voip buyers guide: choosing the right voip · voip solutions can transform your business...

VoIP Buyers Guide:Choosing the right VoIP phone system

Document Document classification: Public | October 2018

Introduction

It’s important to understand your options, your current business needs and future requirements before making a purchasing decision for a business phone system in the cloud.

Onsite phone systems are expensive to maintain and their restrictions may not fit with your business needs. If you are looking to move your phone systems to the cloud, it is crucial to map business and functional requirements to the solutions available.

With the right business phone system, companies can save time and money. A telephony platform should come with a wide range of features as standard, but buyers should be wary of hidden costs for additional features from some providers. The system should be scalable and able to integrate with other systems and applications in your company, such as CRM.

Moving to the cloud should not only be a financial no brainer but also deliver better technology to your users driving greater efficiencies in your workforce. The aim of this buyer’s guide is to provide essential information and useful tips to consider before making your decision.

Document classification: Public | October 2018

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To learn more about Foehn please call 0330 403 0000 or visit www.foehn.co.uk

VoIP Buyers Guide: Choosing the right VoIP phone system


Over the past five years, cloud connectivity has been a huge catalyst in the adoption of VoIP, making deployment even simpler, making functionality more

powerful and making ownership more affordable.

Voip in the 21st Century: An indispensable business advantage

The evolution of VoIP

Recent years have seen an influx of bright new competitors, so-called ‘born-in-the-cloud businesses’. Their customer service is slicker, their response time is quicker, their prices are more competitive and your customers are taking an interest.

But why? Your people have more experience and your product is better. The clue comes when it comes to contacting them. By phone, email, text or web site, response is always quick, even if your contact is out of the office. You’re always put through to somebody, without waiting, and that person is always fully armed with your customer history. Clearly, their communications have got something that yours don’t have.

VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol now applies to a whole raft of different phone and contact centre systems, where technologies have merged and where terminology has become blurred. So, let’s set things straight.

Over the past ten years VoIP has changed business communications from telecommunications to unified communications and most recently, in this age of digitalisation, it has caused a minor revolution in driving collaboration, automation and improving the way we work.

Instead of running your phones and computers over different networks it ‘converges’ them onto one. When that happens, you can make voice, messaging, email, video and a whole lot of applications interact together as ‘unified communications’.

Effectively, voice calls are treated like data and your communications become applications, not hardware-driven. That means you can run them from anywhere – your office, a data centre, the cloud, your mobile phone or a third-party service provider. It also means you can streamline your working practices, work remotely, save time and accelerate your business.

Most phones sold over the past ten years are VoIP enabled, but many owners are unaware of their features and capabilities. There’s even a chance that, like a surprising number of UK SMEs, your phone system may still run on old-fashioned ‘TDM’, not IP, connected to a metal box (PBX) in the store room at the back of your office. You can transfer calls, take voicemail and set call forwarding, but not a lot more. Either way, your video conferencing system probably collects dust in the boardroom whilst employees prefer using their own computers or smart phones to run Skype - cloud-based VoIP.

Over the past five years, cloud connectivity has been a huge catalyst in the adoption of VoIP, making deployment even simpler, making functionality more powerful and making ownership more affordable. Cloud VoIP systems were considered state of the art, despite the fact that some providers, like Foehn, were running VoIP phone systems for almost a decade.

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Small Growing Medium Growing Larger Company

Up to 20 employees

You need to set up fast with a main number

You are non-technical but want control of your telephony

Flexibility to work from home, in the office or on the move

Appear big on a budget with a professional business image /

Integrate with your CRM system

Keep your costs low

20 to 99 employees

Fast set-up of new employees and departments

Permission based access for supervisors and users

Adapt your telephony periodically to business demands

Keep your costs low with no capex

Support your business growth fast and remain agile

100+ employees

Add new agents and sites and scale as business expands

Integrations with CRM and other business systems

Advanced customisable call routing and reporting

Minimal capital expenditure

Support your business growth fast and remain agile

Quick set-up and delivery of your ‘plug and ring’ ready HD Voice

Handsets

Easy to use portal for admin and users

Control of your dial plan, IVR

Professional call management

Low cost, per user, monthly pricing

Free minutes per user UK geographic landline numbers (01,02,03)

