications and your phone system. This feature is commonly used in customer service operations as well as to provide support to day to day functions such as locating and dialing the number of a business partner.
K) Find Me/Follow Me. This feature enables the re-routing of incoming calls to a different phone number specified by the user.
4) Identify the trade offs in product features and services that you will be willing to make. Although, core functionality will be offered of each PBX system, these features will vary in some ways from vendor to vendor. In addition, each vendor will offer a unique set of products and services in a number of different packages.
5) Review vendor references. Contact your peers in order to obtain feedback regarding their experience with a particular vendor and product. In addition, data presented in trade publications and by industry analysts will identify key features of products and the effectiveness of the product in meeting particular business needs.
6) Calculate the mark of the proposed phone system. The actual cost of your system will depend on the features you catch, the vendor who provides the service, your business location, and a number of other factors. Other factors are the number of system users and the size of the system purchased with impact your cost. Your equipment can be purchased separately or incorporated into the monthly cost of operating your system. However, whatever the system configuration you recall, be sure to identify what specific elements are included in any phone system package and what elements are considered to be in addition to the package, i.e., add-ons. Beget the calculations necessary to determine your total cost of ownership which includes maintenance fees. Also consider implementation costs, consulting fees, training costs, maintenance requirements, any yearly increases in costs, payment schedules, and any additional fees.
6) Understand the ability of the vendors to provide any needed services. The availability of services is crucial to the successful implementation of the PBX system. In addition, the maturity of the services provided by the vendor as well as the manner in which they provide customer service should be determined. The firm’s ability to address software bugs, perform system upgrades, and operate a help desk are critical considerations for the selection process.
7) Vendor Selection. Identify a short list of vendors who offer products that best meet your business requirements. Services narrate the most uncertain element of the PBX selection process as well as the most expensive element of the process. Submit a request for a quotation to the vendors and compare their responses in terms of both product offering and costs. Both vendors with a spacious presence in the market and smaller companies should be considered in this process to ensure you identify the vendor that is best qualified to meet both your needs and the limitations of your budget. You should also think the cash position of the vendor, the track record of the firm’s management, the stability of the work force, the product’s release schedule history, the effectiveness of the company’s market spot.
Regardless of the information related to the individual systems that you disclose during the process, the key interrogate remains “How do I match the requirements of my business to one particular vendor’s PBX product and services? ” A thorough review of a product’s functionality, investment, interoperability, services will best ensure you remove the best product for your organization. In all cases, the product and vendor evaluation process will lead to a more objective evaluation process, specific selection criteria, stakeholder consensus, and a more efficient implementation of the selected product
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Filed under Small Business Phone Service by on Dec 1st, 2010.