Once you’ve made the decision to switch to voice over internet protocol (VoIP) telephony, you must perform due diligence to ensure you pick the right service provider and solution. Clearly, cost savings are topmost on your mind, but you need to consider overall efficiency as well. Your options are wide-ranging and every vendor has a slightly different solution to offer. And this can be extremely confusing.

In choosing the solution that most closely fits the needs and scale of your company, you should aim to focus on three major aspects:

• The provider’s technical expertise: This will show the commitment of the vendor towards internet telephony. Solutions offered must provide scalability and flexibility.
• How responsive its support team is: Examine how complete its suite of support services are. Also, look for a responsive and accessible after-sales support team.
• Whether the provider has a customer-focused approach: A customer-friendly, interactive and alert approach is likely to signify the vendor’s level of interest in forming a long-term relationship with you.

A provider should also demonstrate a solid understanding of your businesses needs and the ability to build solutions to match those needs. You must also ensure that the solution can scale up as your company grows.

In preparing to purchase a VoIP system, you need to clearly define your business needs for both the present and the future. Aligning your convergence systems with realistic growth goals and organizational vision is a worthwhile exercise.

When you come to choose a solution, you should look out for:

• A complete suite of communications and business applications
• Back-up options for emergencies or system failures
• High reliability and availability records
• Flexibility and scalability
• Multi-vendor interoperability
• Excellent voice quality
• Easy implementation and management
• Integrated networking between sites
• Clarity about total costs and the payback period
• Guarantees of quality and service levels
• Robust support options

You need to get this right because if you end up with an unsuitable IP telephony system, skilful implementation or competent service will not solve the problem.

Tags: business, management, voip

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 8:26 am and is filed under voip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.