What are the Benefits of a Cloud Hosted VoIP Phone System?

What are the Benefits of a Cloud Hosted VoIP Phone System?

13th July 2018

So, you’re looking at a new phone system and you keep seeing ‘cloud hosted telephone’ ‘VoIP’ or ‘SIP’ systems everywhere, but what does it actually mean for you and your team?’  

All of the above systems are the same thing in essence; they use your internet connection to connect your calls, this can give you: 

  1. Line rental savings 
  2. Cheaper telephone calls 
  3. More flexibility  
  4. Business Continuity  
  5. Easy multi-site communications  
  6. Big system features for the Small business 
  7. Office Moves are really easy

 

Line Rental Savings 

This is where most businesses save the most money, the more lines you have, the more you will save, even more so if you have ISDN 2 or ISDN 30 lines. For a small system of 10-30 extensions you can make savings of £300+ per month. 

Exactly how much you can save will depend on the types of lines you have, how many and how old your system is. Typically, the older your contract, the more you may be paying.  

Cheaper Telephone calls  

As well as cheaper line rental these cloud systems typically come with either very cheap calls or generous bundles of inclusive minutes to be used, some might even be unlimited.  

A guide would be for calls outside an allowance to be 1p per minute for landline calls, and as low as 5p per minute for mobile calls.  

Flexibility  

The flexibility you get from a hosted system is unrivalled. Because the system is software based, and not hardware boxes that sat in your office like traditional systems they enabled you to scale up or down and turn features on and off as required – brilliant if you’re a seasonal business, or just like to keep your options open. 

Remote offices or home workers are able to work as part of the same system seamlessly and you are able to deploy new phones to users or sites quickly and easily. 

Most systems don’t require any capital expenditure at all, and all costs are a monthly operational expense. 

Business Continuity  

With the flexibility described above if the worst were to happen to your business and you lose access to a site then phones can simply be deployed to a new site in a very short timescale. While you are waiting for new phones to arrive you can use mobile apps, to get your extension working on, or have calls diverted to other mobiles or landline numbers. 

Having a cloud hosted system will make business continuity a breeze for your phone system. 

Multi- Site Communication 

If you have multiple sites, home workers or even people on the road, one system can operate over all of them seamlessly, with no additional costs and free calls between sites. 

Calls can also be routed to different sites if you’re busy, or unavailable. 

These sites don’t even have to be in the same country, most systems will allow you to have international numbers associated with them. Great for global operations where you may want to offer a local number to your clients. 

More Features  

Cloud hosted telephone systems typically offer features that were once just the reserve of bigger businesses, you can expect to find as standard on most systems: 

  1. Direct Numbers for each extension 
  2. Voicemail 
  3. Hunt Groups  
  4. Auto Attendants (Press 1 for X, 2 for Y) 
  5. Mobile twinning (your mobile phone can ring at the same time as your desk phone) 
  6. Music on Hold or your own Messages  
  7. 3 Way Calling
  8. Softphones - use your PC or mobile, instead of a physical handset
     

Office Moves 

We have been in our new offices in a multi tenanted building with 18 other businesses for nearly 2 years now, and there is not a single traditional phone system in sight from 2-3 extension systems to 30+ extensions they are scalable and suitable for almost any business. 

The reason I mention our new office and that there are no traditional systems is because almost all companies that moved here opted to have a new cloud system before they moved. This is because they quite literally pack up the phone from their old office, and plugged it in at the new one and they were up and running again, sounds too simple? It really is!  

Have any questions on a particular area of these benefits? Just let us know and we’ll answer your questions. 

Talk to one of our friendly experts. 

 

Keen to learn more? Explore our other resources on Cloud Hosted Telecoms below: 

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