Phone System Buyers Guide 4 Tips To Help You Find The Right Telephone System For Your Business

Narrowing Your Choices

The most important step in finding a phone system is eliminating the systems that you don’t want. You can do so by determining the system size and features that your business needs.

System Size

The term “Business” describes many different sizes from SOHO to Fortune 500 - and there is a phone system out there to fit the needs of any company. Thats why refining your needs in terms of size will qualify or eliminate more equipment than any other factor.

For the purpose of choosing a phone system the size of your business is measured in terms of extensions and phone lines.

• An extension is any device plugged into a system - desk phones, wall phones,
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  conferencing units, etc. Generally you need about one extension per employee.


• A line is the connection between your phone system and the outside world. Generally you want about one line for every two or three extensions.


• Phone system size is often described in the form LINESxEXTENSIONS. For instance a 6×16 describes a six line, sixteen extension telephone system.

System Features

“Features” describes the capabilities of a telephone system. Does it support Caller ID or VoIP? Can it pick up and route calls to the appropriate department. Does it have Voicemail. While many features are provided via add on equipment some systems may not have the capability to use this equipment. You

Features which commonly limit your choice of systems are:

• Caller ID


• VoIP


• Automated Attendant

Manufacturer Preference

If the phone system you are purchasing is intended to be an upgrade for an obsolete or outgrown system selecting equipment from the same manufacturer may provide significant cost savings. Heres why:

• Reuse of old equipment. Both Nortel and Avaya offer modern systems which are backwards compatible with legacy phones. Considering that individual phones make up the majority of the cost on most systems this reuse can translate into a large savings.


• Minimal learning curve. Employee training is expensive and time consuming.
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  Sticking to a brand that your workers know can often minimize the training time necessary - as many manufacturers make new product lines identical or similar in functionality to legacy lines.

Reliability

In recent years a number of software based systems have entered the PBX market. While these units are - in general - feature rich and low cost, choosing a software PBX often proves detrimental to system reliability. If phone service is optional then these hybrid solutions may well be worth exploring. On the other hand if phone service is necessary to take orders or make sales, then choosing a more traditional hardware PBX will often prove a better long term

Summing It All Up

Determining the system thats right for your business is about finding a good fit at a great price. Limiting your choices by defining the size, features, manufacturer, and type of system you need is a great start because it allows you to comparison shop from the handful of systems that fit your business and eliminates the thousands of other systems which do not meet your criteria.

Nalin Singapuri serves as Director of Internet Technology with Business Phones Direct a vendor of Small Business Phone Systems

Nalin enjoys creating customer friendly resources such as the Telewiki Resource Library

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