How to Budget Your Business Telecoms in 2015

When planning your budget for the next 12 months it’s very easy to focus your spend on improving your IT infrastructure, often leaving your telecoms system overlooked.

But in doing so, you could actually be missing an opportunity to save money by reducing costs and improving productivity. Getting the best value from your business telecoms means ensuring that it’s up-to-date, cost-efficient and can offer the flexibility needed for an agile business.

The business world is fast-moving and ever-changing. In order to stay ahead of the game, your business needs to be agile enough to respond to changes in work patterns.

› Four million employees now regularly work from home (Source: TUC)
› More than 60% of employees could be working remotely within a decade (Source: TNW)
› In a survey of more than 2,200 UK businesses and senior managers, 90% said they offered flexible working (Source: Regus)

Is your business telecoms system fit for flexible and remote working?

Another challenge is coping with the peaks and troughs in the business cycle. Seasonality can have a great impact on call volumes. Various events can cause surges to incoming calls:

› Marketing campaigns
› Special promotions
› Competitions
› Appeals
› Seasonal sales

Does your telecoms system offer the features and scalability to cope with increased demand?

ISDN is yesterday’s technology. It was designed for an era before the demand for more flexible working. Today’s employees often use a range of telecoms devices, from smartphones to softphones and desk-based handsets to help them stay productive. Being able to make and receive calls seamlessly whilst on the go, without impacting the customer calling experience, is crucial for many enterprises.

This is difficult with ISDN.

It’s little wonder that ISDN channels are declining by around 300,000 year on year.

Many organisations are now choosing to migrate their traditional telephony services over to SIP. By mid-2014, there were more than 1.2 million SIP Trunks in the UK.

SMEs and large corporates are helping drive this growth, as businesses recognise the value offered by SIP.

SIP offers many benefits over ISDN, such as:

› Flexibility – when paired with an inbound call management platform, calls can be routed quickly and easily using call plans
› Scalability – the ability to increase or decrease the number of lines you take
› Lower costs – SIP can offer significantly lower line rental and call costs than ISDN, including free internal calls
› Innovation – ISDN has reached a technology cul-de-sac, while SIP is a direct route to the future

SIP can help you get the best value from your business telecoms budget and meet your business needs for today – and tomorrow.