#hosted telephony

VoIP’s Future Potential

VoIP services, as in the Internet era, are distinctive and cost-effective for internet users. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is the buzzword in today’s telephony. The VoIP revolution has already penetrated many corporate settings and is poised to expand beyond its current scope in the near future. According to a recent poll, approximately 90% of large businesses have made the move to VoIP…

At Simple Comms, we aim to make it easier to manage your businesses costs and reduce operational complexity with a consolidated Calls and Lines package. We offer excellent value for money and a hands-on customer service department should you ever require assistance with your Telecoms from Simple Comms.

We provide the most cost effective VIOP Phones Glasgow has to offer and our Business Telephone systems are much better than your average Hosted Telephony deals. Our VOIP Phones start at only £5 per handset!

Contact Simple Comms today

New Post has been published on http://yoozoom.co.uk/voip-systems/boost-collaboration-productivity-and-revenue-with-hosted-voip/

Boost Collaboration, Productivity and Revenue with Hosted VoIP

In recent years we’ve seen some fundamental changes take place with regards to the technology that we apply in business. While the cloud is not a new technology, it’s only in the past five years that we’ve seen it gain mainstream traction. Now, the cloud is accepted as a solution to a range of business related challenges. It’s levelled the playing fields between large corporations and smaller businesses, as the latter can now easily access previously expensive technologies surrounding both software and IT infrastructures. Telephony too has become more accessible to smaller businesses, with many opting for alternatives to the traditional, onsite (and expensive) telephone systems of old. Hosted VoIP is one of these options and according to Frost and Sullivan, these are being installed in an effort by businesses to “avoid the cost and complexity of premise-based solutions.”

“Small businesses that account for the majority of the end users are likely to continue driving hosted IP telephony deployments,” Frost & Sullivan senior analyst Lynda Starr said.  “Medium and large businesses’ interests in hosted IP telephony and VoIP access service are also likely to increase.”

Improvements to Hosted VoIP Technology

This is due to improvements in hosted VoIP services taking place to improve voice quality, tighter SLAs (Service Level Agreement) and even more competitive pricing fuelling the drive towards hosted VoIP.

According to Computer Weekly;

“Hosted services allow businesses with limited budgets and staff to balance the cost of a more efficient communication system with a level of available productivity. They also offer customers the immediate benefit of upgrades that otherwise would not be considered a practical expense for another 10 years.” The cost benefits of hosted VoIP are well documented. Traditional PBX systems are costly to both implement and maintain. Since hosted VoIP is a cloud service, all hardware and software is maintained by the supplier, doing away with the need for capital expenditure and ongoing maintenance costs”

Small Businesses Can Achieve Rapid Growth

Businesses can also save on costs and improve revenues in other ways when using hosted VoIP however. According to Starr, end users can expect to find “rapid growth potential” which is reassuring when considering a migration from “outdated Y2K-era systems.” She goes on to say that “small and midsized businesses in particular stood to gain a more professional phone appearance.” Further to this, small businesses don’t tend to have a dedicated IT department. For those that do, these departments are often stretched as they try to keep pace with the demands of maintaining a small business network. IT is also constantly trying to keep up with protecting the business from threats and in modern times, often attempting to juggle various software vendor solutions and cloud services such as SaaS and IaaS solutions. It’s been widely discussed that the traditional IT department is also changing and many companies now work with external vendors and consultancies in order to boost their IT infrastructure and services.

Hosted VoIP & Mobility

Mobility has become increasingly important to business in a myriad of ways in recent years. BYOD schemes have become commonplace, and remote workers are rapidly increasing as the work/leisure divide is squeezed ever tighter. Hosted VoIP can add to the benefits that mobility adds into the workplace as it allows employees to use their business VoIP telephone number on their own devices, including smartphone, tablets and desktop PCs. Hosted voice allows employees then to make or receive calls from any location, on any device. This allows for improved productivity, as the employee is not working from a fixed location, and for better collaboration. Employees using hosted VoIP can route calls through the hosted VoIP interface and take advantage of lower costs when it comes to international calling. This means that they can easily contact customers or partners in offices around the globe with very little fuss and at a reduced price.

