A key business challenge faced by SMBs is to keep up with digital transformation, meaning leverage digital technologies for driving business growth. One of the areas where such technologies are playing an important role is telecom. Businesses that are deploying advanced telecom systems are getting an edge against those who are still using legacy telecom solutions.
According to a MarketsandMarkets report, the global cloud PBX market is expected to touch a figure of $USD 9.5 Billion by 2023. This essentially means, businesses both enterprise level and SMBs, are moving to managed telephony systems.
Having said that, let’s take a look at a comparison between traditional phone systems and managed telephony. This will help you make an informed decision as to whether you should pick the latter.
1. Excellent Up-Time
Hosted phone systems promise an amazing uptime and a minimal downtime. Some hosted system providers go so far as to promise more than 99% uptime. All that is required is consistent internet connectivity. This means your business’s communication lines are open always, within the company and with the outside world (customers, third-party providers etc.)
On the other hand, on-premise systems face downtime problems and at times phone systems are down by hours or days. When your phone systems are down, you can no longer communicate with your customers and if your business has offices over distributed locations, employees across locations cannot talk to one another. As can be imagined, the repercussions for your business, in this case, are tremendous in the form of loss of employee productivity and business revenue.
2. Service Issues Handled by Provider
As a business, irrespective of whether you are enterprise or SMB business, you are always short of time. You want to ensure whatever time you have on your hands is spent in strategic revenue generation activities. If you have an on-premise traditional phone system, you are responsible for taking care of the problems, if and when something goes wrong.
Even if you have signed for a service contract, you still have to pay for equipment replacement or damage (unless, this is covered in your service contract, in which case the service contract is prohibitively expensive).
Also, most services contracts have fixed scope and a certain resolution time frame. Not all problems are covered and there are times when the problem resolution can take days.
If you sign up with a hosted PBX solutions provider, the provider is responsible for everything from the service perspective. Most service providers promise top-of-the-line uninterrupted service and 24×7 support in case something goes wrong. It’s important to understand that the back end telecom infrastructure is not located in your office premise and its upkeep is also not your responsibility. You are assured of, and sign concreted and enforceable SLAs that ensure your business’s communications system functions optimally at all times.
Conclusion
Just comparing these two aspects tell you in very clear terms that managed telephony is the way forward for your business. You can’t take a chance with the telecom infrastructure that drives your business. With a managed telephony-system, you know you have a communications solution that is scalable, accessible and affordable, and which walks in step with your business needs.
Managed Telephony Systems vs. Traditional Phone System – Is There a Clear Winner?
