Voice Networks
The advantages of a hosted PBX
The key benefit (besides cost
savings) is that the service can send calls
virtually anywhere.
by Greg Brashier
While mobile phones, PDAs and landlines
allow workers to stay connected with the
office, often they cannot synchronize those
devices with one preset number that works
through the company's PBX system. This means
that callers need to try various numbers to
reach a person or that they must leave a
voice mail and hope that the recipient
returns the call in a timely manner.
Many companies use a traditional on-site
PBX, but when mobile professionals need to
be connected, setting up a system to handle
remote offices and mobile workers can be
complex and costly. Most PBX hardware only
sends calls to phones that are physically
wired to the PBX inside the same building.
One alternative is a hosted PBX system
that delivers the functionality of a
traditional on-site PBX but as a service.
The subscriber does not buy the equipment
and can use regular phones. Other than the
cost savings, the key benefit of a hosted
PBX is that it can make the office virtual
by sending calls almost anywhere, enabling
employees to work without constraints.
Employees can receive calls through the
company's main business number whether they
are working in the office, at home or on the
road. The "follow me" feature allows calls
to try several different numbers for each
employee.
When a call comes into the sales
department, for example, how is the call
routed? Will the caller be forced to leave a
voice mail if the first person the call is
sent to is on the phone or out of the
office, or will the call be routed to
another representative?
An automatic call distribution (ACD)
queue is a standard part of many sales
organizations and call centers. ACD queues
know, for example, which employees are
working, which are already taking a call and
which are on a break or out for the day.
Calls are then routed immediately to an
available agent instead of making the caller
wait while different numbers are tried. If
all agents are already busy, the caller can
be given the option to wait for the next
available agent.
In many hosted PBX environments, sales
members can log themselves in and out of the
ACD queue or have calls routed to mobile
phones. Sales managers can choose how they
want to route calls, whether based on skill
level or on which sales person has been idle
the longest amount of time. Policies can be
set to identify who is calling and to route
those calls to the appropriate sales
representative, allowing the representative
to know who is calling in advance.
Communications professionals often spend
a lot of time maintaining and upgrading
premise-based PBXs, or in managing the PBX
vendor who provides the service and support.
Expanding and upgrading the system also can
be challenging.
A hosted PBX reduces upgrade costs and
complexity, as the hosting company houses
the equipment and is in charge of updating
and expanding the technology to meet the
needs of its subscriber base. In addition,
hosted PBX systems can usually scale to any
size. The service provider typically has
many thousands of extensions spread across
its client base, so adding an additional
extension for your company does not tax the
provider's bandwidth.
Another important consideration is
possible downtime. If the power goes out,
the traditional, hardware-based PBX system
goes down. Because a hosted PBX service is
always hosted at an off-site location, an
outage at the customer site usually does not
affect the phone service provider. Calls can
still be taken on cell phones or at
alternate locations using the
follow-me/forwarding feature.
Sometimes a hosted PBX service can be
used solely as a backup for existing
hardware PBXs. Using a hosted PBX service in
this way is usually less expensive than
using it full time, and it is almost always
cheaper than buying another piece of
hardware to put on a shelf in case of an
emergency.
When considering a hosted PBX, check that
the technology allows for full-featured
reporting. With some hosted PBX services,
sales managers can print out phone logs for
each sales representative to evaluate
effective use of the team, or see graphical
representations of call traffic through the
day to know how best to staff for increased
call traffic. Many services offer Web-based
voice mail retrieval and control settings,
allowing for access from anywhere.
There are two main types of hosted PBX
technology available today, the standard
hosted PBX and the hosted IP PBX. The
standard hosted PBX normally accepts calls
from and sends calls to any type of phone,
anywhere. Usually, these systems involve
some kind of per-minute fee for calls to
cover the costs from the underlying phone
carriers.
Hosted IP PBX services typically use
voice over IP (VoIP) to send calls over the
Internet to subscribers. This requires using
only VoIP phones sold by the service
provider and calls generally cannot go to
cell phones or landlines. The tradeoff is
that these services typically charge only a
monthly flat rate for all calls, allowing
better budgeting and control for companies
with widely varying call traffic.