Productivity and Hosted VoIP

Hosted VoIP can offer increased productivity in a number of ways. Thanks to the way that it’s hosted and deployed, it’s a simple matter to add and remove users which is far faster than traditional telephony. Users can manage their own features, or IT can deploy as they see fit at the click of a button.

If a traditional PBX system goes wrong, often there’s significant downtime before it gets put right. Hosted VoIP tends to offer excellent up time and as such, costs associated with downtime – which can quickly climb into the 1000s – are significantly reduced. Downtime costs can be attributed to many things, but the costs associated with employees being left unable to work can be huge. When adding unified communication (UC) features to a hosted VoIP solution, productivity can be further increased through more effective communication. UC describes a set of communication features that allows businesses to integrate various technologies, such as:

* Voice * Video * SMS * Email * Voicemail * Conferencing * Web Collaboration (Screen Share / Whiteboards) * Presence Identification

For example, an employee could have their voicemail sent as a transcript to their inbox, so that they can read and respond at any time without having to listen to the audio. Conference calls can be made using the hosted VoIP system no matter what device is used so employees can easily join in with meetings no matter where they are, so long as there’s an internet connection. With UC, employees such as sales representatives can share presentations with potential customers in order to better demonstrate products or services by screen sharing. This can be used to discuss quotes, walk through creative products or link up with suppliers to discuss projects in more detail.

Hosted VoIP allows employees to streamline communications in such a way that it’s possible to consolidate them in order to spend less time on individual interactions. This again allows for improved productivity and in turn, better revenues. Research backs this up; according to a Forbes Insight Survey, cloud collaboration increases productivity and advances global communication.

Eric Schoch, vice president and general manager Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution,

“The survey results show that cloud-based collaboration acts as a significant enabler of business success, which is exactly what our customers tell us on a daily basis. Clouds accelerate the roll-out of collaborative technologies such as voice, video, and conferencing so that companies can improve the efficiency of their decision-making and the quality of their customers’ experiences. As clouds and macroeconomic factors increase the speed of business and collaboration, businesses look to clouds as a means to gain a competitive edge.”

The survey also found that cloud-based collaboration, * Can shorten time to market * Quicken product upgrade cycles * Lead to faster responses to competitive challenges * Enables more efficient business processes * Enables and encourages innovation

All of the above can impact revenues positively and ensure that the business can facilitate growth and innovation – which Forbes points out is an almost inevitable consequence of using cloud services such as hosted VoIP. Hosted VoIP has a lot to offer any business, regardless of size. Thanks to the monthly payment model, it requires little in the way of capital expenditure, whilst the benefits are multiple.

New Post has been published on http://yoozoom.co.uk/voip-systems/boost-collaboration-productivity-and-revenue-with-hosted-voip/

Boost Collaboration, Productivity and Revenue with Hosted VoIP

In recent years we’ve seen some fundamental changes take place with regards to the technology that we apply in business. While the cloud is not a new technology, it’s only in the past five years that we’ve seen it gain mainstream traction. Now, the cloud is accepted as a solution to a range of business related challenges. It’s levelled the playing fields between large corporations and smaller businesses, as the latter can now easily access previously expensive technologies surrounding both software and IT infrastructures. Telephony too has become more accessible to smaller businesses, with many opting for alternatives to the traditional, onsite (and expensive) telephone systems of old. Hosted VoIP is one of these options and according to Frost and Sullivan, these are being installed in an effort by businesses to “avoid the cost and complexity of premise-based solutions.”

“Small businesses that account for the majority of the end users are likely to continue driving hosted IP telephony deployments,” Frost & Sullivan senior analyst Lynda Starr said.  “Medium and large businesses’ interests in hosted IP telephony and VoIP access service are also likely to increase.”

Improvements to Hosted VoIP Technology

This is due to improvements in hosted VoIP services taking place to improve voice quality, tighter SLAs (Service Level Agreement) and even more competitive pricing fuelling the drive towards hosted VoIP.

