Do you really need to take time away from creating a business plan, a marketing plan, a personnel hiring strategy, and other really fun stuff in order to evaluate your options for the pick of a phone system for your small business? The simple answer to this examine is yes if your business will need an efficient and effective way to begin 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 support your efforts to ensure the effective communication by your business with the world at large.
1) Identify both your current 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 take care to end 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 recent technological advances that will wait on 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 actual 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. Dispute 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 residence an incoming call on beget 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 respond to incoming calls on a first come first serve 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 used to broadcast a message using the speaker of another employees hand set.
i) Location features. This feature enables seamless connections between the systems of local employees and those in another location 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 conventional in customer service operations as well as to provide attend 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 price of the proposed phone system. The actual cost of your system will depend on the features you select, 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 select, 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. Acquire 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 portray the most risky element of the PBX selection process as well as the most expensive element of the process. Submit a quiz for a quotation to the vendors and compare their responses in terms of both product offering and costs. Both vendors with a large presence in the market and smaller companies should be considered in this process to ensure you identify the vendor that is best kindly to meet both your needs and the limitations of your budget. You should also consider 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 position.
Regardless of the information related to the individual systems that you uncover during the process, the key expect 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 select the best product for your organization. In all cases, the product and vendor evaluation process will lead to a more honest evaluation process, specific selection criteria, stakeholder consensus, and a more efficient implementation of the selected product
Related Posts
Filed under Small Business Pbx Systems by on Jan 19th, 2011. Comment. 
Business phone systems are vital to the smooth operation of your business, especially if you’re running a small venture. A phone system is one of the most important communication tools in a company, so the quality of the setup and equipment is very essential.
When you recall a telephone system for your business, it’s distinguished to take budget into consideration as well as your specific needs. The equipment you engage should handle the requirements of your business now and into the future.
The type of business phone system you implement will depend on the size of your company and your plans for future expansion. Most basic phone systems come with options such as voicemail, a receptionist station, call transfer capabilities, and room for expansion. A KSU telephone system is the most common type in this category – it’s a dinky box mounted on a wall that requires software to run. Many name brands sell this type of phone system, so it’s not difficult to find a vendor.
PBX telephone systems are another option. KSU systems are perfectly acceptable for about 10-40 users, but if you have a larger organization PBX is the next step up. PBX stands for private branch exchange system, which is essentially a small private switchboard just for your company. This type of phone system is needed for larger businesses because it’s the only telephone system that can handle a lot of activity.
Whether you go with a hosted PBX or a virtual PBX, this is the only setup that can handle a large amount of incoming calls, route connections, and process everything quickly and precisely. A hosted PBX or virtual PBX comes with a lot of different features as well, such as automated directories of employee extensions, call parking, conference calling capabilities, and customizable voicemail services.
A whole host of brand name vendors sell PBX systems, so it’s easy to find something that will suit your business perfectly.
Luckily, setting up a business phone system doesn’t have to be expensive. These days the Internet makes it possible to purchase low-cost systems from vendors over the web. Obvious services even allow you to set up a virtual phone system through the Internet that provides all the features you would normally get with hardware.
A business system also needs high-quality phones to work properly, whether you’re setting up a classic phone system or are venturing to try VOIP services that promise to sever costs significantly. Ayala phones offer excellent features for a small or large office environment. Ayala phones provide everything you could ever need in a business telephone without a titanic price tag.
In the ruin, the specific phone system you settle to place for your business will depend on more than one factor. What suits your needs may not be right for another company. Do some research ahead of time to figure out what kind of system will fulfill the requirements of your business and work best with the number of employees you currently have at the office.
Related Posts
Filed under Small Business Pbx Systems by on Dec 1st, 2010. Comment.
Hurricane Katrina taught us a lesson. Disaster recovery is important! Hopefully we will never again have to experience the devastation that this natural event wreaked upon us. However, that event got many businesses thinking – “How safe is my data? ” This article provides some basic steps that will aid you recover your business’s data in case of a disaster.
How much data are you willing to lose? It may sound like a uninteresting inquire but it will help you determine your disaster recovery strategy. For example, many financial institutions employ a technique called data mirroring or data shadowing. Every time a transaction is written, that same transaction is written to another disk at another situation. For example, if your business is in Recent York City, a copy of your data is written or mirrored to a residence in Philadelphia or wherever your backup site is located. If your business suffers physical damage, you have up-to-date data at another location. In theory, only the transaction being processed at the time of the misfortune is lost.
