Despite advances in technology like online chat and social media, the telephone remains an important connection point to your customers. Using a traditional private branch exchange (PBX) leaves your enterprise vulnerable to natural disasters and other causes of downtime. The potential for lost revenue and customers is a good reason to consider the benefits of hosted Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

The downtime culprits: It’s important to be aware of the types of situations that can lead to telephone downtime, so that you can anticipate them and have a plan for getting back online in the event of an outage.

• Natural disasters like a fire or a flood can impact your own building, or they can cause an outage at a phone company switch that leads to your lines being down.
• System failures can occur because lightning has struck a local power pole, or because a local power outage is affecting your phone system. You can also have a hardware problem that causes a system failure, such as a malfunctioning PBX due to overheating.
• The human element can contribute to a number of problems, such as theft or an employee spilling a full cup of coffee on your PBX.

The hosted VoIP alternative: The cloud has introduced a disruption to commerce that has not been seen since the advent of widespread Internet use. It offers streamlined solutions with measurable cost savings that reach to every area of business processes, including phone systems. Hosting your phone system in the cloud provides a variety of benefits:

• No down time, ever: When you choose hosted VoIP, your phone system will never go down because of a natural disaster, a system failure, or because someone spilled their coffee. Your phone platform resides in your service provider’s data center, not in your own office building.
• Expanded mobility: If your enterprise is matching broader trends, you likely have a growing percentage of your workforce stationed at a home office. With VoIP, setting up additional phone lines is as easy as plugging in and picking up the handset.
• Reduced hardware risks: With a traditional phone system, you would simply be out of luck if there was a hardware problem. With hosted VoIP, calls are easily routed to another device, so if there’s a problem with a handset, you have a lot of flexibility without losing connectivity.
• Customer access: Even when power lines are down, your hosted VoIP will be taking calls. You will no longer rely on electricity for a connection with your customers.

If you have a customer considering hosted VoIP, contact our consultants at Innovative Business Solutions. Whether you are a managed service provider, IT Vendor, telephone hardware VAR, or commercial real estate broker, we would love to partner with you.