VoIP for Small Business - Make Sure YOU Benefit!

Small Business VoIP Solutions

VoIP for Small Business is a frantically growing market, with companies eager to make significant savings on their operating costs.

If you’ve spent some time reading through some of our other articles, you’d have realised how VoIP can have enormous benefits for large companies. In fact, many are spending significant amounts of capital investing in VoIP equipment, in order to take advantage of the enhanced services, and the cost savings that it offers.

At the other end of the spectrum, you will also have seen how there has been phenomenal growth in home VoIP services, that is, Voice Over IP services to the individual. The key driver for this growth has been the cost benefits of subscribing to a service whereby calls can be made from PC to PC often for free, and then calls to other phones all around the world are significantly cheaper than they would be otherwise.

However, where does all this leave the small business? Can small companies gain benefit from moving over to VoIP, and what are the best means of doing so. In this article we take a look at just that question, in order to advise on the best options.

VoIP for small business is one of the fastest growing sectors of the industry, and the target market for a number of VoIP operators looking to grow their customer base. However, it is estimated that between 80-85% of all small businesses still use their incumbent telecommunications provider for all their business communications requirements, and this is a market the incumbent providers will try hard to hold on to.

What Type Of Small Business Can Benefit?

Clearly, the benefits of VoIP for Small Business depend entirely on the nature of the business and the types of communications required. If your business falls into one or more of the following categories, it is very likely that you could save considerable amounts by converting to Voice Over IP :

- Businesses that rely upon internet access, and in particular with more than one user requiring high-speed access to the internet

- Businesses that make a high volume of international calls every month, for example, those where their monthly bill for international calls is in excess of Ł100 ($190)

- Businesses that are focused on either tele-sales or another telephone based service, for example, telephone ordering, customer service, or switchboard services

- Businesses with a dispersed staff base. For example, where staff are home-working, or based in several different locations

- Businesses where staff spend a lot of time around PC’s, communicating with the same individuals in other locations on a regular basis.

In fact, the list above probably covers the majority of small businesses in one form or another!

What we’ll do now is to take you through the steps that will allow your business to become VoIP-enabled, where you’ll also get an indication of the cost savings you could make by changing over.

5 Steps to Becoming VoIP for Small Business-Enabled

1. The first essential step is to consider your current method of internet access, and move over to broadband. Depending on your business usage, anything from 1Mbit/second up to speeds of greater than 10Mbit/second can be used, but typically you won’t require much more than the minimum. There are a couple of specialist sites that will carry out a 'broadband speed check' for you to assess the speed of your broadband connectivity based on your post (zip) code. Broadband internet access on its own can save you a fortune over traditional dial-up, especially if you are accessing the internet on a daily basis for long periods of time.

2. Talk to your customers, suppliers, and anyone else you need to speak to on a regular basis, to find out who and what they are using for their own communications. If you talk to your biggest client several times on a daily basis, and this client for example is ‘Skype-enabled’, then it’s likely you will be able to contact them whenever you want for free. As you can imagine, if this client is based abroad, and you speak to them for average 1 hour per day, that may be costing you Ł50+ per week with your traditional provider – a straight-forward saving of Ł2,500 per year on your phone bill!

Don’t worry if this isn’t clear, click here to go to the tutorials explaining how VoIP works.

3. Consider your bill for internal communications. For example, do you and your staff spend a lot of time communicating with one another by phone? Is this forming a large part of your monthly phone bill? Again, simply by moving over to VoIP, and with a modest investment in hardware, you can minimise your internal communications bill by moving over to a PC-PC based system. As you will see, the additional applications and services available to you make running your business considerably easier.

4. Next, you will need to find the VoIP package that suits you and your business. As you can see from our online list of providers there are numerous different operators, all offering very different types of service. You may wish to subscribe to a monthly package, which in itself can offer you substantial savings to your business, or you may wish to purchase credits up front, or alternatively pay as you go. Shop around, as you may find that some providers offer ‘extras’ that will really enhance your VoIP for small business experience.

5. Finally, you will need to consider hardware in your VoIP for small business solution, namely either handsets or headsets that are compatible with a VoIP-based system. These are now relatively inexpensive, and we can offer advice on the best options available to you. Again, there are a wide range of different types available, each with differing capabilities, so an understanding of the different options will help you tailor the best solution for your business.

So where do we go next?

Having solved your broadband access issues (see (1) above, and having spoken to your key customers and suppliers, it’s time to make the change. Our section on VoIP for Small Business – Getting Started will get you under way. Or you may first wish to choose your hardware, namely your VoIP phone. The Choosing A VoIP Handset section will help you with all the advice you need.

Also, you will find it helpful to read the article on Small Business Phoner Systems which compares three of the key providers of small business systems on the market, and gives an unbiased view on the relative merits of each.

Finally, to see how businesses across Europe really are deploying IP telephony solutions, Return from VoIP for Small Business to Choosing A VoIP Handset Home Page