Why VoIP for Enterprise? – The Cost of Maintaining Landline Systems

VoIP for enterprise solution makes sense because of the high cost of maintaining existing landline solutions and because of the flexibility VoIP brings to operations. Large-scale operations are much like an aircraft carrier, you can’t turn them around on a dime. It takes time and planning. Moving a mid-size to enterprise organization from an outdated landline system to a VoIP for enterprise solution requires not only an evaluation of cost but also an estimation of the operational benefits of VoIP technology.

Are You in the Enterprise Category?

There is no hard and fast rule to determine the size at which a small company turns into a mid-size company or enterprise-level organization, but you know it when you are there. The processes get more complex, employee count grows dramatically, and IT systems get continuously more complicated. In general, having 500 employees is a good sign that you are firmly in the mid-size business category and moving toward the enterprise-level in your organizational development.

What Are You Paying Now? The Cost of Maintaining Landline Solutions

As we have already noted, switching over to VoIP for a large-scale operation can seem daunting, and for this reason, many organizational leaders hesitate to pull the trigger on a VoIP for enterprise implementation. However, let’s take a moment to consider the cost of maintaining the status quo – the old landline system you are currently running.

The Financial Costs

• Carrier and Long-Distance Rates – If your company is still paying heavily for long-distance calling, the eradication of these charges could be the first, and maybe the most compelling reason to move to an enterprise VoIP system. Because VoIP operates over modern internet infrastructure, long-distance charges become nearly non-existent.
• Landline System Maintenance – Like any system that gets older, things start to fall apart in a landline system. Added to this challenge is the frustration of needing a telephone system that is flexible enough to handle company growth and operational changes. Each time that lines need to be added or areas of the facility get renovated, a technician that understands your system has to be found and hired. As systems age, the technicians that were once proficient in those systems retire, leaving you with fewer (and increasingly more expensive) options for telephone system maintenance professionals.

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The Organizational Costs

• Cost of Operational Flexibility – Many mid-size and enterprise-level leaders are becoming more and more frustrated with their current landline-based telephone systems. In order to compete, their internal and external workflow has to change. But landline systems do not fit well with innovative thinking or operational changes. There may be nothing more stressful in organizational planning than to be forced to fit your modern operations goals around a decaying telephone structure.
• Cost of Employee Satisfaction – Employees from generation X to know what VoIP technology has done for their personal lives. They use it every day in video, audio, and chat sessions through apps on their home computers and portable devices. So, when they go to work and have to work with outdated phone systems that don’t have the features or ease of use of their inexpensive home systems, discontentment can easily set in and harm morale.
• Cost of Customer Acquisition and Service – Customers aren’t that different from employees. They expect that the businesses that they are dealing with are keeping up with technology. They want to communicate and do business in the way they have become comfortable. They want to be able to text, chat, email, video chat, or call within one seamless system. If you don’t have that system, it’s a sign to the client that your business isn’t keeping up with the times, and you may lose that client to the next startup that is leveraging VoIP for enterprise technology.
• Cost of Productivity Improvement – An article about VoIP productivity in Forbes tells us that, “the shift of building intelligence into the network provides the foundation for capabilities that analog phone lines could never achieve. The biggest productivity gains are from unified communications, an approach that erases the boundaries between the desk phone and the mobile phone.”
• Cost of Brand Continuity – The most often objection that enterprise VoIP providers like GoToConnect or Intermedia get to VoIP for enterprise services is, “We can forward calls to our cell phones, we don’t need out-of-office phone continuity.” There are a few problems with this reasoning. First, clients don’t like being shuffled around on the phone. Second, brand continuity is not maintained with call-forwarding to personal cell phones. Third, employees inevitably give customers their private cell numbers to call into, just because it’s easier for both parties. In the end, you lose control of the call and branding.
• Cost of Operational Flexibility – We have already mentioned this in passing, but it bears repeating. Older landline systems do not have the flexibility needed to help you compete at your level. Each organizational change and new operational endeavor requires new users to be provisioned or decommissioned. Adding and removing lines in a traditional landline telephone system is costly and cumbersome, but that’s just internally. With the decentralization of workflow, enterprise-level organizations are increasingly wanting to provision work from home and satellite offices with seamless, integrated communications, but with landline systems, it’s just not feasible.
• Cost of Competitive Edge – New competitors move into your space with increasing regularity. Cloud technologies allow them to harness the power and efficiencies of scale that were once only available to enterprise. With slick promotion and venture capital at their back, these rising competitors are poised to take the percentage of market share that cares about how they communicate away from your organization.

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VoIP for Enterprise – the Path Forward

VoIP providers such as OomaOffice and Grasshopper will tell you that moving a large-scale operation away from a landline telephone solution to a unified communications system like VoIP for enterprise is not a simple procedure. However, rest assured that with the right enterprise VoIP consultant and implementation team on your side, it can be a smooth transition that doesn’t cause any disruption or involve downtime for your current operations. The initial layout of capital to move away from your current system must be seen as an investment in the communications infrastructure and capabilities of your organization. It’s not necessarily a long-term investment return. In fact, many see investment returns in the categories we have discussed above in the near to mid-term. The first step for your organization is to call in a VoIP for enterprise consultant who can answer your questions and work with your internal IT departmental leadership to determine which VoIP setup and provider to use. Following those initial strategy sessions, plans can be made to migrate your current telephone system to a more flexible, powerful, and useful VoIP for business solution. The implementation stage is always the most exciting as employees and clients begin to discover the many efficiencies that are built into a VoIP for enterprise unified communications system.