It’s no secret that business owners are always looking for ways to cut their monthly expenses. If you own or manage a business, there’s one area that has big savings potential that you may have overlooked – your business communications. Are you stuck with a legacy phone system that is bleeding you dry and needs to be replaced? Voice over IP (VoIP) can be a great option for your small or medium-sized business. Typically, the primary reason businesses switch to VoIP is to save money. There are several potential cost savings in a VoIP system and particularly a hosted or cloud-based solution vs. traditional phone systems, some of which include:

Hardware

Most phone systems require an expensive up-front hardware cost. With a traditional phone system, if your company needs an auto-attendant, you have to purchase auto-attendant hardware and pay for installation. Additionally, if you need to add a second auto-attendant to another location, you are forced to purchase additional hardware. With VoIP, you have complete freedom to change or update your system in real time, without any extra purchases or installation. Add users or phones instantly, update IVRs, route calls to any location, all without any added expense or hardware.

Maintenance

Just like any other machine, phone system hardware can fail, and when it does, the downtime can cost your company thousands. If you deploy VoIP in the cloud, you can easily eliminate worrisome hardware failures, and other maintenance issues that result in lost revenue. Also, older phone systems have parts that are becoming very expensive to purchase, and hard to come by. Add on top of that the cost of a technical expert to maintain the system, and you have one very expensive way of communicating. Keep in mind that because companies aren’t making the old phone systems anymore, the people that know how to maintain them are becoming scarce, so their services are becoming more expensive. This will only continue to go up in cost over the years as more businesses switch to VoIP solutions.

Calling Fees

Since IP telephony connects calls over the Internet, businesses using VoIP avoid paying any long distance or interstate fees. Moreover, international calls can be made at half the cost of traditional landline-based communications.

Free Upgrades

As with many forms of technology, phone systems require periodic updates, which are your responsibility if you have a traditional phone system. With VoIP, the upgrades are covered by your provider, and you should always have access to top-of-the-line equipment.

Mobility

Traditional landline phones keep you tethered to your desk for fear of missing an important phone call. If you need to move offices, whether across the hall or across town, you have to manually reroute your phone number to your new location. With VoIP, your number represents your account, not your physical location, so it travels with you wherever you go. As long as you have an IP connection at your new location, a VoIP system recognizes it as a handset and you are good to go. VoIP takes mobility a step further by utilizing smartphone apps, making your mobile phone an extension of your network, which allows you to take business calls on your smartphone no matter where you are.

Advanced Features

Majority of VoIP providers offer advanced features that can help small to mid-sized businesses appear larger and well established, at no additional cost. Features such as auto-assistant, call routing, music on hold, presence, find-me-follow-me, and many others help smaller businesses appear more professional and capable of exceptional customer service- which always increases business.

Conclusion

These are just a few of the ways VoIP can be a big cost savings for businesses of all sizes. However, it is important to pick the right vendor for VoIP services and equipment to make sure they are the best match for your specific business needs.