VoIP or Hosted Telephony isn’t something brand new, I’m sure many business owners will have come across it over the last few years. However, as with all modern technology, it is a service that has massively benefited from continuous development, and should now be seriously considered by all business owners.

1. Loss of business due to natural disasters or weather conditions

I’m sure we’ve all seen the recent news regarding flooding across the UK, which has of course been devastating for many business owners. Unfortunately flooding is an unavoidable disaster for businesses as is loss of business due to snow, ice or strong winds, which cause mayhem on UK roads. When this occurs both your customers and staff can be seriously affected by not being able to get out and about.

Empowering your work force with an IP phone will mean they can continue to make and receive business phone calls regardless of their location, all they need is a broadband connection. If snow is on the way it could mean that your staff literally take their desktop phone home, or if caught by surprise they can simply use mobile twinning to guarantee business continuity.

2. Missed out of hours business calls

When your office shuts in an evening, over a weekend or on national holidays do you have a simple method of managing how your business handles phone calls?

Using VoIP means you will have access to an online web and mobile client which will allow you to set up call mapping exactly how you require. Services such as forwarding to a different number or voicemail messages can be set to activate automatically at any time of the day, and if required, instantly edited. Plus, due to the flexible working VoIP allows you and your staff to make and receive business calls from your mobile phones.

3. Costly phone bills between different office locations

Many larger businesses operate out of different offices in different geographic locations, and of course regular communication between locations is a vital part of business operations. Although many traditional call packages will have inclusive calls, I’m many businesses will quickly use any allocated minutes, or pay for an additional bolt on to keep costs down.

A VoIP telephone service allows you to call any handset on your system for free, just like an internal call to a different floor in the same building. All users and handsets are managed from one central login, and users can be add and removed with a few clicks of the mouse.

4. Staff frustrated about lack of working flexibility

As companies and business owners embrace technology, 2016 is set to be the year flexible working is fully embraced. Increasingly it is becoming the norm for staff and business owners alike to be given the opportunity to work at home, or remotely in a different location.

VoIP allows flexible working as you can literally pick up your IP handset and take it home with you, or literally anywhere in the world. To continue making and receiving calls as normal all you need is a reliable broadband connection. Or if your mobile is twinned with the handset providing it is powered up in the office, you can make and receive business calls on your mobile.

5. Expensive on site hardware and maintenance

Does your current ISDN or PBX phone system mean you have big expensive hardware on your premises? Not only is this equipment expensive to supply it also requires constant maintenance and upgrades – how many times over the last 18 months has an telecoms engineer attended your business at your expense?

IP telephony is cloud based, and all calls are made and received over the internet and all managed online. In addition, the whole thing is future proof, any service upgrades are automatically added and installed.