24/7 Support

Define Admins Supervisors or Manager rights at different levels

Dial plan control and call management, IVR, ACD

Integrations with your CRM and other business systems

Automated call distribution

Advanced call logging and reporting

24/7 Support

Scale with ease and add agents and sites with ease

Robust centralised system to support multiple locations

Advance call management

Multiple integrations for CRM and other business services

Advanced atomic reporting in real-time

Full monitoring and 24/7 support

Your business needs Your business needs Your business needs

Your phone systemrequirements



If you’re looking for a hosted phone system, the first area that needs consideration when choosing a platform is the context in which you operate – both now and in the future. For example, will employees be making and receiving calls only when at their desks in the office? Does the company need to support home workers, flexible workers or a largely mobile workforce? Identifying key business needs first will help buyers to focus on requirements that are most critical.

The following table can help you focus on which requirements are more important to your growing business.

Identify Your Business Needs First

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Having established you need a VoIP phone system, there are immediately a lot of options and questions concerning which type of VoIP system is best suited to your business - on-premise, managed service, hosted, private cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud…? Furthermore, the versatility of VoIP raises questions concerning integration – CRM, Skype, fixed-to-mobile, call centre….?

VoIP solutions can transform your business performance but the challenge is selecting the system that your business needs. The choice depends on the way a business wants to operate today whilst anticipating the future requirements of its communications strategy.

At this point it’s tempting to dive straight into the exciting features VoIP has to offer, but that comes later. First you need to address some basic questions and decide on your comms strategy and the type of system your business needs in the longer term.

Assessing your VoIP phone system options

If you invested heavily in your current system, or you need only moderate VoIP functionality, or you’re going to move offices and replace your entire system in the mid-term – you may want to convert your TDM based system to IP. This can be done by introducing IP gateways and SIP trunking connectivity that convert your communications to IP. It will save money on calls between offices and deliver limited additional features but these are false economies. It’s also a rather dated solution that by current standards is clunky and just puts a sticking plaster over the real issue. Also, this route may cause problems in getting support from the system vendor. Far better is to consider a full replacement with a modern, dedicated VoIP phone system, particularly a hosted solution. You’ll be surprised at how much cheaper, simpler and effective this approach can be.

The rise of hosted, managed and cloud systems, where the system is owned by a third party that offers access charged on a ‘per seat’ pricing model, has gained huge popularity amongst businesses that prefer to put their money to work in the P&L rather than incur capital expenditure. However, the extra-low interest rates of recent years have encouraged some businesses to undertake outright purchase. It’s not just hardware you’re paying for though. Consider also the cost of upgrades, maintenance and depreciation – all additional costs that a hosted pricing model normally includes in the monthly payment.

Do you want to upgrade your old onsite system to VoIP?

How do you want to pay for a new system?

Where do you want to locate your new VoIP system?

Some businesses prefer to keep their system on site. Compliance or mandatory security regulations may demand this or they simply, and rather irrationally, perceive data centre hosting as insecure. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Data centres and cloud hosting employ the latest, state of the art network security, anti-virus software and data backup that wouldn’t be affordable to most SMEs. Furthermore, the data centre building offers far greater protection and environmental control to ensure the physical protection of equipment, all backed up by business continuity systems and ‘redundancy’ to support disaster recovery.

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Do you want to own your system or subscribe to a hosted VoIP service?

The total cost of ownership for a VoIP phone system extends far beyond the purchase price. Upgrades and maintenance plus the cost of monitoring, management and general support need to be taken into account. A hosted contract normally amortises these costs into the monthly payment and, importantly, includes a service level agreement to ensure your communications run trouble-free. From the outset, though, the chances of technical problems with a hosted system are small because the equipment is always maintained at the highest, most up to date specification. Similarly, the system is managed by a trained and experienced support team, something that can be a challenge for a cash-strapped, business IT department.

A hosted VoIP system also keeps you in control, usually equipped with a management console that lets you change configuration of the system, add or remove users, assign features to specific employees and monitor performance. In this way, you gain the upside of ownership, with management and control of services, but you don’t inherit the downside costs.

Is a managed service an option for the SME?