This process is costly; you need to either purchase or rent extra computer equipment. You also need to enter into a contract with a company that provides data storage. Obviously this may not be cost-effective for your company. So, how much data are you willing to lose?
How often does your business backup its data? Every hour? Twice a day? Once a day? Once a week? Your backup schedule answers the previously asked question. If you backup twice a day you are willing to lose half a day’s worth of data. If you only backup weekly, you are willing to lose a week’s worth of data.
Backing up is extremely important. However, if your office is damaged, what about your backup media?
Store your data at an off-site facility. There are many companies that provide archiving and storage services.
Be smart. Choose a facility at least 50 miles or so from your office. If there is a flood in your community, you don’t want your� storage facility in the same town or city.
A main concern is resolved; you have your data. However, depending on the disaster, your office may be gone. Data is no good unless you have the technology available to keep that data to work.
How long can you afford to be out of business? One day? One week? One month? Not at all? The reply to this expect determines the type of off-site facility, if any, that you have.
There are three types of off-site facilities. They are: hot, warm, and cold. Many financial institutions, health care companies, and other critical companies use a hot site.
A hot site is a complete off-site replica of your data center. It includes all of the computer equipment, networking equipment, and any other technologies that are part of your data center. You are quite close to being up and running. This site is also the home of your off-site data storage. The data is ready to go. In some scenarios, there are desks, phones, and other office equipment ready to exhaust.
A hot site is expensive. In addition to the cost of renting or purchasing the technology, you are also incurring a monthly rent. This type of site is like insurance; you pay monthly and hope that you never have to use it.
A warm site has the technology but is not as up-to-date or ready to use. You may have to supply some additional equipment to originate this a replica of your office. You may also have to install programs and data because your off-site storage may not be share of this site. This type of site is less expensive, but it requires more time and work to have it run your business.
A cold site is a bare bones facility. You will need to bring in equipment, restore your data, and so on. It is the least expensive of the three solutions, but it incurs the more down time.
Certainly there are other solutions. If you are a small business, you may be able to quickly purchase some computers, restore your data and temporarily rent space until you can rebuild or relocate. The key is to have a plan. Don’t wait until the disaster strikes!
A good plan is documented. This fact is often overlooked. Don’t let your employees convince you that the information is in their head; they will know what to do. They may not be working for you anymore, or God forbid, depending on the type of disaster, they, the company, and you may not be alive.
Your plan includes all the instructions necessary to rebuild your business. It includes: how to hook up your equipment, instructions for installing software and restoring data, how to rebuild your email system, how to rebuild your phone PBX system, and so on. It includes contact information, who declares a disaster, and it may even include phone scripts that employees use to reassure your clients that your business is mild feasible.
Include walk-throughs to ensure that your instructions are correct. Ensure that people read the document, or at least the sections that pertain to their responsibilities.
A disaster recovery plan is the best written-document that you pray will never have to be used. Be prepared. You never know when a disaster may occur but you can know what to do if one does.
Related Posts
Filed under Small Business Pbx Systems by on Sep 22nd, 2010. Comment.
So your organization is finally planning on upgrading the old PBX, you’ve got a big project on your hands, and you are looking for the first things that you need to do to plan this beast out. Well have no fear because I have been on the planning, fabricate, deployment and support side of the voice over IP business for 10 years and will give you a big represent 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 maintain 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 popular 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 sigh over IP systems.
-There are a lot of unusual features available that you need.
There are, however, other benefits to upgrading the existing phone system that you may not have thought of and will arrive out during the process:
-Your old data network gets an upgrade as fragment of the cost of the new 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 passe PBX system or a hosted voice over IP system are not discussed because they are a minor fragment of the overall market at this point.
Planning the VoIP Upgrade
So, where do you start? Well, the first step is assessing your current 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 help 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 form of negate T-1′s and analog ports
-Number and type of data T1′s at every site. (A T1 can be used for tell, Internet, WAN, or a combination).
-Current wide area network per region bandwidth and utilization.
-Current local dwelling 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 gain funding support for this you have to get a handle on what your new monthly costs are. Unique 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 approach.