Call quality is also a consideration with
hosted PBX services. Standard hosted PBX
call quality will depend on the transmission
medium. The highest quality phone calls come
when the service sends calls across standard
phone lines. Cell phones and VoIP phones
will likely reduce call quality but give
benefits in flexibility and/or cost.
Hosted IP PBX systems rely on Internet
telephony and have the associated questions
about reliability and quality. These can be
improved by selecting the most suitable
vendor and making sure the adopting
company's own IP infrastructure is
appropriate.
Greg Brashier is vice president of
marketing for Virtual PBX, San Jose, Calif.
For more information
(click here)
Small business tries
ASPs
Northshore Paralegal Services in Danvers,
Mass., is a small business serving the
Boston area with background screening for
clients' potential hires and title
abstracting for the mortgage industry. Last
year, President Ted Lannon took note of a
steady news stream of natural and man-made
disasters and began feeling a little
vulnerable about his company. The heart of
his business-files, servers and
applications-depended on the smooth and
uninterrupted functioning of his software,
hardware and physical infrastructure.
He also began to feel too thinly spread.
With a seven-person staff, all IT and
telecom maintenance and support fell on his
shoulders. His answer: outsourcing the
service firm's IT and telecom operations.
Lannon kept his office, but started
moving his software and hardware maintenance
burden out the door to application service
providers (ASPs). The primary business ASP
he chose was Oracle-based NetSuite. The
phone system and service provider was
Junction Networks, New York.
Out went the on-premise servers: one with
e-mail and authentication; a second for
general ledger and accounts payable; and all
but one file server. Also off the wall and
out the door: the phone system and
extensions.
"I wanted to take my business and make it
virtual," says Lannon. "I wanted to do away
with office Quickbooks, where everyone had
to go through the LAN. I wanted to do away
with doing my own authentication. I shifted
to the ASP model because I wanted fault
tolerance in case of a disaster."
Lannon also wanted to provide his remote
employees in Virginia with the same services
they could use in the office. Lastly, he
wanted to shed full responsibility for
server and phone system maintenance without
hiring more IT staff.
On the voice side, he exchanged the
legacy system for some Polycom IP handsets.
He disconnected all but one (for fax) of his
service provider lines and replaced them and
the existing phone system with Junction
Networks' onSIP hosted IP PBX service.
With the DSL disconnected, Lannon now
runs both voice and data over his broadband
connection, with 10-MB download and 1.5-MB
upload speeds. Because phone calls are all
routed over IP, and applications are all
browser-based, location has become almost
irrelevant to his business.
"Not being tied to a physical location is
fantastic," he offers. "If a disaster
happens, I just work from home and send the
insurance guys in to replace my equipment."
His employees can work from home, as
well, with broadband, PC and a software or
hardware SIP phone. Lannon keeps a redundant
drive of the one file server on the premises
in a fireproof box. If he ever wants to move
his office, he just packs the phones and
reconnects to the Internet; the phones
register themselves to onSIP and the staff
continues working as before.
"Some IP PBX hosts are hardware-software
combos, where you plug a box in the office
and coordinate between lines and SIP,"
Lannon explains. "I didn't want another
device on my network. All changes should
make my operation simpler and not more
complex. Also, other companies wanted to
charge per seat. Junction Networks basically
charges per application and per minute.
Paying for circuits was always painful, as
well as all those ridiculous little fees."
Business continuity aside, Lannon has
gained other benefits from onSIP. He now
dials his seven extensions by two-digit
numbers, including the one in Virginia. He
can work at home without missing calls,
since onSIP can ring two or more phones at
once if they are registered to the same SIP
number. He also likes getting voice mails in
his e-mail box: "My e-mails hit me at home
the same way they do in the office."
What about cost? "It's a significant
discount," Lannon says. His monthly service
provider bill once was between $400 and
$600, he says, while he is spending about
$100 now.
For more information from Junction
Networks
(click here)