28 Oct VOIP – The future with VOIP and how it fits into the modern world.
Offices are empty, staff are at home, the country and its businesses are on a knife-edge. Businesses have been forced to work differently to survive and thrive in the current economic climate forced on by COVID-19. Businesses on traditional phone systems are being left behind by others, paving the way with newer IP-based methods of communication that allows contact from anywhere.
VOIP is this solution and has been for some time to most of us without us even knowing! Facetime, Zoom and Skype put VOIP into action and show its functionality.
VOIP the business benefits
Cost, everybody in the business, or otherwise wants the best quality product or service for as cheap as possible. VOIP is cheaper due to traditional telephony using ‘circuit switching’, which requires a channel to be maintained for the duration of the call, VOIP, on the other hand, uses ‘packet switching’, where the data is routed through the internet in ‘packets’ whenever voice or data is picked up – the connection isn’t continuous, it stops and starts whenever someone speaks. Without the need for as much cabling infrastructure, there will be less system maintenance needed which means cheaper call charges. VOIP can connect through WIFI, mobile data, or an ethernet cable as it only requires an internet connection, avoiding the need for new phone lines needing to be installed in your office both saving your business money.
Mobility with VOIP
On traditional phone systems, a number is assigned a fixed location, each line that runs to a business is assigned a phone number. But in a VOIP system, this isn’t so! No dedicated physical phone line means your phone number is not location-specific.
Being reachable no matter where you are
Not needing a location-specific to your number means you can be anywhere in the world with an internet connection and your VOIP number can be carried with you, for example, before leaving the office you assign your mobile as the device to route calls to, you leave the office in London, board a plane to Germany, after landing you receive a phone call on your mobile and can answer the same VOIP number as if you’re in the office, the caller will have no idea you aren’t in the office. This allows for untold flexibility, letting your work and home life co-inside like never before.
It’s resilient
When using dated Telephony you are often reliant on a single piece of hardware to provide connectivity to your entire business, this can be a recipe for disaster if there’s a power malfunction or problem trading has to stop until an engineer can come out and fix it, potentially hampering you for hours or even days. VOIP gives you the ability to avoid disaster recovery all together as you can forward incoming calls to various devices meaning if there is a problem that affects the running of the office you can divert calls to any other internet-connected device instantly, not letting that power cut or water leak stop your business working to its full potential.
It is easy to set up
VOIP can be cloud- hosted if you choose for it to be, this will avoid the hardware acquisition costs altogether, meaning money and time saved!
Current relevance
The way the world is currently more and more of us are working remotely from home. It is predicted that 50% of the UK workforce will be working remotely by 2020¹ it can be difficult to stay connected, especially to a professional standard. VOIP allows remote workers to remain professional at all times, most callers would have no idea that the receiver is even working remotely with an instant diversion from the office phone to their chosen device, this means that many workers could make a smooth transition from working in the office to working from home practically overnight.
Saving money at the moment is of the utmost importance due to job security being so fragile with the current pandemic in full flow. There is scope to save a considerable amount of money by axing ISDN and reinvesting the money saved in dedicated fibre connectivity, improving your internet speed – while also switching the telephony to VOIP, Improving general functionality of voice and data traffic, better speed, better reliability, better flexibility and value for money, without the need to spend more. These are all of the utmost importance for remote workers. Reliability and speed of connection should be valued above all else for remote workers or the individual working from home may not keep up with the workload leading to stress for the remote worker and a frustrated manager due to work targets not being met.
How can we help?
Here at VaraTech, we offer a broad range of IT support and consultancy services that aim to help small businesses extract maximum value from their IT. From proactive network monitoring/maintenance and hardware leasing to Cloud services, VoIP telephony and much more, we help our clients identify and roll-out the best-fit solutions for their businesses.
We’re cloud computing experts! We can help your business leverage the potential of some of the most empowering Cloud services, such as Microsoft 365. Why not get in touch today, to discover how the flexibility, scalability cost-efficiency, convenience and security of Cloud services can help your business realise its potential.