-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 new monthly costs are lower than your current monthly costs, after accounting for new equipment installation services and everything else to put the new 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 new system. You may fetch out during the course of this planning that it will be significant to get a new Internet phone and wide area network connections in order to realize the desired return on investment so make sure you preserve 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 design installation and support of the new system. To find the best note and the best service on the new system you should go about this in a very specific way. Customers have found in many cases that it’s best to secure a phone system from a manufacturer who has good local resellers that will do a good 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 gargantuan enough to handle your business but won’t be overwhelmed by it and is miniature enough that your business is important to them and they’ll bend over backwards to catch 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 procure some options.
The major phone system vendors are the best source to find out the local resellers. The major vendors of declare 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 get 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 great job for your voice over IP upgrade. Be aware though as soon as you start this process of contacting vendors you are going to start getting phone calls because people know that you’re enthusiastic. Now, that may be a way that you can pick up out who’s the most fervent to obtain your business, but it also might unprejudiced give you objective 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 way, you should start this process at least six months before you want to have a recent phone system up and running. It is going to you 2 to 3 months to select a vendor, another month to figure out pricing and financing, and from when you say go it will take 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 seek information from 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 glean 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 examine a demo of their system. I recommend that you glance the demo of their system, don’t buy into any of their must have exclusive 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 wait on was like after the sale.
During this part of the engagement is when you have the most leverage and you can come by the most things for free. By all means take the time to pick up some good 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 region, or if they are local and are going to be available for succor after the installation. Don’t be jumpy to ask this question 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 employ this to settle 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 voice over IP system you should expect that you’re going to be able to run the system over a new data network and not on a separate network that you put in parallel to the existing one. This means that the company is putting in your voice over IP phone system should have excellent 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 real 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 way to get better pricing out of the vendor. Sometimes there is an end of fiscal quarter or year coming up and it’s possible to get 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 perform 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 small 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 sure that you parted on good terms.
Finally, as you start the installation with your vendor of choice, make sure you work closely with her project management team and get them all the information that you’re looking for as quickly as possible. This is going to make 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 idea 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 situation, please ask them at Geeknick.
Related Posts
Filed under Small Business Pbx Systems by on Aug 3rd, 2010. Comment.
With a little forethought and a little time investment (hours not days), you can virtually eliminate the costly and confusing telephone system you have been struggling with or have been putting off purchasing due to SMB budget constraints.
If you’re paying Ma-Bell for a traditional phone line, or have your own confusing pbx switch on situation, you’re not making the most of current phone technology. In fact, you may be wasting precious time and money for a system that does not meet your needs and actually takes away revenue.
Maybe you are paying a full-time employee to do nothing but manage the “phone system”, or worse, heaping the responsibility on a part-time additional duty basis to an employee who could otherwise focus on THEIR job.
You may have already joined the quarter million other home subscribers of the Magic jack community. Now it’s time to see how this can be applied to your small or medium business.
There are links to reviews of the magic jack included with this article, but in summary:
FEATURES:
- It’s cheap, costs include $40 for the device and 1st year of phone service, $19.95/yr after that
- Being a USB storage method(like a thumb drive), it carries it’s acquire software and installs when inserted in the USB slot
- You can either make calls using a headset/mic or a traditional telephone (cordless phones & fax machines)
- It comes with “voicemail” forwarded to any email account you wish
- you get email notifications when new VMs arrive
- Although it’s not a traditional phone ine with 911 they provide 911 where YOU control the address, so you can set the 911 for ANY spot in the US (got a sick mother? )
- Nationwide toll-free is included and international can be had for a price or…
- Send a Magic Jack to anyone you want to call and who you want to call YOU and it’s free WORLDWIDE!
- You can migrate your unique landline phone number, maybe your cell number not always, or get a new phone number*
- ALL of this depends on a broadband connection (I recommend Always on like Cable, NOT DSL), and a computer/laptop.
UNFEATURES
- Call quality (QoS) resembles a cell phone, in both sound quality and dropped calls.
- Customer service is basically their FAQs online and that’s about it.
- The map is bigger than other USB devices, but has a dongle to get it out of the procedure of your other USB plugs
- One yank on the phone cord and “POP”! out comes the MJ
- limited local phone numbers means long distance numbers in some locations
- Ordering the service online or over the phone or using the MJ program can be confusing
* The “local” phone numbers are not always a local call for your city, for instance in Montana the ONLY number they have are local to Helena, great if you live in the capital not so great for the rest of the state.
