Hosted VoIP Lite: Getting Your Feet Wet

Making the move to a new business phone system can be downright scary. The communications technology that a company chooses has become so critical to business efficiency, that one IT misstep can easily set you back weeks in terms of productivity.

This is just one of the many reasons we’ve seen businesses turn to a hosted VoIP phone system. With hosted VoIP, there’s no big upfront commitment. No massive equipment or servers to finance, no infrastructure changes, no heavy wiring. You are free to try out the system with as small of an initial deployment as you’re comfortable taking on – even just a single phone – before deciding if it’s right for your business.

The Way It Used to Be (Traditional PBX)

Before the days of hosted VoIP, your IT decision maker’s best friend was research. They’d spend hours reading white papers, watching presentations, or attending webinars on why they should choose one PBX vendor over another. The prospect of trying out a phone system live on your premise with little to no commitment was laughable. There was simply too much that needed to be done to get it to work, and no vendors that would do that work without expecting to be paid in full.

It’s not the vendor’s fault, really, but a problem in on-premise technology itself. All premise-based PBX systems require equipment and wiring that takes a solid investment of time and money. If things don’t work out, whether the technology simply isn’t a good fit, the service isn’t reliable, or the customer support is lacking — it’s too late. You’ve already signed on the dotted line and there’s no going back.

But over the past few years, hosted VoIP has changed the game. Speculative research and sales fluff has given way to live on-site demonstrations, demo phones, and the advent of the phased-in VoIP phone system.

The Phased-In VoIP Phone System

As businesses become more savvy about VoIP phone system technology, we’re seeing more and more opting to get started with a small set of VoIP phones (or even just one). These phones use your business’s existing data connection, requiring no invasive wiring, no premise hardware, and can be up and running in the course of a single visit.

This way, your key players like the head of IT, the CEO, or even a small department can serve as guinea pigs without impacting the day-to-day operation of the entire business. These limited roll-outs can often be fully integrated with your existing business phone system for a seamless phasing-in of phones over time.

And it doesn’t take long. As you experience important factors such as call quality, reliability, potency of features, and ease of use, the decision largely makes itself. If you’re not happy with the technology, it’s easy enough to pull the plug. If you’re confident in the technology, the ability to add new phones anywhere at any time helps you ramp up your deployment to include additional departments and even additional locations.

Are you ready to try hosted VoIP for yourself?  Give our consultants a call at 888-955-3520 to have a risk-free, no-obligation conversation about how you can test out FreedomIQ for yourself with a small deployment.