Smart Business Magazine, November 2014

60 Smart Business Cleveland November 2014 VoIP The economy of scale How VoIP can save money during business expansion When a business is in expansion mode there are many expenses that accompany its growth But if an expanding company has the economy of scale benefit thats inherent to VoIP the more offices it opens the more cost savings it has the potential to see There is so much duplication when trying to offer traditional phone service if you have multiple offices says Alex Desberg sales and marketing director at Ohio net If we can get rid of that duplication that extra waste you really start to see some economic benefit and efficiencies within telecommunications Smart Business spoke with Desberg to find out how businesses with multiple locations are able to save money and streamline their labor efforts by using VoIP What kinds of issues do some businesses experience with a traditional phone system in multiple office locations Some companies have six or seven locations across the region and every one has a different phone system different provider and one IT person trying to manage it all Sometimes theyre on legacy equipment where they inherited an old phone system culture An IT or telecom manager may get separate bills for phone service for the vendor that takes care of phone systems for Internet and for long distance and each invoice needs to be reviewed and approved But with VoIP its all on one bill saving a lot of time How does moving to a VoIP system increase efficiencies VoIP can turn multiple phone systems into one cloud based system reducing the resources that the provider needs to maintain Its hosted so the provider only needs to go to one place to effect change or support or update the system for the customer If a phone provider has to go on site to update change or move a phone around that adds cost In a hosted environment such as with VoIP the providers staff doesnt have to go anywhere because they have remote access to everything that the clients business is using With phone support issues if there are multiple vendors a company with a traditional phone system may spend a lot of time trying to figure out which vendor to call to service the phone system Internet etc Using VoIP a service call turns into a brief phone call rather than an hour of trying to figure out who does what Another issue is reporting VoIP reporting shows everything a customer has how much is being used whos calling who and that reporting is available online Customers can see a full call detail report any time they want Traditionally you would need to call your phone provider and request a report and that can be a huge set of phone records that need to be manually reviewed How do VoIP systems save money for companies with multiple locations When multiple locations each have their own phone system theres time effort and money involved in keeping each running Theres a base cost per location Even if its inexpensive there are still costs associated with it and theyll need resources running that phone system at each location Phone systems should also be built to allow for some expandability Its a mistake to put in the minimum amount of phone lines just to get by Its better to ensure accessibility and be able to answer all the calls a business receives every day That may lead to a provider over building a little bit But with VoIP that extra capacity is built in at one location and it still has that expandability It creates a better cost model Do business owners who use VoIP have the opportunity for labor savings as well Yes Traditionally organizations want fewer people doing the same amount of work that would be accomplished with greater human resources With a cloud based phone model you dont need somebody who is technically inclined to be able to maintain and update the system because it is part of the providers service The company can subsequently invest resources into running its business rather than learning a phone system ALEX DESBERG Sales and marketing director Ohio net adesberg@ ohio net Insights Telecommunications is brought to you by Ohio net INTERVIEWED BY HEATHER TUNSTALL INSIGHTS TELECOMMUNICATIONS SOCIAL MEDIA Connect with us on Facebook or Twitter @ OhioNetInternet