[Or – VoIP – and why Foxhall Solutions is good for start-ups …]
Many companies come-alive on a dining-room table and while a land-line or a mobile phone may be a convenient way to start off your company telecom’s, it becomes more ‘limiting’ as the company grows.
The ‘olden days’ …
In the pre-VoIP days, it used to be that you would order a new phone line to be installed at your home, and that number would then be advertised on your new business cards and website, you might also choose to have a broadband service on that line.
Doing this, incurred installation costs and tied you into a contract period with the Telecom’s provider. It also meant that it was difficult to expand this new line and number to include a colleague or new employee that needed a phone to work with you and promote your business. Then, when it came time to move off that kitchen table and set up your growing business at a local serviced office, you found that you couldn’t cancel your phone line without paying a contract penalty – and you couldn’t take your business number with you either!
VoIP and the right Telecom’s company changes all that …
Modern telecom’s …
Foxhall Solutions can provide a new business with a phone number for any UK area code and have a soft-phone on a laptop operational & ringing for that business in a couple of hours (using an existing broadband Internet connection). Further ‘extensions’ ringing under that same number and using the same calling plan, can be generated for colleagues and employees in minutes. There is also a range of VoIP phone-sets available to allow you to choose between desk and cordless phones as you prefer. They can be programmed and shipped to you in one to two days.
Each phone has a fixed-fee calling plan so that the monthly rental covers all calls to UK geographic numbers and mobiles, making it easy to budget no matter how many calls you need to make to get your business established. Calls that are diverted off to your mobile when you are out-of-office are included in that plan.
The extensions have full PBX facilities behind them, so you can transfer a call to a colleague, and have ring-groups, call-queues or Auto-attendants (IVR) to ensure that incoming calls will go to the right person.
Moving and shaking …
When the time comes for that office move, you can just take the VoIP phone with you, plug it into the network at your new office and carry on making and taking calls as before. Your colleagues and employees can do the same. The number remains with the phone[s]. There are no lines to cancel and no contracts to escape from – and there is no need for a marketing drive to inform your customer base of your change of phone number!
Hosted or PBX? …
Telecom’s companies will either promote ‘Hosted VoIP‘ – where you rent handsets that are connected through the Internet to a ‘Cloud’ VoIP PBX – or – will sell an on-site IP-PBX solution with SIP Trunk channels in an Internet connection. Hosted VoIP offers low-cost start-up, being the cost of a phone and the first month’s rental, but can be expensive as your business and the number of phones you need – grows. An on-site PBX has an initial capital cost for the central IP-PBX and the phones and is usually only cost-effective at five or more handsets – but, the monthly service costs for an on-site PBX, are far lower than for Hosted extensions.
Foxhall offers you the best of both worlds! Start off hosted, but then reduce costs by moving to an on-premise IP-PBX as your system expands and costs escalate. This process is seamless and can be done without business disruption.
As your business expands it makes sense to change the service and pricing model. It becomes expensive to ‘rent’ multiple phone-sets when you usually need a lot less line ‘channels’ than extensions on a business phone system. Typically, a standard business phone system will have three times the number of extensions as lines (Call Centres are an exception of course). In addition, the core systems for VoIP are low-cost (a 300 extension Yeastar S300 retails at less than the cost of an iPhone). Therefore, it makes sense to purchase a core IP-PBX, switch to a SIP Trunk model and rent a set of trunk lines to drive down the cost of ownership. Foxhall Solutions can make that change for you with just one month’s notice.
While there is huge scope for growth & change in your telecom’s strategy, It is possible to sit in that top-floor, corner-office of the tower block you now own, in a city that’s an hour away from where you live – and answer a call to the same number, on the same phone that started it all those years ago, on the kitchen table.
Call us at Foxhall Solutions to talk about how your phone system can help you grow your business …
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