If you already have Private Branch Exchange (PBX) system, it seems logical to simply upgrade your existing equipment to an IP PBX telephony solution. However logical this step may seem, it may not be the best decision for you and your business.
How do you decide between a hosted VoIP service and an on-premise IP PBX?
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Geographically dispersed offices and customer locations
A growing need to support mobile and remote end-users
A desire to exploit some of the advanced features offered by hosted VoIP
If you would like to understand whether a hosted VoIP service is a lower cost solution for you, please call us and we will help you with no obligation for you to buy. Before you call, please make sure that you have the following information
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The time period you wish to consider for the cost ownership analysis
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The number of office or shop locations
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The number of employees and telephones you require, including your anticipated growth over the time period
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Your monthly telecom expenses
Business performance improvement
Hosted services offer a number of significant advantages that are not rooted simply in cost. The most important benefits to consider are;
Improved service performance for your employees. Hosted VoIP service providers invest heavily in network connectivity, ensuring that all of your offices or shops benefit from robust and well managed connections. VoIP is not a simple service to implement and manage. If call quality and high levels of service availability are important to your business, then a hosted service is more likely to meet your needs,
Increased productivity. Hosted services are generally easier for your employees to use, offer more features and management report facilities than on-premise systems,
Increased agility. Hosted VoIP services are simpler to move, change and scale up or down.
Other important factors to consider
A PBX requires a dedicated, configured and properly managed environment.
PBX software needs regular support and maintenance that extends to the desktop and telephony devices. Most IP PBX vendors release new software upgrades every six months and managing this could place an unwanted burden on your business.
A PBX will require you to purchase and maintain call logging equipment for you to be able to monitor your costs and performance.
A PBX will require you to buy and maintain call recording equipment.
A single PBX gives you no resilience.
Many PBX’s are proprietary which means that they only function with telephone handsets, headsets or soft clients from the same manufacturer.
Moves, Adds and Changes are faster, simpler and lower cost with a hosted service. An on-premise solution will mean that you must have an appropriately qualified system administrator. With a hosted service, employees can manage their own telephony needs through an intuitive on-line portal.
If your business is geographically dispersed, an on-premise solution will require you to implement dialling plans, inter-site trunking, call distribution for inbound calls etc. Hosted services are simpler to implement and require little or no management from you.
Hosted services scale by the telephone line from single line additions upwards. IP PBX systems require an initial investment to support a block of telephone lines and upgrades are also only available in blocks. Scaling an IP PBX up or down will make "lumpy" changes to your capacity.
Many PBXs do not fully support click-to-dial from outlook. This can be a particularly issue because some PBX’s partially integrate with outlook. You need to understand how you want outlook to function in your new IP environment to be able to make an informed decision. Hosted service providers tend to have better outlook integration.
Hosted services are delivered using world-class equipment on secure networks with built in resilience and business continuity. Replicating an IP PBX environment of a similar integrity will be costly and highly complex.