According to Computer Weekly;

“Hosted services allow businesses with limited budgets and staff to balance the cost of a more efficient communication system with a level of available productivity. They also offer customers the immediate benefit of upgrades that otherwise would not be considered a practical expense for another 10 years.” The cost benefits of hosted VoIP are well documented. Traditional PBX systems are costly to both implement and maintain. Since hosted VoIP is a cloud service, all hardware and software is maintained by the supplier, doing away with the need for capital expenditure and ongoing maintenance costs”

Small Businesses Can Achieve Rapid Growth

Businesses can also save on costs and improve revenues in other ways when using hosted VoIP however. According to Starr, end users can expect to find “rapid growth potential” which is reassuring when considering a migration from “outdated Y2K-era systems.” She goes on to say that “small and midsized businesses in particular stood to gain a more professional phone appearance.” Further to this, small businesses don’t tend to have a dedicated IT department. For those that do, these departments are often stretched as they try to keep pace with the demands of maintaining a small business network. IT is also constantly trying to keep up with protecting the business from threats and in modern times, often attempting to juggle various software vendor solutions and cloud services such as SaaS and IaaS solutions. It’s been widely discussed that the traditional IT department is also changing and many companies now work with external vendors and consultancies in order to boost their IT infrastructure and services.

Hosted VoIP & Mobility

Mobility has become increasingly important to business in a myriad of ways in recent years. BYOD schemes have become commonplace, and remote workers are rapidly increasing as the work/leisure divide is squeezed ever tighter. Hosted VoIP can add to the benefits that mobility adds into the workplace as it allows employees to use their business VoIP telephone number on their own devices, including smartphone, tablets and desktop PCs. Hosted voice allows employees then to make or receive calls from any location, on any device. This allows for improved productivity, as the employee is not working from a fixed location, and for better collaboration. Employees using hosted VoIP can route calls through the hosted VoIP interface and take advantage of lower costs when it comes to international calling. This means that they can easily contact customers or partners in offices around the globe with very little fuss and at a reduced price.

Productivity and Hosted VoIP

Hosted VoIP can offer increased productivity in a number of ways. Thanks to the way that it’s hosted and deployed, it’s a simple matter to add and remove users which is far faster than traditional telephony. Users can manage their own features, or IT can deploy as they see fit at the click of a button.

If a traditional PBX system goes wrong, often there’s significant downtime before it gets put right. Hosted VoIP tends to offer excellent up time and as such, costs associated with downtime – which can quickly climb into the 1000s – are significantly reduced. Downtime costs can be attributed to many things, but the costs associated with employees being left unable to work can be huge. When adding unified communication (UC) features to a hosted VoIP solution, productivity can be further increased through more effective communication. UC describes a set of communication features that allows businesses to integrate various technologies, such as:

* Voice * Video * SMS * Email * Voicemail * Conferencing * Web Collaboration (Screen Share / Whiteboards) * Presence Identification

For example, an employee could have their voicemail sent as a transcript to their inbox, so that they can read and respond at any time without having to listen to the audio. Conference calls can be made using the hosted VoIP system no matter what device is used so employees can easily join in with meetings no matter where they are, so long as there’s an internet connection. With UC, employees such as sales representatives can share presentations with potential customers in order to better demonstrate products or services by screen sharing. This can be used to discuss quotes, walk through creative products or link up with suppliers to discuss projects in more detail.

Hosted VoIP allows employees to streamline communications in such a way that it’s possible to consolidate them in order to spend less time on individual interactions. This again allows for improved productivity and in turn, better revenues. Research backs this up; according to a Forbes Insight Survey, cloud collaboration increases productivity and advances global communication.

Eric Schoch, vice president and general manager Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution,

“The survey results show that cloud-based collaboration acts as a significant enabler of business success, which is exactly what our customers tell us on a daily basis. Clouds accelerate the roll-out of collaborative technologies such as voice, video, and conferencing so that companies can improve the efficiency of their decision-making and the quality of their customers’ experiences. As clouds and macroeconomic factors increase the speed of business and collaboration, businesses look to clouds as a means to gain a competitive edge.”

The survey also found that cloud-based collaboration, * Can shorten time to market * Quicken product upgrade cycles * Lead to faster responses to competitive challenges * Enables more efficient business processes * Enables and encourages innovation

All of the above can impact revenues positively and ensure that the business can facilitate growth and innovation – which Forbes points out is an almost inevitable consequence of using cloud services such as hosted VoIP. Hosted VoIP has a lot to offer any business, regardless of size. Thanks to the monthly payment model, it requires little in the way of capital expenditure, whilst the benefits are multiple.