After making the decision to move your business from a landline phone service to VoIP Phone system, you’ll want to ensure that you’re able to deploy the new service as smoothly as possible.
Many businesses go through an initial struggle when implementing VoIP services. However, below, you can learn more about what these common risks are and the steps you can take to avoid them.
Our Guide to Avoiding Risks When Implementing A VoIP Phone System for Your Business
Create a Detailed Plan
The main step to implementing a VoIP systems successfully into your business is to create a detailed plan. Be sure to consider the bandwidth requirements of the phone system before installation to ensure that you have the internet capacity to handle it. As a result, the transmission quality can be enhanced.
You’ll also want to be sure that you’ve prepared properly for the software and installation process to allow for some downtime in communications.
If you’re feeling unsure of being able to carry out these steps completely on your own, it may be worth seeking a VoIP provider like Ooma Business, RingCentral, 8×8 or Nextiva that has customer support who can guide you every step of the way.
Analog Equipment
It’s becoming more common for businesses to abandon analog equipment. Having said that, there are still plenty of businesses that need to keep certain pieces of analog equipment to continue running the company smoothly.
For example, things like credit card machines are a necessity for many businesses. However, they don’t necessarily work with IP solutions.
Therefore, you’ll want to be careful when it comes to considering which analog items to leave in the past and which ones to bring with you while using VoIP services. [Related: Business VoIP Providers Comparisons]
Enhanced 911 Compliance Guidelines
The E911 compliance guidelines require VoIP systems to adhere to their restrictions. These guidelines involve VoIP systems being compliant with the Public Safety Answering Point.
This means that data on location and telephones is to be automatically transmitted. We recommend sticking with business providers that have gained a good reputation over the years as they’re more likely to stick to these guidelines and keep you out of trouble.
It may also be a good idea to find VoIP providers that provides you with IT and telephone support, as well as security and safety features.
Preventing Downtime
In order to run your VoIP system to the best of its abilities, you’ll want to make sure that your internet connection is up to speed. A strong internet connection boosts the many benefits that your business can experience by implementing VoIP services. If your internet connection goes down, your VoIP system goes down along with it.
Networks with poor connections is one of the biggest reasons as to why companies experience downtime with their VoIP services. Many businesses have started to deploy backup plans to prepare for network outages so that business can continue as normal until the network is back up.
A UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) is another important factor to consider. If the power goes out completely, you won’t be able to access your VoIP services. Having a UPS can help to provide your modem with power for a short period, by which time, you may have been able to get the power on for things to continue as normal.
Taking Advantage of Productivity Benefits
One of the main ways that you can implement VoIP services smoothly into your business is to properly train your employees on how to use the wide range of productivity features that are available.
Below, you can learn more about what some of these productivity benefits are and how your team can learn to use them.
- Conference calls – Conference calls allow for multiple people to be involved in a conversation, no matter where they are. As long as they’ve got their phone with the VoIP software, you can host conference calls from anywhere at any time.
- Remote office – You can have all of the calls made to your line routed to a specific phone. This is handy if you were working from home and wanted to have important calls directed to the phone that you have and not the one that’s at work.
- Do not disturb modes – Do not disturb modes can be excellent for minimizing distractions so that employees can focus on deep work and be highly productive.
- Priority calling – if you’re expecting an important phone call from someone, you can set their number as a priority. This means that the phone only rings when that specific number calls to avoid distractions and delays.
Conclusion
Now that you know more about some of the common reasons as to why some businesses have issues deploying VoIP systems, you can be sure to use the tips in this post to avoid the same issues.
VoIP software can enhance the way you do business is incredibly powerful ways, but only as long as it’s incorporated properly. Hopefully, the details found in this article have been useful in helping you to feel more confident about making the move to VoIP systems.