VOIP Explained

I get calls all the time from customers telling me they want to purchase a VOIP phone system. When I ask them what it is about VOIP that will benefit them most of them think that they can save money. At this point, I tell them that VOIP really does not mean any one thing. There are a number of different ways to use VOIP with your business phone system. Here are some of the different applications for VOIP:

VOIP Phone Calls: You can make phone calls over the internet using VOIP. These calls go out over your internet connection not a telephone line. You can make domestic calls for free and international calls very cheaply.

VOIP Phones: VOIP Phones are hard wired telephones that connect to your LAN and access your internet connection. They will synch up with your VOIP PBX phone system and allow you to function just as if you were connected to your office where your PBX resides. You can make and receive calls, transfer calls, intercom & check voice mail from wherever you are connected. It is all seamless to the outside caller, they have no way of knowing that you are at a remote site.
There are also software VOIP phones that you can use on a laptop, ipad or smartphone. These work the same way as a hard wired phone. It is a seamless connection to your office and you can stay in touch wherever you have a wi-fi connection. If you are out of the Country, you can intercom back and forth with your office and make calls in the US without incurring any charges.

The Avaya IP Office 500 has a teleworker application that uses VOIP and your local landline together. You can make and receive calls on your analog phone line (such as your home line) and the outside caller will only see your office phone line where your VOIP PBX resides. Callers can call the office number and the IP Office 500 will route the call to your home number. Companies are saving a lot of money by getting rid of offices full of cubicles and setting those people up in home offices using this technology. Employees are much happier working from home and they can be more productive without the downtime of a commute every morning.

Site to Site: You can have an office in DC and an office in California with a VOIP PBX at each
end. With VOIP you can transfer calls and intercom site to site just as if both offices were all on one phone system. Many fortune 500 companies with offices all over the world use their data network and VOIP to seamlessly route calls between offices. If you are on a tech support call for example, you may start out in a call center in India and wind up being transferred back to a US call center as the call is escalated or if you need to go to a different department.

You do not have to go what is called "full VOIP" to utilize these technologies. Many of the VOIP capable phone systems are what they call "converged" systems. They will allow you to use analog phone lines, a PRI circuit or SIP trunking. You can have digital telephones in the office and just use VOIP to connect phones outside the office or to transfer calls between offices. The telephone PBX manufacturers started coming out with converged systems about five years ago so that you could utilize your traditional telco technology and deploy VOIP as needed.

One thing that is worth mentioning too is that there is some IT work involved to deploy VOIP for your business. If you do not have an in-house IT department. You will need an IT consultant to configure your network. You need to make sure you have enough bandwidth and that the voice traffic is being handled properly over your network so that you get good call quality.

If you would like to discuss how to deploy VOIP for your business, please feel free to get in touch with me.

Adam Stern





410-239-2227 direct

www.absphones.com

Unified Messaging Explained

For years now, one of the buzzwords in telecom technology has been "Unified Messaging." To begin with, let's take a look at messaging in the late 1990's to understand the problem that Unified Messaging addresses. There you are in 1999 driving to your appointment. Your customer calls you in the office and leaves a message in your voice mail. Your coworker calls you on your cell phone and leaves you a message. Meanwhile, your boss sends you an email asking for your quarterly sales forecast and he needs it by the end of the day. We have all these ways for people to contact you, but all the information is going to different places. You leave your appointment and check your cell phone voice mail. You call into the office and get your voice mail from the office phone system. When you return to your office at 4pm, you get your email informing you that the boss wants his sales forecast by 5. Your customer that left you a voice mail on the office phone system is mad because you did not respond quickly enough. Do you see what the problem is here? We have all these ways to communicate, but no way to manage it. It is a liability having to be responsible for messages on your cell phone and your office voice mail. Customers get your cell phone number and call you there instead of the office and run up your bill. You are getting time sensitive emails when you are out of the office and cannot respond quickly enough.

Unified Messaging allows you to manage all of your communications in one place. With a smart phone such as the iphone or android, you can be directly linked to all your communications wherever you are without even having to be in the office. There are a number of different technologies in play here. With voice mail to email, your emails are all converted to an audio file and sent to your email. You can now listen to your voice mail messages in the same place you are checking your email. Instead of having to listen to your voice mail messages sequentially through the phone, you can skip ahead to the more import messages. This feature is sometimes called visual voice mail. You can check your email right from your phone or from your home computer or ipad. No matter where you are, you are now getting all of your communications delivered directly to you in your email inbox.

Then there is the problem of customers leaving you messages on your cell phone and on your office voice mail. Unified messaging solves this by giving your customers one number to call to contact you. You do not have to give out your cell phone number. You have a DID number which stands for direct inward dialing. When your customer calls that number your desk phone and your cell phone ring simultaneously. If you don't answer the call then the call is redirected to your office voice mail so that your voice mail messages are only going to one place. You no longer have to provide your cell phone number to your customer. It is much simpler and efficient and you get the added bonus of saving on cell phone costs by no longer having customers call you on your cell phone when you are in the office and could have taken the call on your office phone.

The blackberry solved the problem of getting your emails when you are out of the office. With the advent of "cell phone integration" with your business phone system, the problem of having two points of contact was resolved.

Does anyone still send faxes anymore? I try not to. It seems like such a hassle. Nonetheless, unified messaging addresses faxes as well! You can also assign a separate DID number for faxes. Just like your DID number for your voice calls, this DID is your own personalized fax number. So now your faxes come directly to you, instead of having to walk down the hall to the fax machine and sift through a pile of papers. Like your voice mail messages, the faxes are delivered to your email inbox wherever you are! All of your communications - voice, fax, & email are delivered directly to your email inbox which you have access to via your smartphone wherever you are 24 hours a day. Besides the savings in cell phone costs, think about how much more efficient it is to manage all of this from one place!

If you would like more information about how to implement Unified Communications for your business please feel free to contact me:

Adam Stern


www.absphones.com

410-239-2227