Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) seemed to make sense for residential customers a long time ago looking to save money on their long distance bills. However, the technology never seemed to catch on quite as rapidly in the business sector. Voice quality seemed to always be a concern that businesses large and small weren’t willing to sacrifice in order to save some money on their long distance bill. However, times are changing, and now VoIP may make more sense for small businesses than ever before. Here are some reasons why:

• Scalability – Most VoIP providers that specialize in VoIP Implementation for businesses will provide several different flexible options for small to medium sized businesses. Sign with a provider that is willing to sit and talk with you about your individual business needs and how to scale a VoIP network to those needs specifically. Lack of flexibility from a provider is simply not an option.

• Cost Savings – This one is rather obvious. The reason most business owners want to switch to VoIP is to save on long distance calling. The temptation here to be wary of, however, is to sign with a provider that offers the lowest implementation costs, which for most small businesses will typically run somewhere between $500 – $1,000. The wisest move, consequently, may be to go with a larger and more established provider with perhaps slightly higher implementation fees. This choice will inevitably save you money with a more reliable network and better customer service in the long run. To the penny-wise executive, it can be easy to view this approach as somewhat abstract and not tangible enough to meet your more immediate budget needs, but it really does prove to be the wisest move down the road in the vast majority of cases. Accurate forecasting to see how spending more money here short term can save money long term.

• Features – VoIP can be a very feature-rich option now for your business. Some examples include: (1) Call forwarding is perfect for today’s mobile office environments. (2) Multi-faceted attendant consoles, which control and manage all your calls in one small, simple interface. (3) Click to call searches through a list of past calls or saved numbers and with one click on your PC, you are dialed in. This is deal for businesses with large client lists and contacts. Call sequencing, email configurations, and faxing options are a few more valuable features that implementing VoIP can offer your business to increase both profitability and productivity

101 Digital, Inc. provides IT solutions for small businesses. With IT Consulting and expert Network Services, we provide everything you need to keep your technology running at its optimal level contact us to discuss how we can help your business succeed. We look forward to hearing from you!