In many ways. By integrating your voice and
data communications, you get the powerful capabilities of the most
sophisticated phone systems, and then some, without the cost and
complexity.
Easy moves, adds & changes
In a tremendous boon for small businesses, networked telephony
systems allow you to move, add and change phones easily and in
minutes. Since the handsets are network devices like your
computers or printers, you simply plug them into standard Ethernet
jacks anywhere on your network. You eliminate the cost and time
required to schedule a service technician every time you want to
add or move a telephone.
Multiple auto attendants
Networked telephony solutions feature multiple auto attendants,
allowing you to determine how calls are routed through your
organization. You can assign an auto attendant for the entire
company and for each division, workgroup or individual. You even
can use different auto attendants for various times of the day,
such as business hours, non-business hours and lunch. As a result,
you can organize call patterns to your exact needs, ensuring
customers, clients and vendors access their parties for optimal
business communications.
Call Detail Reporting (CDR)
CDR enables you to track phone usage within the organization,
including who makes calls, to where, when and for how long. You
also can assign account codes to individual customers or clients
to precisely track how much time you spend on the phone with them.
As a result, you can bill clients more accurately and easily and
improve time management within the company.
Reliability
Select a networked telephony system that works independently of
network operating systems. This ensures that your solution will
continue to deliver high-quality voice communications even if the
rest of your network crashes.
If your business depends on constant incoming calls from
customers or vendors, there are more advanced network telephony
systems available. The following are some of the capabilities
these systems offer.
Unified Messaging
Traditionally, you segregate your e-mail and voice messages
into two separate systems. With an advanced networked telephony
solution, you can combine both into a single e-mail application
such as Microsoft Outlook Express. This way, all messages are
available in one location, ensuring more convenient and efficient
communications. Simply click on a voice mail and your computer
plays it back. You can listen to your most important voice
messages first and save and organize your voice mail in folders as
you do with your e-mail. You even can forward your voice mail as
e-mail attachments to other users.
Computer/telephony integration (CTI)
Advanced networked telephony systems enable small businesses to
deploy powerful call-center capabilities that once only large
corporations could afford to deploy and operate. By integrating
your voice communications and data, a network telephony system can
display the records of customers or vendors on your computer
automatically and nearly instantly whenever they call. As a
result, you greatly improve the response times and accuracy of
business-critical departments like sales, customer service or
technical support. Even create call hunt groups, ensuring calls
are forwarded to the next available agents.
Use your computer as a telephone
With advanced networked telephony, the integration of your
voice communications with your Ethernet network is so seamless
that you can deploy desktop computers as handsets. When using
optional software and headsets, employees can dial their phones
from their screens and have all the functionality of a standard
telephone. This is especially useful for users in
transaction-intensive departments that serve as call centers. As a
result, your company can leverage its computers, eliminating the
costs of additional handsets, and employees can reduce the clutter
on their desktops.
Control and customize telephones without technical expertise
If your networked telephony solution ships with an
administration utility, a simple-to-use program that you access
with any standard Web browser from any computer on the network,
you can easily and completely customize your phones to your exact
business requirements. In fact, you control your entire phone
system. For example, limit any phone to certain area codes at
certain times of the day. Or arrange for the phone to ring at the
next available agent in your customer-service department.
Additionally, employees can access the utility to tailor phones
to their own needs. They can customize the programmable buttons on
their telephones for speed dials, forward their calls to other
phones, and set-up off-site notification to be notified via phone
or pager of new voice-mail messages.
Access messages from home
Advanced networked telephony solutions enable you and your
employees to access voice-mail from home. Simply dial into the
messaging system from an off-site location, enter your password
and access your messages. You also can take full advantage of all
of the system’s capabilities from remote locations, such as
voice conferencing, just as if you were at the office. As far as
callers can tell, you are at the office. As a result, your
telecommuters and branch offices remain part of your main
office’s telephone system.
The extras come at no extra cost
With the exception of the software and headsets needed to use
your computers as telephones, all of these advanced business
features are standard on advanced networked telephony solutions.
