The Internet is doing amazing things for businesses of all shapes and sizes, from increasing their overall audience to streamlining communications. One such way the Internet is assisting these businesses is by offering them a new business phone solution, called a VOIP system. This system can majorly help cut costs and increase flexibility among workers, which makes it an increasingly preferred system among new businesses. If you’ve just started up your company and can’t afford the often high phone bills that come from phone companies, checking out this new business phone solution might be worth your while. Even if you’re worried about moving everything to the cloud, more and more people are doing so and certainly has positive benefits. Over 80% of companies said they saved money when they moved to the cloud and it’s estimated that by 2017, over 1.5 billion people will be using personal cloud storage! Clearly, this new cloud technology is garnering trust and support among others, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t take advantage of it too!
What is VOIP and How Does it Work?
VOIP stands for voice over internet protocol, which essentially makes you conduct your phone services via the Internet. (Think like Skype, except you can use your phone or a landline to call instead of your computer.) This is, of course, dependent on how good your Internet connection is — if it’s good enough, you can get your phone services through your connection instead of from the phone company. The analog phone signals are transformed into digital signals that can be transferred over the Internet, which can be done either with an IP Phone or through another box, known as an ATA. Make sure you’re getting a VOIP system that allows you to do basic functions like call 911, 411, and allows you to access a directory listing.
Why Should I Use VOIP?
If you’d been looking for small and medium sized business phone solutions, it might be time to ditch your traditional based phone systems in favor of VOIP. The primary reason that small businesses especially are choosing VOIP as a new business phone solution is because VOIP can slash startup costs for a new business by as much as 90%! Existing small businesses that make the switch to VOIP can lower the costs of their local costs by as much as 40%.
Additionally, VOIP can help make your processes more efficient — did you know that half of a conversation of a phone is silence? When you use VOIP, that silence is filled with data so the bandwidth in data communication channels is put to some use, instead of just going to waste. Furthermore, organizations who used unified communications, such as VOIP, saved a little over a half hour every day per each employee, since they could reach each other on the first try.
How Big Are VOIP Business Systems?
This new business phone solution is growing in popularity, especially as kinks and bugs are worked out of the system. Businesses of all sizes see it as a cost-saving and time-efficient method of conducting their phone services. Although it can primarily benefit small to medium businesses with the most direct impact, large businesses and corporations are also reaping the benefit, especially if their employees travel frequently. IBISWorld shows that their contribution to the economy is supposed to go up annually until about 2017. Between residential and business sales, VOIP industries were supposed to be with almost $75 billion by the end of 2015, said Infonetics Research in a recent study. Additionally, the global market for cloud equipment is predicted to hit almost $80 billion by 2018 — it’s a growing market and one in which we can expect to see many advances in the next few areas.
If you’ve been unhappy with your growing phone bills and tired of being tethered to your phone systems, consider giving VOIP a chance. Your IT department will be able to assist you in making the switch and choosing the best VOIP company for your business. Save time and money with VOIP!
