Back in the days before digital communications were invented, staying connected with someone was cumbersome. You needed a dedicated landline connection to send and receive calls. Landlines use hard phone copper lines to transmit calls from one phone to another. It requires a significant amount of bandwidth and only supports limited types of calls. The hardware also must run a type of communication connection, which was expensive. If landlines are the interstate system, VoIP is like airspace for helicopters, with complete flexibility to go where necessary and without any physical boundaries.
Most Americans are cutting the cord on landlines and now switching to digitized communication. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems function like a conventional landline phone that relies on data connectivity to transmit communications through the power of the Internet. It can deliver voice services and provide a variety of powerful business communication services. You might find that investing in a business VoIP communication systems reinvigorates your business practices and introduce new opportunities for collaboration and innovation.
The VoIP industry is expected to increase its market size to at least $55 billion by 2025, making the demand for adopting this solution overwhelming. Look at these VoIP advantages that can benefit your business.
Transitioning to VoIP provides benefits far beyond the cost savings. While companies that have a lot of global calling can achieve substantial savings, there are important productivity benefits as well. Below are a few VoIP advantages:
VoIP can quickly scale to your needs. Businesses seeing growth can rely on VoIP to adjust as it is easy to configure. As new opportunities come, you can customize your plan without the downtime and hassle of setting up a whole new system. Whether you’re simply launching a new campaign or growing your business, you can trust VoIP on taking care of your changing business communication needs.
Significant investments in hardware or devices are typically unnecessary when implementing VoIP. You only need an Internet connection to carry both voice and data, which consolidates your phone and Internet bills into one—eliminating the need for a dedicated phone line. The service provider also handles maintenance, which frees your IT department to work on more strategic plans and spend less time troubleshooting. Also, finance departments tend to be fans of the subscription pay model that comes with VoIP, because it can be categorized as operating expenses, rather than having a single, large capital investment.
More employees expect organizations to support bring–your–own–device (BYOD) programs. VoIP is an amazing tool for promoting mobility. For example, users can send and receive calls from any location using their own device—making distance and location as not a hindrance and allowing telecommuting easy for the workforce.
The growing adoption of corporate Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs and the increasing affordability of smartphones and mobile computing devices are behind the booming mobile workforce. American market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts the mobile worker population in the U.S. to grow from 96.2 million in 2015 to 105.4 million in 2020, or almost three-quarters of the total U.S. workforce.
Workers are now able to download work documents from any company-approved device wherever they are and whenever they need to. They can, thus, do their jobs as efficiently as when they are in their offices. This privilege allows them to be more productive while making them more empowered and happier employees.
Unified communications integrate phoning, messaging, conferencing, and video. This set up allows devices to connect over the Internet without any wirings between them. It enables the features of a traditional PBX experience voice quality better than a traditional phone connection. Removing the complexity out of a PBX makes things easier. It offers a simplified maintenance and support through a single vendor.
VoIP is capable of supporting legacy systems while carrying voice, data, and video traffic over one physical network across multiple locations. For unified communications (UC) managers, it means more streamlined communications management, reduced personnel cost, and minimized telephone subscription and long distance call fees.
Service providers also offer bundled add-on services that are comparatively cheaper than when purchased individually from different vendors. These include video and audio conferencing, voicemail to email transcription, integrated messaging, interactive voice recognition, and auto attendant.
A more unified but simplified communications system that enhances productivity
Legacy phone systems can only offer so much, but VoIP technology provides many more opportunities because of its capability of integrating with third-party protocols and applications. Users can hold video conferences, share and exchange images and documents, and work collaboratively from disparate locations. These features help save travel costs and time inherent in the conduct of physical meetings at external venues.
Everything connected to the Internet has become smart — smart watches, smart homes, smart refrigerators, driverless cars, self-lacing shoes — so why can’t messaging be smart? Office managers need only to select a list of contacts that need the information and push a button to relay information to all concerned parties simultaneously through email, voicemail, text messaging, or phone call. With a streamlined and more efficient internal communications system, the office can be a happier place in which to work.
Satisfied customers become loyal customers from whom companies can expect repeat business. VoIP offers an efficient call management feature to ensure that every customer call is answered. Call routing speeds up customer response time while findme/followme routing directs calls to their intended recipients. Call screening allows prioritization of calls while instant conferencing promotes a better customer experience.
There are a wide variety of features that make VoIP systems attractive to enterprises. A few features typically included in a VoIP system are:
Ready to learn more about if a business VoIP system is right for your business? Visit our ‘Business Voice Services’ center.
