Clear Advantages

There are many advantages to using VoIP for communications. Some will make your IT guys attempt a back flip, which probably isn’t a good idea since athletics and IT usually don’t mix well. But, read at your own risk. I will classify the advantages by business role for clarity.

Role: Business Owner

Lower Expenses = More Profit

Ok, so I over simplified that a little, but that simple equation is important to the guys who write the checks every month. So, why is it less expensive?

1. Unified Cabling (see IT Role below).
2. No Taxes.
3. Cheaper Long Distance rates.
4. Lower Maintenance costs (The phone system is at Artis IT. Let us fix it, upgrade it, and pay the electric bill for it. Its included in the price).

Not only is VoIP less expensive, it has all of the features of a traditional phone system, and more. Remember we are still wearing the Business Owner’s hat.

1. Follow-me – You are busy and on the move, let your calls automatically find you if you are not at your desk. It will ring your cell phone, home phone, plane phone, and any other phone before collecting a Voice Mail. Even then, your Voice Mail gets emailed to your PDA and you get the message within minutes.
2. Call Detail Reporting – Find out who is and isn’t on the phone everyday. Make sure Sales Reps are on the phone making sales and make sure the warehouse workers are on the forklift filling orders.
3. Ring Group Distribution – Nothing is more frustrating than missing a potential revenue producing call. Ring groups make sure everyone in sales gets the incoming call so no opportunity is wasted.
4. There is a complete list of feature at the end of this article.

Role: Employee

The advantages for employees are simple, the phone and supporting systems are easy to use. Here are a few examples of why employees love Artis PBX.

1. Web Access to Voicemail and features. If you have to stay home and take your child to the Dr, no worries. Log in to the Artis PBX web portal and forward your office calls to your home for the day. In the web portal you can listen to your Voice Mail, set your call forward / follow-me settings and review your call history to see if you missed any calls.
2. Call Transfer. Easily transfer calls to other people in the office or at remote locations. With VoIP, it like everyone is at the same location.
3. Easy Dialing. Use 4-digit extension dialing for everyone in the company, regardless of location.
4. Conference Calling. Most phones support 2 way conference calling. Or you can easily setup a conference bridge line and have multiple parties join the call.
5. One Touch Voice Mail. Voice Mail indicator light for messages waiting, then press your “Messages” button, enter password, and you are listening to your messages.
6. Do Not Disturb – Turn your phone off and send calls directly to voicemail when you are having an important meeting at your desk, or if you are just busy trying to meet work deadlines and you want to return calls at the end of the day.

Role: Information Technology (I.T.)

For the IT support role, VoIP just make sense. Unified cabling and distributed power reduce clutter on desks and make build-outs costs 50% less than with a traditional phone system. Other advantages are:

1. Moves/Changes – There is no need to route calls down a different wire when Susie moves from cube 5 to cube 23. The phone is registered with the PBX, not the jack. Just plug the IP phone in anywhere, including your house or a hotel, and it works just like you are sitting at your desk.
2. Application Integration – Integrate the phone with your business applications. Have your call center software rapidly dial out and only ring a CSR when there is an answer at the other end. Or, dump your call detail records into your data warehouse for analytics and performance reporting.
3. Less Management – Artis IT manages your PBX, phones, firmware and provisioning. Just set the TFTP server address on the phone, kick back and relax. IT can spend more time doing the things they like to do, such as Chess, Karate and reading the Radio Shack flyer from the Sunday paper.

Before I provide the business cases I promised earlier, let me give you our contact information. If you have any questions about how Artis IT can implement VoIP Hosted PBX solutions for your business, please give us a call at (904) 861-2366.

Business Case

Barry’s Mutual Fund Startup (Micro Business)

Barry and his grad school friend just completed their MBA program and are starting a Mutual Fund. They are asking wealthy individuals to invest between $500,000 and $5,000,000 dollars with their firm. Money is tight at the beginning, but Barry needs to impress his prospects and his main point of impression is when the prospects call Barry. Barry chooses Artis PBX and uses free “Soft Phone” software to turn his PC into a VoIP phone that works just great with Artis PBX. When prospects call Barry, they hear a professional sounding greeting accompanied by relaxing classical music while on hold. Calls are routed to Barry and his friend working at the home offices. Six months later, Barry has acquired $25,000,000 and needs to move to New York and get an office. He takes his Artis PBX phone with him and plugs it into the Internet at the New York office and the phone migration is complete. Everything works just as it did before the move. That winter, an ice storm hits New York and causes mass power outages. Barry and his employees head in separate directions seeking power, warmth and a place to continue business operations. They plug their phone into the Internet at their final destinations and the business continuity has succeeded. Barry raises even more capital as he fields calls from his competitor’s clients since the competition could not be reached during the storm.