The pressure on IT resources is a problem common to many businesses and in these circumstances a managed service can be an appropriate solution. Whether the system is on site or located in the data centre, managed service providers will enhance, run and maintain your VoIP phone system to guaranteed service levels. For low resource IT departments or businesses embarking on an out-sourcing strategy, this approach meets objectives, but it comes at a price and it delegates control into the trust of a third party. How will they respond? Are they agile enough to make small but crucial changes to configurations, like a ring strategy for example? For larger organisations with specialist technology and multi-national branches, a managed service with an established network of resources in overseas countries can provide best value for money. Less often is this an SME benefit.

Why you should be looking to the cloud for your VoIP phone systemThe owner-managed, on-site PBX from the big-brand vendors may still be a valid solution for a minority of businesses but the tangible competitive advantages of cloud and hosted alternatives are powerful. The middle road followed by hybrid cloud systems and the public cloud options (Microsoft, Google, etc) may suit the big enterprise. For the smaller business, though, the agility and customer support of a cloud communications specialist offer the basis of a more productive long term partnership.

The advent of the cloud as a reliable, secure and technically viable environment for application service delivery has taken hosted communications to a new level. Testament to the wholesale acceptance of cloud services is the number of legal firms, generally accepted as the most cautious and cynical of IT consumers, now adopting cloud services including communications. Whilst delivering all the benefits of a hosted solution, the cloud is all about providing access to high performance applications and delivering on-demand services anywhere on any devices. The impact of the cloud on communications has resulted in an explosion of productivity-boosting applications that use the versatility of the cloud to make integration simple.

The flexibility of subscribing to a VoIP cloud phone system means you can now access a platform that bristles with innovative features and integrates with the new exciting applications that appear on the market daily. This latent ability of the cloud to drive innovation is demonstrated well in the rise of cloud Contact Centres that have capitalised on the versatility and agility of cloud services to provide a vast array of features, such as scaling of contact centre resources to meet market conditions, integrating customer data with VoIP calls and linking multiple features to improve the customer experience.

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Benefits of moving your telephone system to the cloudMore and more companies are enjoying the business and technical benefits of hosting their phone system in the cloud.

Minimal capital expenditure

This helps cash flow and helps a business to retain capital for growth.

Reduced cost

Physical maintenance charges are no longer required.

Reduced risk

Because cloud phone systems are scalable you only pay for what you use.

Increased professionalism

Small and medium sized businesses can have all of the telephony power and functionality that enterprise level companies have for just a fraction of the cost.

With the right choice of cloud phone system a business need never miss a call from a prospect or customer.

Having someone to answer calls professionally is equally important. Even small to medium sized companies can afford a system with an auto-attendant answering service, music on hold, call queuing, voicemail and the ability to forward to any other phone number, including mobiles.

Scalability

Cloud phone systems can scale up and down, enabling companies to easily flex to meet the demands of seasonal fluctuations - January for holiday companies, November for pre-Christmas rush and so on.

Lines & access – voice – data benefits

The planning issues associated with call concurrency and line provision are removed. With a hosted service, dial tone is provided as required.

Easy to use management & administration

No management, no backups and no technical staff required.

Freedom of choice

Opt for a hard desk phone or softphone and connect with your business phone system while on the move.

Choose where staff work

Location independent working is increasing in popularity across organisations of all sizes and this capability opens up many opportunities to get the most out of a mobile workforce.

More responsive

Faster provisioning and service deployment.

Greater control

Choosing the right cloud phone system can offer a business greater control of its telephony.

Using an administration portal a business owner or administrator can even set different permissions at a business wide and user level.

Business Benefits Technical Benefits

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Could I convert my VoIP phone system to a cloud system in the future?

Is Skype for Business the right cloud solution for the SME?

Yes, many larger companies have been doing just that. Those that have forked out hundreds of thousands on VoIP kit five to ten years ago have watched the simultaneous rise of cloud communications and the comparative decline of their return on investment. In response, they have moved their systems to the data centre and capitalised on server virtualisation to integrate new applications and manage their systems remotely from the office.

Other, more risk-averse businesses have taken a half way measure with a hybrid cloud arrangement. The main VoIP server remains at the company offices whilst certain applications (e.g. video, messaging) are run from the cloud. Either way, cloud migration and hybrid cloud strategies are the domains of the larger enterprise trying to recover return on their investment. For most SMEs, adoption of the cloud for the entire communications portfolio of communications is a much simpler and cost-effective decision.

