How to Select a Phone System for Your Small Office
In the past 5-10 years, communication in businesses and our personal lives has completely transformed, and one of the biggest concerns that small business owners have is keeping their phone and communication systems as up-to-date as possible. At Baron Communications, our networking experts can work with you find the find the perfect phone systems for a small office or other small business and make sure that every part of your communication system functions well and efficiently.
Your company's phone system is your direct line to your customers, and it also needs to be an efficient and effective way for your employees to communicate with one another. When you're selecting the products you'll use and designing your phone system, there are a number of things that you should keep in mind:
Your Staff
Look at your business plan and decide how many of your staff members will need to have a phone within the next three or four years. If you're just starting your business, you'll want to consider how much you plan to expand in the next few years. If your business is more established, it will probably be fairly stable over the next few years, but be sure to design a phone system that is in line with your future projections.
Make sure that your phone system will be able to support all incoming and inter-office traffic so that your staff will be able to complete their work efficiently.
Choose The System's Essential Features
There are a number of great features that your telephone system can have, but you'll need to decide on which will be essential to your business' operations:
- Will you have a receptionist, or will callers use an auto-attendant to reach certain individuals?
- Do you need conference calling or call forwarding services?
- Is voice-mail necessary? Will you need voice-mail to email services?
- Will your employees need mobile access to the system?
Decide on which features you'll need and compare systems based on that.
Other Tips
- Don't make a decision without weighing the future growth of your company. You don't want to need to have the system replaced in the near future, and spending on the system now will be better than having an inadequate system later.
- Ask for a demonstration before you make a purchase. Make sure that the system's interface is easy to use and that you won't be spending money on training for the system later on. Also make sure that you understand how to add new users.