Business Communications - What Businesses Should Consider When Investing In Telecommunications

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by: Edmund Jonalyn
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Date: Thu, 20 May 2010 Time: 1:37 PM
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The area of telecommunications for business has grown exponentially over the past decade or so. Whereas previously, companies could make do with a couple of phones and - if they were particularly high-tech - a fax machine, these days customers and clients expect to be in constant communication with their suppliers. This can mean several, or even dozens, of fixed landlines, plus mobiles for the whole workforce and large-capacity broadband packages to keep up with the needs of the business.

But what to choose? The technology now available can make picking the right services for you business a tricky task, and lead to large cost implications. This is especially the case if companies have a lot of staff turnover or run multiple sites, however, many new services can help to cut costs significantly.

What's VOIP?

One technology of which businesses should be aware and of which there's been much talk recently is VOIP (Voice-Over-Internet-Protocol), a service currently being offered by Axis Telecom. This technology lets users make calls across the internet by converting the analog signal to digital format for transmission.

VOIP's cost saving advantages versus a standard telephone line are threefold. Firstly, businesses will find they need many fewer fixed phone lines; provided broadband speeds are sufficient, these lines can all be consolidated into a single package. Secondly, because VOIP calls are charged by amount of data sent, rather than time, the calls themselves are also cheaper. Thirdly, many services businesses cannot do without, such as automatic redial, call forwarding, conference calling and caller ID, are all included free in most VOIP software packages. VOIP also makes telecoms more efficient. Because all calls are handled by computer, it means multiple sites can be plugged into the same system, making transferring calls much simpler.

What can digital call recording do for my business?

Although call recording is a technology that has been around for years, digital call recording is now a serious option for businesses. Call recording is useful for businesses for two reasons: it gives companies an accurate record of their dealings with customers and can be used to train and inform staff.

Businesses are now able to take advantage of digital call recording, which offers and more practical, streamlined approach to monitoring calls, such as the service called Safeline offered by Axis Telecom. Whereas traditional call recording requires hardware connected to each phone in the business, something which can cost around 150-200 for each phone, digital recording connects your lines to an external server. This means that whereas calls are usually recorded on tape and then require organising manually, all calls are recorded as MP3s, and have all customer details attached electronically, making cataloguing and retrieving records simple.

Keeping track of costs

It is often difficult for businesses to discover where they're actually spending money. Companies with many phone lines might find a percentage of them are no longer being used, but uncovering this might be difficult.

As employees leave a company their phone lines, either mobile or fixed, often remain connected. Businesses are also often unaware of which areas they are spending money in. For instance, are their employees making a lot of national calls? Calls to premium rate numbers? Mobile calls? Being able to check these statistics can have twofold benefits.

The first reason to monitor where you spend money is that it might be possible to alter your service plan to better reflect your companies' needs. For instance, if your telecoms operator gives you unlimited calls to local numbers, but your employees actually spend most of their time calling mobile numbers, does this represent value for money? Verifying these figures will also help track down any prescribed use of company phone lines.

However, for most companies operating a large number of phone lines, manually checking phone records would be an impractical and extremely time consuming task. Axis Telecom can help in this respect. Axis operates an online billing services which lets companies quickly and simply log into their account and track where they are spending money. What's more, Axis' system can help to find any phone lines which, whilst still being connected (and therefore costing money), have been idle for a set time, allowing them to be taken out.

Finally...

What is perhaps most important for businesses is that their services are consolidated. The best packages are available when companies are willing to receive all of their services from a single provider, rather than, for example, getting broadband and landline from one, mobile contracts from another and specialist services, such as call recording and VOIP from a third. Suppliers such as Axis Telecom exist to provide businesses with packages which can encompass everything talked about here at competitive prices. By integrating these services, businesses are able to keep track of and, ultimately, lower costs - and get a more efficient, streamlined service into the bargain.

About the Author

Telecoms companies sometimes find it hard to hang on to their customers over a sustained period of time. Get the inside view from Axis Telecom Managing Director, David Meyers on what you should be getting from your telecoms provider. You can also find out more about managing telecoms costs with Axis Telecom.

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