You can’t ignore Skype for Business, if only because it comes from Microsoft who still control 75% of desktops amongst the world’s mid-size to large enterprises, plus a lot more. But, unlike their longer established applications, Skype for Business doesn’t serve the SME with the same empathy. That seems strange because Skype’s origins are amongst the world’s smallest businesses and personal users. The driving force behind Skype for Business has always been Lync, and Microsoft OCS before that. In the past, these solutions have served the large enterprise and the current Skype for Business inherits this focus, leaving the SME space under-served on pricing, feature sets and support service.

Evidence of this appears when attempting to understand the complex pricing and bundling of services. From day one, even the larger businesses have been caught out by pricing that, in a typical Microsoft way, tries to lock you into the extended suite of Skype for Business services. Many early adopters who took on the messaging and presence features for free have since been surprised at the upscaling of prices for voice and video licences.

Starting with the on-premise based Skype for Business Server, integrating with MS Office and providing a comprehensive set of unified comms services, Microsoft has expanded out to integrate with the cloud-based Office 365, incorporating Cloud PBX to marry Office 365 with comms features. These Online Services achieve full voice capability by combining with additional features, including their Skype4B PSTN Calling Service, to provide breakout to the public telecoms network, and Skype for Business Cloud Connector to enable cloud access from a premise-based phone system.

From here on, the complexity and variations in licence options increase while service tie-in escalates - all at odds with the needs of all SMEs to maintain simplicity and freedom to change. The fact is, Microsoft is a relative newcomer to the world of voice and communications. The attempt to catch up and deliver voice in the shortest possible time has created a bottleneck of solutions, and it shows. Applications and licences are changed frequently and it can be a confusing process deciding on what’s best for your business. For example, Microsoft recently reallocated Skype for Business online into its ‘Teams’ category.

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Freedom & Agility

Open source enables you to stay free from vendor lock-in and maintain the option of working with components and hardware that are not supplied by a particular vendor. Open source gives you the ability to develop and add your own features through improved service agility –for example, you can benefit from immediate controlover your dial plan, IVR structure, call distribution andmessaging.

Security & StabilitySystems built on open source foundations are highly stable and extremely secure. Under the close watch of a very large community of expert developers, bugs and security holes are promptly identified and resolved. This ongoing pooling of knowledge and talent accelerates problem-solving. Open source software therefore constitutes some of the most secure options out there today.

Feature-rich & InnovativeOpen source software gives you the opportunity to create nuanced solutions that best fit your specific needs. You do not have to settle for a generic, solution. Further, new features are regularly being released and products are continuously being refined thanks to the active, vibrant communities that encompass open source projects. Reputation means everything within the massive, global communities of developers working on open source software. The competition between these developers results in improved quality and cutting-edge enhancements.

Stronger SupportCompanies that have adopted open source solutions and are in need of assistance can effortlessly turn to dynamic communities of developers for advice and support. Open source support packages are also readily available to those seeking more in-depth assistance and in a price range that remains much more affordable than that of proprietary vendors.

Real value & Cost savingsOpen source software is the most affordable option out there. It offers significant savings in licence fees and consequently poses a considerably lower financial risk, an important characteristic for small to medium sized businesses with access to a limited budget. Open source also represents a reduced deployment spend as well as a lower cost per agent – granting an unrivalled ROI when compared to proprietary solutions.

Facilitated Integration & InteroperabilityOpen source software has the advantage of interoperating with most standards-based telephony equipment through rather inexpensive hardware. As a result, it can be easily integrated across voice applications, CRM systems and legacy systems.

Simplicity & EleganceWe are seeing a growing movement towards a desire for VoIP phone systems and CX contact centres that are ‘beautifully simple’ to operate and manage. Open source communities are driving this trend through their pursuit of simplicity and the elimination of the unnecessary within their code. As seen in a recent survey by CIO.com, ‘Simplify IT’ now sits among CEOs’ highest business priorities. Passionate and proud of their code, open source developers are constantly striving to render their phone systems easier to use, more attractive and more user-friendly. In driving out complexity, open source ensures ease of integration, promotes innovative product development and changes the entire way phone systems are used.

What is the Asterisk Open source advantage”?

Consider the advantages of Open Source

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Choose a VoIP system that your employees will want to use

What does cloud-based VoIP hold in store for the SME in the future?

Some VoIP systems are complex in their design and utilisation. Consequently, no matter how clever the phone system, if your people don’t want to use it, your investment is wasted. For this reason, simplicity of use has now become a key requirement in system design. In turn, the presentation of features and aesthetics of the user interface is critical to user acceptance.

