subject: Say Goodbye To Old Phones And Hello To New Voice Services [print this page] There are many new terms being bandied about that have to do with the latest phone technology, or telephony. There are so many that sometimes it seems there are more terms than products, services and online customer service representatives. There are hosted services and networked services, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and plain old IP telephony, plus plenty of terms, plans and service packages with facts, figures and claims about scalability, reliability, service quality, security, privacy and storage. It is a lot to digest.
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) may have taken the lead in implementing the new voice services, but large enterprises are finding rationales and reasons to follow the SMBs down this digital pathway. Because defining and explaining the advantage of the new voice services initially took a back seat to the hype-and-buzz machine, companies supplying these services have made the value proposition hard to grasp. There are a number of major issues you need to consider before you start deciding what new digital voice services are best for your firm.
In-house IT expertise
When you start using VoIP or IP phone technology, for all or part of your voice services solution, you are heading down the path of that oft-misused term, convergence. If you do not have top IT people with state-of-the-art expertise, you will need to add personnel or go for a hosted solution. It will take a leading-edge business communications firm to meet you wherever your firm happens to be on that convergence path, and offer services and support to get the job done the way you want it.
If you firm's IT is able to manage VoIP and other new voice services, you still need to apportion your in-house expertise to handle all your other work. You may discover that the economic argument for handling new voice services wholly in-house, or even partly, is no longer a slam dunk (if it ever was). Whether it is matter of budgets or of higher strategic priorities for your IT team, if you have one, the move to a new service model may include some hosted features, leaving your IT resources focused more important functions.
What is your motivation?
Many SMBs were motivated to look into new telephony services by the wide-ranging need to reduce costs across the board. If the economic argument is a winner, that may be all it takes to tip the decision in favor of starting down that road to convergence. Businesses with long-term phone company accounts are keenly aware of the high costs as opposed to IP-based voice services, so this is a key consideration or any size or type of firm. Alternatively, some businesses would reap limited economic benefit with new services, hosted or otherwise, but may have a clear strategic justification for outsourcing operations that do not yield a competitive advantage. This brings the consideration out of the accounting department, so to speak, and looks at the big picture, the firm's mission and position.
New voice services, however deployed, will likely be the way many companies do get on the convergence path for the first time. Once on, only going out of business will take them off the path. When they first implement their new voice services, it will become clear that communication is not solely, or even mainly, about voice. So, in addition to having hosted solutions or customized la carte ones, these businesses will be rewarded with richer telephony experiences. These are likely to spur even more wide-ranging integrated communications, and bring voice, other audio, video and data together in ways that were impossible just a decade ago.
Bottom line
Do you trust the cloud? The extent to which you do is good indicator of how quickly your firm will buy into some parts of the new voice services model, which can include a greater or lesser degree of hosting in the cloud. There are always considerations of trust for outsourcing any job or service, but clearly the cloud model can offer both complementary services as well as an alternative to hosted services. Every company's situation is unique, so you need to review the foregoing considerations, add more of your own and decide what is right in your particular situation.
It may be that you want to dip your toe in the water before diving all the way in. Be assured that there are plenty of business communications firms with the expertise to chart you a course through the always-choppy waters of technological change. Finding a great vendor you can trust, of course, is of primary importance.
