How To Choose A New Phone System
Lines & Minutes Offers
We've put out new offers with fantastic savings with 1 and 3 year contracts, and a great SIP offer with 5000 bundled minutes per month!
How To Choose a New Phone System
A new phone system is both a substantial and a long-term investment, and with the variety of types of system on offer in today's rapidly changing technology landscape it is helpful to take a step back and examine some of the underlying reasons to choose one type of system over another.
Many of the people who browse our website are first time buyers with little specialised knowledge of the telecoms industry but who just want their situation solved. Often there is a phone system requirement because of a new business being set up, a new location being moved into, company expansion or the old system giving excessive problems. If any of these describe your situation, this section of our website should help you. We would recommend that you read through the pages in this help section in order to have a good understanding of which questions to ask, why people recommend the systems they do and what the eventual total charges may be.
Types of phone system
In a nutshell, there are essentially four different types of system that phone system resellers recommend to business customers:
- An analog phone system;
- A digital phone system;
- An IP phone system and;
- A cloud phone system (also known as a hosted phone system)
Each of these phone systems offers something slightly different to the other, with both benefits and downsides. But more importantly, each differs in the basic infrastructure requirements needed for it to be able to work in your office - and this is a not so obvious consideration that you should take into account when choosing your new phone system.
In other words, it is all very well to become enthusiastic regarding new phone system functionality, but what is rarely explained thoroughly is that you as a customer may actually need to spend a few thousand pound rewiring your entire office in order to make this very latest phone system functionality possible.
Types of lines
Just as there are variations in types of phone systems, there are also variations in the phone lines that you can use to connect your phone system to the outside world.Features
New phone systems are largely sold on features. When purchasing a new phone system, it is worth taking stock of your business and asking yourself what it will look like in 5 years time. Some of the following points may help you make a checklist:
- Make a headcount of inside, mobile and remote users and project it 5 years into the future. Add analog devices such as fax machines and door entry mechanisms. This is your starting point.
- Are you likely to seasonally fluctuate in office/company size? If so, how scalable is the system?
- Do you need individual extensions with voicemail for every employee?
- Do you need a mobile client to incorporate smartphones, iphones and blackberries into the company phone system?
- Do you need calls routed to people in remote locations?
- Do you use conferencing in your business?
- Do you need an auto attendant to route calls to the right person or department in your company? (press 1 for sales etc)
- Do you want a hunt group mechanism whereby calls automatically forward to another employee if they are not answered?
- Further phone systems features for your checklist. Choose the features you want and add them to your checklist, dividing them into "must have" and "nice to have"
By writing down the key points that your new telephone system must have and using these as starting list you'll save yourself time in deciding what the new system should be.
Next
Next Steps:
Telefonix |
| For the small business, value solutions for multitasking employees. |
 |
| For the medium sized company, solutions to help you grow |
 |
| For the enterprise, best of breed solutions to forge ahead of the competition. |
 |
Address
Telefonix Voice & Data,
Unit 1 Bourne Mill Business Park
Guildford Road, Farnham
Surrey, GU99PS, England
Tel: +44 01252 333 888
Company Reg: 04351046