At Foehn, we have seen a growing movement towards a desire for phone systems that are ‘beautifully simple’ to operate and manage. From the user interface to the graphics and the management processes, we have taken a single-minded determination to drive out complexity and make phone system management as simple as possible, to the point where many management features can be performed by business users rather than IT specialists. Going deeper, we’ve even applied the same philosophy to the underlying programming, built around the open source Asterisk platform, with elegant coding that will ensure ease of integration and product development in the future.

So, against this backdrop, it is greatly rewarding to hear we’ve got it right. A survey by CIO.com has confirmed that, amongst CEO’s top priorities for 2017, ‘Simplify IT’ has increased in importance more than any other objective since 2016, and now sits alongside the highest priorities in the business.

This movement appears to be contributing to a new kind of conversation about phone systems where the vocabulary also extends to what is ‘ugly’ or ‘horrible’. It is emotive dialogue like this that reinforces the fact that attractive design is now a very tangible and important feature of any phone system. As with anything that makes life easier and is a pleasure to use, simplicity of design should be on all cloud phone feature lists – and somewhere near the top.

It’s exciting times, with providers of cloud phones and contact centres building on their key advantage - ease of integration. For example, WebRTC is a feature that assists voice connection through web-based services, such as a click-to-call button on a web site. This is just one development that is driving the latest trend to deliver voice communication from the application rather than from the device. There are many more.

For example, there are exciting developments for those businesses that need the features of a multi-channel contact centre. One such development is speech analytics which is able to analyse the caller’s tone, vocabulary and mood to establish emotion and satisfaction levels. It can even detect a caller’s age, which can help to ensure the call is routed to the right type of agent. When combined with predictive analytics, systems can also identify when a caller is getting frustrated or angry, or when they are lying, or even when they are trying to commit fraud.

Similarly, artificial intelligence allows customer service teams to prioritise calls by assessing the caller’s history, the past behaviour of similar callers, and then adding in new information from other sources (like weather data) to predict queries. Natural language processing can be used to listen to a call with an agent and automatically trigger the most appropriate responses, while the agent continues to focus on their conversation with the customer. AI can also decide on and execute the best way to deliver assistance, based upon factors such as the customer’s previously preferred methods of interaction.

Whichever VoIP option you acquire, you can be guaranteed that innovation and future-proofing come for free.

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Cloud phone system checklist

1. What is included?

Some companies price on an all-inclusive basis, with a single price per user per month, with all features included, while others offer a very low starting fee, but then charge for each additional feature thereafter. These costs can escalate quickly. Present the provider with the list of features required, to ensure they quote for your business needs. Make sure you understand what extras apply.

2. Additional call costsCall costs are wrapped into hosted telephony. Buyers need to pay careful attention to the costs of national, international calls and calls to mobile phones. Check with the provider for a bundle that fits your business.

3. Avoid maintenance contracts

Maintenance services are not required with hosted telephony as there is no longer a need for a site visit to make changes to the system. This means changes can be made as and when needed, reducing delays.

4. Take control of your cloud phonesystem

Some providers will charge for any administrative changes, so make sure you understand what the limitations are. This can become costly, and can cause significant delays if you are relying on a provider to make changes. Consider choosing an easy to use platform, where you can manage your own dial plan and schedule.

5. Do you need a direct connectionto the network?

You will have considered your bandwidth, but you should also consider having a direct connection to the network. This will ensure that your provider can guarantee packet prioritisation, QoS and latency management. Underpin performance of your network and support team with a service level agreement. You will be in safe hands if you work with a phone system vendor that has the network skills to ensure end-to-end performance.

Investing in a comprehensive SIP service will also further enable you to capitalise on the low cost benefits to the full. If you are in doubt, talk to a provider that has expertise in IP networks as well as telephony.

Whilst it is easy to get carried away with futuristic trends, make sure your provider can supply you with a reliable, scalable service that meet your needs.


VoIP Buyers Guide: Choosing the right VoIP phone system-011


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About FoehnWe are an award-winning provider of cloud communications technology, delivering cloud phone systems and contact centres to the private and public sectors since 2000.


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To learn more about Foehn please call 0330 403 0000 or visit www.foehn.co.ukDocument classification: Public | October 2018

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