VOIP technology, What can it do for you?

What is a VOIP telephony solution?

VOIP Stands for “Voice over IP” and uses your internet connection instead of your phone lines to make calls. By making calls over the network, you open up a huge range of possibilities of using and monitoring the data coming in and out. It also gives cost saving benefits and added functionalities to your phone systems that can be a great asset for any company.

What can a VOIP phone do that a regular handset can’t?

The typical handset’s functionalities nowadays are limited to VM on a singular device and simply making calls. But what if you have remote workers, or often travel and can’t always be at your desk? Do you have to wait before you get back in the office to listen to potentially important voicemails, do you have to manage separate contacts via mobile and handset? And how do you monitor your employee’s performance on the phone, and see trends in what could be improved and what works? For the average company these problems have led to bespoke software and solutions to manage these issues but what if there was an easier way?

With VOIP phone systems such as IP Cortex, these issues are now pre-emptively tackled all in one system. What IP Cortex can offer is hot desking, softphone, video conferencing/realtime collaboration and data management all in one phone system. However in order to take advantage of this technology you will need to allocate at least 2mb bandwidth for a stable connection & quality voice call service.

To sort through these in order, hot desking will allow your staff to use their handset anywhere as long as they are registered on the system and have the login credentials. If this isn’t enough then you can use their newly advance Keevio system which like a softphone solution, turns any device that can use a browser into a handset, capable of video conferencing, calling, IM’ing and file sharing others on the system and it’s able to integrate into your CRM for easy management. Therefore if you’re someone that has a lot of remote workers in your business, you can easily boost their productivity by allowing them to work on the fly. Whether you are looking at having Handsets or implementing the Keevio system, they are both incredibly easy to setup and monitor. By having an easy to understand statistics screen, you can understand how many calls you are receiving, time taken to answer those calls and average call length etc. Couple this with the ability to log all information into your CRM and you have an all-inclusive phone system to cover almost any need. Rather than ask the question of “what can the VOIP phone system do?” it’s better to ask the question “what can’t it do?”

How easy is the setup of a VOIP system and what are the costs involved?

Switching your phone system to a VOIP solution is very simple. Unlike your typical phone system, VOIP handsets don’t require phone access points, and are simple to install as they only need to be connected to the network via an Ethernet cable. This means no extra phone cabling needs to be run through the office making it fairly easy to setup. Also due to its advanced systems, you can also merge your fax and telephone line into one. On top of this, all of the features previously mentioned are not add-ons, but come with the product.

The cost involved in setting up a VOIP telephony solution is extremely cost effective, based on the services you will receive. You will need to first purchase an IP cortex unit based on the amount of concurrent calls you need to make, pay a monthly fee for a sip trunks provider and a monthly fee for maintenance and your calls and that’s it. Once you have the system in place you will also immediately begin to see cost savings on your calls. As you won’t be using standard telephone lines, calls to other VOIP phones will be free.

What if my internet cuts out or the phone system goes down?

Having a robust system in place for any key service is vital for any company. Therefore VOIP telephony solutions are no different. The level of security and levels of failover will depend entirely on what you are willing to pay for, as the system can be 99.9% secure. The reason for this is that you can have multiple IP Cortex units that synchronize information with each other and instantly failover in the case of one of the units failing to work to give you maximum availability and security. With regards to the internet going down, you can simply make sure your internet lines are made more robust by having failover ISDN lines. By improving your own disaster recovery plans, you will essentially ensure that your VOIP phone system will be as reliable as possible.

Want to know more?

If this sound like something your business could use then why not contact Southbank IT to know more. Our experts can help you talk through more of the benefits and how it can be tailored to you. Also check out https://www.ipcortex.co.uk/ for more information on solutions and about their award winning technology.