Choosing A Business Telephone System?

When you’re just starting up in business, it’s easy to underestimate the type of business telephone systems that you should be looking at getting installed, but why is going for one of the smaller business telephone systems a potential false economy?

In the beginning, most companies start out with just enough employees to see them through the initial phases of getting the business up and running. They tend to gear their needs – in terms of equipment – to the number of staff they have. While this sort of thinking is sensible for most of the supplies and equipment that they’re going to need, it can be limiting when it comes to a telephone system.

There are a number of business telephone systems, such as the ATS Telecoms – https://www.atstelecoms.com.au/solutions/ that will give you a certain amount of flexibility when it comes to expansion, but the additional number of extra lines that you can add to them still may not be as many as you’re going to need in the long run i.e. starting off with a 2 line 4 extension system will be enough if you have up to four people on your staff, but if you start to employ more people, then you’re going to need to upgrade the system.

If you think that you’re going to need to install a system that has a greater potential to cope with the growth of your company, and you don’t see your business ever getting to the stage where you’re going to need one of the large switchboards that a fortune 500 company might need, then your best option is going to be a small business telephone system.

The phone system will allow you to use your telephones to communicate with other members of staff – a standard requirement if your business is spread over more than one office – and you’ll be able to add in other extensions as and when you need them. Traditionally you’ve been able to add modems and fax machines to business phone systems, too; with the increase in the numbers of companies that are using wireless broadband, though, you’ll be able to add an internet connection, and that may give you the option to add even more telephone lines in the future.

Of course, larger business telephone systems will be able to take advantage of the growth in areas of technology that some of the smaller systems may not be able to cope with i.e. if you make a lot of expensive overseas telephone calls in the day-to-day running of your business, then you’re going to be interested in finding a way of cutting back on this expense, without reducing the number of calls being made; that’s where using a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) system is going to be ideal for you.

VoIP takes advantage of the much lower costs that you’ll be paying for your internet usage, by sending the analog telephone signal out over the internet to the person that you’re calling. As the technology improves, so does the quality of the calls, making this an attractive feature to have as part of your business telephone systems.

So, if you’re just starting your new business, and haven’t yet looked at a phone system, stop and give it some consideration. What do you have in your business plan about the projected turnover of your company? Will you have to increase the number of staff that you have, to cope with that projection? If you will, is the telephone system that you’re looking at going to allow for it; or will you have to change again further down the line?

There are a lot of things to think about when considering business telephone systems, more than some people might imagine.