A typical start-up will have budgetary constraints that may lead to purchasing the cheapest available phone system “because there are other priorities”. This may push the owners into a less than optimal purchase or into a contract that may come back to bite them sooner than they may have anticipated.
It often happens that rapid growth or a change of plans or direction means the phone system is suddenly expected to deliver different functionality or business objectives than was originally envisaged. At best that can mean an upgrade but at worst it can mean ripping out the system and a total replacement.
Understand The Functions On Offer And Know Which Ones Are Critical
The list of functions on most service offerings can be dazzling and confusing, and some of them you may never use. However, do take the time to understand what they are, and highlight the ones that would be really useful.
Install An Adequate Number Of Lines
Do speak with a telephony expert to establish how many lines you should order. While nobody wants to have unused capacity bought and paid for with monthly line rental, there is a fine line between too little and just enough. The last thing you want is to cripple your day to day operations because you didn’t install enough lines to cope with the number of concurrent users.
Starting Small Does Not Mean With A Home Phone
While some home phones do provide functionality for handling two or three lines, they really are intended for the domestic market home user. For just a little extra outlay you can invest in the handsets and system that can form the basis of your requirements for the foreseeable future.
What To Look For In Your First Phone System
Take our own service offering – Genesis – as an example. Genesis is a complete telephony service for any small business. It is a hosted virtual PBX, a cloud telephony service that is simple to configure and easy to use. Calls are received and made over a VOIP broadband connection. Genesis gives you an immediate professional corporate image because of its range of functionality.
For example, you can easily hook up your mobile phones so that one system covers your landlines and mobiles. That’s clever. What’s more, it is designed to be scalable, so you can add more handsets and more features as you grow.
Read more about Genesis and its features here and download a fact sheet here.
Important Features Of Your First Phone System
Looking down through the extensive Genesis feature list is essentially a menu of typical functions on many of today’s phone services. This should help you to identify and prioritise a number of them, so that you can ensure they are available on the system that you choose. For example, you might value the Call Divert and Call Forwarding to handle incoming calls efficiently, while the Privacy features may not be so important to a new small business.
Choosing The Right System
Choosing your first phone system can appear to be a daunting task because of the sheer number of services and options available on the market. Being able to quickly focus on your priorities and filter out things you don’t need is a useful first step. To that end, we have written a free New Business Telecoms Guide. This is packed with advice and tips about what to look for and, equally importantly, what to avoid. It will give you a head start and point you in the right direction.