Larry Harry, CPA (Small Business)

Larry has a successful CPA firm and is looking to save money on his phone bill. Since the bulk of Larry’s work comes in between January and May, it is important to keep costs down. Larry replaces his Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) with Artis PBX and saves 20%-60% off what he was paying for phone service. Since Larry’s business is growing rapidly, his phone system can now scale with his business. Larry hires another employee, Bob, but there is not enough room at the current office location. Bob gets an Artis PBX phone and plugs it into his broadband connection and home and Bob is immediately connected to Larry and the rest of the crew just like he is at the office. Bob can now work efficiently while waiting on the new office to be ready. Two months later the new office is ready. Larry and the crew are ready to move. Normally, Larry would have to buy a new phone system for the new office, setup an appointment with the phone company (BARF!) and wait for them to show up between the hours of 4 AM and 11 PM to hook up his new lines. There would probably be some time where Larry wouldn’t get calls because of the switch. Luckily, Larry was smart and chose the Artis PBX Hosted phone system. Once Larry has an Internet connection at the new office, his employees unplug their phones, drive to the new office, plug the phones into the IP network and they are up and running like nothing ever happened. Oh, and by the way, since the PBX was at Artis’ state of the art data center, any calls that came in while the phones were in transit were routed to cell phones or voice mail. Nothing was missed!

Nelly’s Insurance Office (Medium Business)

Nelly owns an insurance company with office all of the state of Florida. She has 100 employees in all. Each employee works from home 50% of the time, and requires their own fax line since Nelly has such a high fax volume. If all the faxes came in on the same line, a typical fax machine would not be able to handle all the incoming calls. Nelly is also being strong-armed into a 5-year contract with her local telephone service provider. Nelly chooses Artis PBX and her problems are solved. Each employee extension receives faxes as well as phone calls and the faxes are emailed to the employee and a central repository for data redundancy. Nelly doesn’t have to worry about a 5-year contract because Artis PBX offers flexible contract lengths depending on each situation. That fall, a hurricane hits Nelly’s home state of Florida. Nelly and her employees evacuate for the safety of their families. Once safe, Nelly’s employees plug their Artis PBX phones into the Internet and Nelly can begin servicing claims for her customers in her home state. Nelly’s disaster recovery and business continuity plan was successful because of Artis PBX.

Recommendations

Here are Artis IT, we have tested our Artis PBX product extensively and have the following recommendations for the best overall performance with your new Hosted PBX from Artis IT.

Certified phones:

Polycom

IP320
IP330
IP430
IP550
IP560
IP650
IP4000

Aastra

480i
480i CT

Certified Soft Phones:

Counterpath

X-Lite
Bria

Unsupported Hardware:

All Cisco Phones

Limitations

If I were to tell you that VoIP solved world hunger while providing all the advantages listed above, you would probably be a bit skeptical, as you should. Here is the truth. VOIP IS NOT FOR EVERYONE. It is, however, right for a lot of folks, but sometimes a 100% VoIP solution is not the answer. Hybrid POTS and VoIP Solutions should cover 99.9% of the businesses out there.

Business Case

Homers Medical Billing, Inc.

Homer runs a small medical billing company in Key East, Florida. He has 15 employees working in Key East and 15 in Pensacola. In his day-to-day operations, Homer and his staff field calls from their clients across the country. HMBI receives and transmits PHI or (Protected Health Information) about patients. Because of this, HMBI is regulated and must comply with the HIPPA rules and regulations set forth by the US government. Since there is not standard for encrypting faxes sent with VoIP, HMBI must retain at least one POTS line for sending faxes with protected information. Receiving faxes, however, is perfectly safe and reliable as Artis PBX has a variety of solutions for secure storage and transmission of faxes from your Hosted PBX to your office. Homer also has to connect with a Modem to a vendor for transmission of billing information. VoIP is not good for emulating modem key sequences because of caching related to minimum packet sizes. Homer needs to keep a POTS line for this business function. Hybrid olution: Homer subscribes to Artis PBX and orders 30 extensions. He pays no tolls for inter-office calls between his Key East and Pensacola Offices. He keeps 2 POTS lines at each office for secure outbound faxing and modem link up. Homer saves 20% - 60% off his traditional phone system charges and can eliminate that hefty “tank” (aka phone system) in the wiring closet that heats the office up in the summer.


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