Understanding Business Phone Systems & Why to Upgrade

Business phone systems are different than your normal family home phone in many ways. There are also major differences in the type of phone systems that businesses can choose from. There is no cookie cutter solution. What your business needs for its telecommunications will depend on factors like your companies size, operating area, office space, employee numbers, budget constraints and more. Here we’ll look at the different types of phone networks your Westchester County business should be considering if you’re not already. Also, we’ll see why you should join the 21st century and upgrade today.

Phone System Options

Business Phone System Westchester County NY

First let’s see what an organization will use within the sphere of their communications. You’ll see pretty quickly its far different than your home phone set up. Some of the most functional capabilities of a business phone service include:

• Conference & group calls – utilize features that allow multiple personnel to be on the same call for meetings, appointments, training, or conferencing.
• On-hold messages & music – when customers are on hold they shouldn’t experience silence, this system can provide messages regarding sales or just on-hold music.
• Multiple lines + adding lines – if you have employees or receive many customer calls at one time you’ll take advantage of the multiple lines. Expanding? This is a critical component.
• Auto-attendant (automated features) – a call directory and extension system along with an auto-attendant which directs callers to the proper department. We’ve all used these systems before when calling larger companies.
• Voice-mail – received messages to be listened to and addressed later when you’re out of the office or occupied.

Smaller and larger businesses alike benefit from these standardized features from today’s best business phone networks. Utilizing cost saving options like Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or the cloud can reduce your costs while at the same time increasing productivity. Let’s look a bit more carefully at your options.

First let’s look at a more traditional option.

PBX Phone Systems

PBX (Private Branch Exchange) is more or less a completely private phone system used within your office location. It sends internal and external calls through the businesses physical phone lines but adds a variety of useful features that traditional phones do not offer on their own. There are other differences as well.

A PBX system is much easier to scale up or add lines to than a traditional phone system. It can be hosted on the Cloud which is called a “host PBX” or “virtual PBX” or even VoIP through what is known as a “IP-PBX”. PBX systems are also incredibly flexible making them great for your ever changing market landscape. This can be a great system your business can use which is essentially a merger of traditional and modern business phone communications. Taking the best from older systems and utilizing today’s modern technology to create a powerful bridging of technologies.

Fiber-Optics w/ VoIP & the Cloud

VoIP and the cloud offer every size of company (from small mom and pop shops to large multi-national corporations) huge benefits and cost saving bonuses. But if you don’t have a high quality high speed internet connection (like fiber internet) you could be selling those phone systems short. Unlike traditional phone lines VoIP & the Cloud are used and accessed through internet connectivity.

That means if you have a sales forces of 20 people and all of them are calling clients via VoIP, you had better have an internet set up that is up to scratch. Traditional DSL or cable internet is far slower than modern day Fiber internet. Because these phone systems rely on the web to connect people you should be sure you have true high speed internet, and the way of now and the future is fiber. No more traditional copper or other outdated wiring which has major limitations. Be sure you’re combining VoIP and the cloud with Fiber to get the most efficient set up.

Adding Lines & Users

With traditional copper wired phone and web connections every new employee or user would require an extension onto the current cabling structure. This is not only expensive but also time consuming. This means that older phone systems with these limitations are cost prohibitive to growth and make it far more difficult to get going. Not to mention with traditional internet like DSL, the further a user is from the central server room the slower their connection will be. With fiber internet and VoIP or Cloud phone systems you don’t have to deal with these same issues. You can simply add users under the current system as quickly as you like without incurring additional costs or downtime for new hardware installation. These are the systems for every growing company.

Upgrade Your Business Phone System

There is a multitude of reasons to upgrade your businesses phones. Not only in terms of built in growth, enhanced productivity, improved internal & external communication, and major cost saving; but also the ease of use. You’re getting the best of all technologies when you combine fiber internet with a cloud based VoIP business phone network. So be sure to get the ball rolling today and start seeing the benefits right away.

We’re finally opening back up from quarantine so it’s not longer an option to delay on changes to your current situation. For the best Business Phone System Westchester County NY, look no further than 30 years of local expertise right here at Top Line Communications. We proudly support the WBC (Westchester Business Counsel) and live right here where we operate. Stay safe from the entire team and we can get through this if we work together! 1-888-426-8647