One of your most critical business assets, and most often overlooked, is your business phone system. Most of us take it for granted. However, it’s the one asset shared by every one of your customers, prospects, vendors and employees. Making certain your phone system properly addresses all of your organization’s internal and external needs is simply essential.
Buying a new phone system is a major decision. The following guidelines can help you sort through the hundreds of options to select a reliable, easy-to-use phone system that meets your needs today and is expandable for the future:
Features versus Accessibility and Usability: Finding the right feature to match your business operation is only part of the process. Making sure the features are easy to use and will work in your business environment is critical. If the feature is easy to use, then it will be utilized.
Manufacturer Warranty or Distributor/Dealer Warranty: Know whether the warranty is direct from the manufacturer, the distributor/dealer, or both. While manufacturer warranties tend to only cover equipment, distributor/dealer warranties tend to cover labor and will vary a great deal.
Product Reliability: Consider manufacturers that operate their facilities under the standards of ISO 9001, 9002 and 14001 and have out-of-box failure rates (the percentage of how many system components fail right out of the box) of 0.0007 percent or less. Another metric for comparison is the Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) rate. This measures the amount of time between phone system failures. Most manufacturers will provide supporting documentation upon request.
System Upgrades and Expandability: Since every business has unique requirements, it’s important to know how each phone system upgrades to include future technologies you may need. It’s equally important to know how a system can grow with your business, utilizing most, if not all of your initial investment.
While the challenge of selecting a new phone system may initially appear daunting, it is quite manageable, if using the above guidelines.
For additional information on conducting a business phone assessment or any of the products and services provided by AVID VoIP Networks, please visit www.avidvoipnetworks.com or call Dwight Wolfe at 661-702-1789, ext. 201.