The savvy entrepreneur has already seen some openings with the above list for cutting costs. Let’s peruse at a few ways you can make the most of this original technology for your business.
We’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg, but here are some cost effective uses:
HARDWARE
- Connect your Home & Work offices
- Virtual Office employee(s) and VAs
- Key Customer and teleconference training
- Anyone who travels for your company
IMPLEMENTATION
- Fax
- Small pbx-like features
- Integration with other tech i.e. Virtual PBX systems
First, HARDWARE solutions.
By simply purchasing the Magic Jack device at $40 ea. you can save tons on the recurring phone bill.
1 – Connect home & work offices, occupy a MJ device for home and work, for anyone who commutes. After the initial $40 you salvage 1 year of uninterrupted calling from work to home etc. try out call forwarding thru a virtual pbx
2 – Virtual Office employees or VAs you contract with can now maintain voice contact with no cost to THEM if you simply buy them a MJ procedure, it’s up to you if you ask for it back at the end of the contract or give it to them for a job well done.
3 – Key customer care and Teleconferencing or training This encompasses many areas but essentially it’s a repeat of the above, for a nominal $40 charge you can ensure your key clients and business partners stay connected again at no fee for them. It’s so easy to use they really won’t have to wade through a tech manual to begin calling you. If you host training over the phone/online through .rdp connections etc. you can send one of the MJs to them ahead of training (perhaps with any manuals) and ask them to call on your $40 dime. Especially if you will have ongoing training with this client. Again, you can choose to fair give it to them as a gift. $40 isn’t much when you consider the price of other training materials you use.
4 – The Road Warriors friend Having spent half my life on the road, I can tell you if I were doing that kind of work now, I would seize the MJ without even thinking about it. Being able to call “Local” to my home or the US when overseas for a year for $20 you bet I’m on board. Just imagine, you accept to the hotel (with broadband access of course) late at night, and fair want to touch base with home or the office, now you plug in MJ into your laptop and before you can unwrap the baby soap bar, you’re ready to make or receive calls from home FOR FREE minus $20 initial fee 
If you are already paying for cell phones for the travelers maybe you can cut down on some of the primetime minutes by simply buying the MJ, or better yet, give the MJ to them for personal calls and encourage strict business ONLY calls on the cell phone wiht no excuses for wasted minutes chatting with family etc.
Now that’s only what you can do by being nice enough to rob MJ devices for everyone, now let’s explaore some of the cool things that can be set up on the USAGE/Implementation side of the house:
1 – FAX Although officially not supported yet, key word being “YET”, faxing can be done from anywhere again as a local call with no special setup, just plug in and send. Again, you might consider integrating with a virtual pbx system for a smoother operation especially if you wish to offer fax back capability.
2 – Private Branch Exchange (private telephone switchboard) although it’s far from a PBX or virtual PBX system, the magic jack will allow 3-way calling and take voicemails. Once you have the MJ phone number you can marry it with a virtual pbx and get full-featured employ of a pbx with the orders or important calls coming to your MJ phone.
If you have set up your business to be on autopilot, send a MJ to your order takers and Cust Support VAs and let the calls come in with no per minute charges coming back to you.
3 – Integrate The most effective use of technology means marry-ing or integrating several solutions to create a full-featured robust solution.
If you aren’t familiar with virtual-PBXs inspect into using one like onebox, for service starting around $10/mo., prices go up depending on usage, you get 1-800 access and the same basic features that a geeky full-time phone switch programmer at your company can create, with less cost and hassle.
- Have calls routed within the PBX to various voicemails, but more importantly following the Tim Ferris way of doing things, you can have them follow YOU or any of your employees and VAs, no matter what phone or time of day they will be at that phone number, giving the illusion of 24/7 customer support.
Routing can also include having the really important calls directed to the MJ device number/voice mail so you get ONLY the most pressing calls, again, from anywhere in the world (With broadband access).
Well, this is again just brushing the surface of what the world of VoIP and devices like the MagicJack can garner for the SMB world, for more info please visit http://squatchtech.ning.com and follow the articles relating to small business technology use.
Your uncle BobSquatch
Related Posts
Filed under Small Business Pbx Systems by on Aug 1st, 2010. Comment.