Top 6 things to consider when upgrading your business telephone systems

Business telephone systems form a core part of how we communicate internally and with our customers. Voice lends a personal touch and a sense of immediacy and with customer service and effective communication being crucial to success, your business telephone system is as important a part of your enterprise as any other aspect of your operations.

Digital technologies dominate today’s economy, so it’s vital to keep pace with the latest trends. Your voice communications shouldn’t be excluded from this. Changes in business functions, market conditions, and the nature of your organisation may also dictate an improvement to your communications set-up.

Whatever the reason, if you’re looking to upgrade your business telephone system there are several factors you should take into consideration. Here are six of the main ones.

1. What Does Your Business Need From A Telephone System?

This is a question that you should ideally be asking on a regular basis, as conditions change in your industry, market sector, and the structure of your business. At the simplest level, this could boil down to considerations such as whether or not you need desk phones, how appropriate computer-based softphones are to the way you operate and how important mobiles are to your workforce.

From the point of view of infrastructure, you might consider issues like what levels of voice and data transfer speeds would be best for your business, whether an on-premise and internally managed phone system would be more suitable for your needs, or whether cloud-based and hosted telecommunications are the way to go.

2. What Tools And Features Do Your Workers Need To Be Productive?

Delving deeper into your operations, you’ll want to take into account how an upgraded system could best provide for your workers in terms of the productivity tools and telephony features they require. It’s useful to conduct an internal assessment and survey to establish what these needs are, by asking individual workers and supervisors about their particular needs.

A business telephone system based on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) offers a substantial range of functions and tools, including voicemail transcription to text or email, voice and video conference calling, automated receptionists, presence panels, and several options for call handling and routing. Providers like LG Networks can assist and advise you on the best combination of features to suit your needs.

3. How Can Your Business Telephone System Provide For Remote Or Mobile Workers?

If like many other organisations you’ve adopted flexible working hours, or have to cater for multiple sites, geographically dispersed offices, or a mobile workforce, your telephone system upgrade will need to make provisions for home-based, remote, or mobile employees.

In these circumstances, support for mobile devices and software applications will be a fundamental requirement. And the backbone and infrastructure of your communications network will have to be capable of allowing “any time, anywhere” access to workers using the internet and local wireless connections.

We can offer telecommunications systems optimised for digital / internet and mobile deployment, with software-based administration and dedicated mobile apps which give workers the tools and functionality they need, from any location where they can access your business network.

4. How Can The System Tie In With External Platforms And Back-end Software?

Streamlined and fully integrated operations are key to the smooth and efficient running of an enterprise. This applies both to customer-facing aspects of the business and the back-end processes that help tie other aspects of the organisation together.

A digital telecommunications platform allows voice and data to combine so that integration with accounting, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), sales, marketing, and other systems can be accomplished seamlessly.

A Unified Communications (UC) upgrade to your business telephone system will also allow office productivity applications, external databases, cloud-based resources, and ancillary services to become available to your workers from a single platform.

5. How Can The System Improve Quality Control And Customer Service?

VoIP-based telephone systems come equipped as standard with tools for monitoring or recording phone calls, and the analysis of business communications data. This kind of information can be crucial in assessing the performance of your customer-facing staff, tracking transactions and improving the delivery of services and technical support to your consumers.

Armed with the results of this kind of analysis, you can identify areas where your operations may be improved, establish your most effective working practices and personnel, and develop methods to incorporate this data into your employee training programmes.

6. Will You Need To Upgrade Your Existing Infrastructure?

Digital communications based on VoIP or SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) work best over a strong and stable data connection. So your budget may need to factor in an upgrade to your existing cabling system, network hardware, and infrastructure that will increase data transfer speeds and reliability, and optimise the network for voice transmission.

LG Networks is acknowledged as an expert in all aspects of data networking, and the installation, testing, upgrading, and maintenance of structured cabling and fibre optic transmission systems. And we have the specialist skills to advise and assist with the best options for upgrading your business telephone system.

If you’d like to know more about VoIP technology, data networking, or upgrading your business telephone system, get in touch with the experts at LG Networks.