VOIP
How can you make major savings on telephone calls between multiple office locations?
How can I make substantial savings per call?
Just imagine how many individual calls are made between your offices, even on a daily basis. Many individuals in your organisation will be in touch with each other on a regular basis. Although email has become prevalent in many companies, a great deal of communications requires the dynamic nature of the telephone. A quick investigation of your telephone costs will provide sufficient proof of the level of charges you are facing on a monthly basis.
If your company has multiple offices you can make substantial savings by using Voice Over IP (VOIP) telephone systems. The reason this is so cost effective for your organisation is that Internet VOIP is not routed through the normal traditional service providers such as NTL or BT; therefore their standard charges are not relevant to your calls. The charges are significantly lower as calls are effectively routed through a data network, the internet or the company's intranet.
Benefits of VOIP technology:
- Lower cost of calls
- No inter-office or home worker calls
- Reduced Line Rental
- Flexible and Modular solutions
- Reduced Cost of Ownership
- Application Integration
Home worker community
VOIP is also ideal if you have a number of home workers who require regular contact with the office or between other home workers. By using VOIP they all become part of an extended office network. If the home worker has broadband installed they can then use IP handsets which can form part of a seamless company telephone system where all calls are routed through the office switch. This allows everyone, including home office workers, to use extension number calls. It’s easy and cost effective.
What technology is needed to use VOIP?
Security
As VOIP is over an open network it is important that you have a relevant level of security on your systems. Firewalls are a sensible technology addition to protect the integrity of your internal systems.
Voice Compression Cards
To ensure that voice transmissions takes place effectively it is highly recommended that the use of voice compression cards should be incorporated into the telephone switches.
Managed Routers
Other products include managed routers, which allow you to prioritise voice over data, resulting in the transfer of voice traffic ahead of data traffic. Without this capability your company will experience a break-up of conversations, voice degradation, when data traffic is heavy.
Integration of voice and software applications – exciting new features
With VOIP and data now running on an integrated network it is possible to build some interesting and useful solutions which incorporate both voice and data.
For example, with a direct link between software applications and voice, one can produce a function that will initiate a screen pop-up when the telephone rings. Another example allows you to implement dial-on-demand from applications that will ring the designated client through a single mouse click.
Messages through the telephone can be configured to be read in Outlook this offers all kinds of advantages to the mobile worker.
