How does VoIP work?
VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, is an established technology that allows telephony services to be delivered over the Internet rather than traditional telephone lines. When you make a VoIP call, your speech is condensed into packets of sound, sent over a broadband connection and restored at the far end. This means that the quality of a VoIP call depends on;
How good your broadband connection is,
How good your telephony equipment is at condensing and restoring speech,
How good your telephony provider is at managing your connections and equipment.
What is the quality of calls like?
VoIP call quality has increased as the technology has matured. Provided that your service is installed, configured and managed properly then a VoIP call is as good as traditional landline voice quality. A high integrity broadband connection assures call quality. Inclarity’s service delivers voice calls over dedicated broadband lines.
What are the benefits of using VoIP as my business telephony solution?
Using VoIP will reduce your internal call costs, typically between 15% and 30% although some businesses have achieved reductions in excess of 80%
VoIP brings flexibility and scalability to your business. You can have a single contact number that can be intelligently routed to suit your business. VoIP provides a rich set of features that will help you to deliver a more responsive and personalised service to your customers, as well as making sure that calls are not missed
Hosted VoIP services offer a number of significant advantages that are not rooted simply in cost. The most important benefits are;
Improved service performance for your employees. Hosted service providers invest heavily in network connectivity, ensuring that all of your offices or shops benefit from robust and well managed connections. VoIP is 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 services are simpler to move, change and scale up or down
Are there any risks in choosing VoIP for my business telephony solution?
Yes, there are risks. However, they can all be overcome by understanding what your business requires of its telephony and then planning your VoIP implementation properly. Some of the things you should consider are;
Large numbers of calls will put pressure on your network connections. You should ensure that you purchase a service with the right amount of capacity, speed and resilience to meet your business needs. If you don’t, call quality will suffer and you may miss calls too.
What happens to 999 emergency calls? Traditional telephony equipment can trace the caller’s location when a 999 call is placed. Some VoIP service providers are unable to trace the location of a 999 caller. inclarity can trace 999 calls, ensuring that they are handled and dispatched properly.
Should I upgrade my existing PBX or move to a hosted service?
Hosted services can be lower cost, providing a better return on investment
A hosted service is often a lower cost solution than an on-premise IP PBX. In general terms, hosted services deliver a better TCO for a business with;
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 VoIP
Hosted services are simpler to implement, manage and scale
Hosted services offer a number of advantages that are not rooted simply in cost. The most important benefits to consider are;
Improved service performance for your employees. Hosted service providers invest heavily in network connectivity, ensuring that all of your offices or shops benefit from robust and well managed connections. VoIP is 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 services are simpler to move, change and scale up or down
Other 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 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
