Even the most established industries can experience steep changes through disruptive technologies. The last ten years or so have been exceptionally fertile for such changes in once stale industries, including the taxi, retail, publishing, music and especially the publishing industries. Each of these and more have experienced dramatic changes as a result of emerging and disruptive technologies.
It may not come as too much of a surprise that the office phone has also undergone several changes while still retaining the basic functions of carrying audio from source to destination. But how that exchange takes place has seen some major changes recently. Following much of business technologies, phone have gone from analog to digital, from cable to cloud.
A case can be made to trust familiar technology, and there is financial wisdom in not moving from a recent investment made in to a new on-premise phone system. Nevertheless, in time, that system will fail. Here are 5 important reasons to move your business phone to the cloud.
#1. Minimal capital expenditures.
Typically, a traditional phone system comes with a significant upfront price tag. The line items on these capital expenditures include servers, phones, network upgrades, and implementation costs. Moving your phone system to the cloud isn’t as strenuous on your budget. As you most like already have business-class data internet service in place, most of the work is already done. Most cloud phone system installations only carry the capital expense of purchasing IP phones, if you choose not to lease them.
#2. Freedom of equipment choice.
Another drawback of on-premise phone systems is that they normally require you use certain vendors and their proprietary equipment. Conversely, cloud phone systems are standards-based, meaning that you are free to use equipment from a great variety of different vendors.
#3. Immediate access to newest innovations.
The update process for on-premise phone systems can be a hassle. Since the provider will have to enable the upgrade at each client location, that leaves you on a waiting list for any of the latest features you may be looking forward to. With a cloud solution, updates and features are available to all clients simultaneously. No wait.
#4. Eliminate burden of hardware refreshes.
Hardware refresh is something that cannot be escaped. Hardware ages, technology advances past its abilities, and it needs to be replaced. The beauty of cloud solutions is that the burden of hardware refreshes to maintain your voice infrastructure is solely the responsibility of the service provider. Software upgrades are also the responsibility of the provider, giving you the most recent technology available without having to make room on the budget for it.
#5. So many features available.
The limited feature set that come with traditional phone systems each require specific hardware components and system configurations, which will add to your cost. On the other hand, with a cloud solution, there is a wide range of business voice features you can access effortlessly. Leading providers will often offer unlimited features like voicemail, auto attendants, dial plans, conference bridges, and much more at no additional cost to your basic monthly price.
Working with a managed IT services provider will go a long way to helping you source the right cloud voice provider for your business. They will often have several vendors they work with and will help you select the one that works for you based on your needs and budget.
For some information on how moving your phone to the cloud can help improve your business, download your copy of “Raise Your Business With Cloud Phone” by Jive.
