VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, is a way of making telephone calls without a phone line. Also known as Internet Telephony, VoIP uses your existing internet connection to make calls to other VoIP users, as well as to landline or mobile phones.
There are many benefits for businesses who use VoIP for their telephone network, and it is becoming an increasingly popular way for companies to communicate, both internally and externally.
As long as you have a broadband connection, you have the option to save money and achieve greater adaptability in the way you work by using a VoIP service.
A Flexible System for Flexible Working
With traditional phone systems, a copper wire has to run through every telephone line, meaning that for a growing business, adding new phone lines to accommodate new staff can be an expensive and disruptive process. With VoIP, adding new users is easy, and no extra infrastructure is necessary.
If a business relocates to a new area and it uses a VoIP system to manage its calls, there is no need to change their phone number, avoiding the need to contact every former client and customer and update them, while worrying about out of date contact information on old marketing materials.
VoIP is also very valuable to people who work from multiple locations. They have one phone number which they can use and respond to wherever they are situated, rather than filling up their email autoresponder or office voicemail with a long list of different numbers for different circumstances.
It is this flexibility which makes VoIP so attractive to modern businesses. As practices like hotdesking, remote offices and home working are increasing in popularity, VoIP works perfectly to accommodate these needs. However it is not just the flexibility, it is also the cost efficiency of VoIP which is causing more and more companies to switch their phone systems entirely to VoIP setups.
Calls from one VoIP phone to another cost nothing, and calls to traditional landline or mobile phones cost significantly less than those made over telephone lines, even long-distance calls.
As well as staff being able to keep a consistent phone number no matter what their location is, businesses which:
- have offices in more than one site or location
- have staff who work from home, all or part of the time
- use hot desking
- have members of staff who travel
will find that because all of the business’s staff will be using the same VoIP system, any calls made between those numbers will be entirely free of charge. If somebody in Office A needs to call somebody in Office B several times a day, every day, and the two offices are in different parts of the country or even different parts of the world, the call charges would normally escalate quickly. Not so with VoIP – as long as both parties have a reliable broadband connection, all communications between them will cost nothing.
As well as cheaper calls, the installation and maintenance are also considerably less expensive than a traditional phone setup.
Different VoIP services offer different features and benefits, and these can include:
- voicemail which can be sent to the recipient’s email address as an attachment
- voice recognition software, which identifies the caller and translates their message into text, which is sent to the recipient via SMS, or text messaging
- the ability to send and receive faxes
- call forwarding and call transfer options
- audio conferencing and conference call facilities
WebPageOne Solutions will ask you what features you require, and find the best solution for you.
Tailor-Made Options to Suit Your Needs
There are a series of decisions to make when opting for a VoIP system, and our aim, at WebPageOne Solutions, is to assist you to choose the services and equipment which will suit you best, and to take the installation and setup out of your hands. Some of the options may seem complicated, but don’t worry – it’s our job to understand the implications of each possibility so that we can advise you and help you to get the best possible system set up.
We Cut Through the Jargon on Your Behalf
WebPageOne Solutions use our expertise in the hardware and software required to advise you about which systems will be best suited to your business. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand the terminology because we will install and set up the entire system for you and make recommendations based on your needs about whether to use:
a traditional landline phone with an analogue telephone adaptor, to convert the analogue signal to digital
- a specific VoIP phone designed for the purpose
- a ‘soft phone’ using computer equipment and sometimes an additional headset
- a SIP system
- a proprietary system like Skype
If you would like to know more about the VoIP options for your business, contact us now on 0845 293 9377 to discuss your business requirements.