Whitepaper you know your phone system is obsolete when by Derek Brown

You Know Your Phone System is Obsolete When… Selecting a New System

Contents You Know Your Phone System is Obsolete When… ..................................... 3 Presence Management........................................................................................... 4 Single Number Reach ............................................................................................. 5 Unifying Communication ...................................................................................... 5 Video Telephony ..................................................................................................... 8 Recording Conversations...................................................................................... 8 Does Your Phone Use the Cloud? ....................................................................... 9 Disaster Recovery.................................................................................................. 10 In Summary ............................................................................................................. 10 References ............................................................................................................... 11

You Know Your Phone System is Obsolete When… An obsolete phone system does more than merely slow you down. It hurts you and your business. Many small business owners stretch their phone systems to the very end, trying to extract every bit of value before they trade it in. But this approach hurts their business rather than helping them stretch their dollars. If competitors are racing ahead and new competitors are emerging in other countries, it is not penny pinching that will save your business; such thinking could actually hurt it. It is efficiency and new capability that gets smart businesses ahead. Modern and updated phone systems work like ‘force multipliers’. I shall discuss some of the force multiplication capabilities of these phone systems that a dated system may be lacking. Modern systems are also more robust and survive disasters Sooner or later, any far better than older systems. This capability too deserves a closer look. company not

operating efficiently will be out of business.

Obsolescence - While many phone system vendors (and those of other gadgets as well) may deny it, planned obsolescence is a well-documented phenomenon. No company wants to get stuck making spares for a twenty year old Laurie McCabe, VP AMI system while the rest of the industry races Partners ahead into new technology. Plus there is money to be made in newer and more capable models. Therefore after a few years, it is only to be expected that spares support can no longer be taken for granted and your phone system needs to be traded in. One sign that your phone system is getting obsolete is when your

spares parts supplier begins to tell you that he will have to place an order for the spares you need and it will take a week for the items to arrive. Can you afford to wait a week? Modern phone systems have most of the capabilities I discuss in the following paragraphs. How well can your system match up?

Presence Management This capability allows the phone system to ‘know’ where a particular client is. There are several advantages. If you are running a contact center and there happens to be a customer with a difficult to handle problem, escalation requires your agent to know the availability of a person with the required skills. The phone system can do this for your agent even as she is speaking to the customer. The system can even indicate if the person is in a meeting or on her desk or out travelling. In each of these cases, it will use the appropriate medium to contact the expert. Most older phone systems cannot display the availability of key individuals on a computer screen. Can yours do this? If not, and if your business depends on resolving calls quickly, then presence management is a key requirement. Using presence management can easily save up to 30 minutes of time per agent per day – besides the frustration and the customer discomfort.

Eliminating ‘telephone tag’ can save workers at least 30 minutes every day.

Single Number Reach You don’t want your customers to carry a list of the phone numbers of your key support personnel around. Ideally, each staff member should have a single number that suffices to reach her, regardless of whether she is at her desk, in the airport or at home. Your phone system works with its presence management capabilities to determine the best way of passing a message. If nothing else works, a text message or a voice mail can be sent. In one of our earlier white papers (Selling Management on a New Phone System), we had told our readers about how a Florida based travel agency, run by two friends from their home, gave their clients an impression of a much larger travel agency by implementing single number reach on their phone system. This ensured that day or night, one of them was always able to respond to a client call. Not only this, the interactive menu driven system they implemented helped clients choose between Spanish or English. Depending on the language the client chose from the menu, the incoming ring tone changed to indicate customer preference. They were therefore able to respond in the correct language as well. Clients had just a single number to call, regardless of day or night or the city they were calling from. All of this was no doubt responsible for the fact that the agency continues to grow exponentially. How does your phone system measure up? Do your clients and sub-contractors need to keep a list of different numbers for your employees or can they just call a single number and be sure of reaching the employee wherever she may be? Are these single numbers published on your website or on visiting cards?

Unifying Communication A modern phone system does far more than ring on the right table. It unifies communication. Since we cannot predict which medium the client would prefer to use to get in touch on a given day, our systems need to be able to handle multiple methods. Clients can use voice mail, fax and email if they prefer to simply send a message or use the phone or IM if they wish to talk. Keeping up

with multiple input streams can be a problem and you could miss out or delay responding to an important message. A good unified communication system can put all messages into a single inbox. This ensures that a communication can never be missed. By eliminating the need to log into multiple locations your staff can save considerable time every week. The graph on the next page shows the growth in installation of Unified Communication systems over the last six years. More than 100% growth is seen over this period - which equates to an approximate CAGR of 16%. Older phone systems do not have the capability to unify communications. If your phone system is unable to handle this, you could be giving away a major competitive advantage.

Growth in Unified Communications 14000 12000 $ Million

10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

Year

Your Phone System is Obsolete Whenâ&#x20AC;Ś | Compare Business Products ÂŠ 2013

Case Study – South Bend Clinic, Indiana This large ‘clinic’ has a staff of 530 including more than 100 physicians overlooking 21 different specialties. It comprises 10 different facilities and handles nearly half a million patients every year. Different departments have different communication needs. Doctors who are moving from patient to patient or between operating theaters have no time to place a call and try alternate numbers. Nurses chase doctors all the time trying to get a response to a query from a patient. Administration and purchase departments have totally different communication needs whereas patient care and emergency services are on a completely different bandwidth. In addition to internal communications, there is a need for very efficient communication services with the community, insurers and other hospitals in the area. With so many different needs and in such a dynamic communication environment, the hospital just did not know what kind of communication system to install. It was very clear that an overhaul was needed but they did not know what to get. The consultant hired to implement a new system decided that the needs were so diverse that a single system that had all the possible capabilities that any one at the clinic could possibly use would result in enormous wasted capacity. While I am not getting into the exact solution the company selected, the fact is that the consultant was able to create a solution that met requirements, was cost effective and was flexible enough to accommodate future needs. With distributed working, telecommuting, greater mobility and more specialized requirements, the need to customize communication systems will only increase. It may be worth checking if your existing phone system has these capabilities.

Video Telephony Many modern telephone systems come video ready. All you need is a USB video camera and you can stream live video onto your PC even as you use the IP phone. There are enormous advantages of being able to see the other party live during a call. Cost saving is just one of them. While this is not a full-fledged video conferencing system, it still gives company many advantages. Impromptu video calls can be made – for example to clients or sub-contractors. Under normal circumstances, video conferencing with these groups would not be possible but one to one video telephony gives rise to additional capabilities. Will your existing phone system support this?

Recording Conversations Quite often, while in a call, your customer service rep may feel the need to record what is being said. Modern phone systems allow a single button press to initiate a recording. These are later stored in the voicemail system and can be handled as just any other voicemail. It is easy to think of hundreds of occasions when such a facility could be extremely useful. Older phone systems either do not support this or the process is cumbersome to use and manage.

Case Study – Voicemail and Fax In another case, a company with staff scattered all across the US used to face major problems in managing the data individuals sent. With the new solution, data is faxed to a specific number. The phone system converts the fax to a pdf file that is mailed automatically to the staff responsible to handle it. The company manages payrolls, invoices and even complete projects using this system. The system also handles incoming voicemail and can email the voicemail automatically to designated personnel. Customer service has improved tremendously because those responsible can now hear the customer directly rather

than reading about the issue. Many times hearing what the customer has to say really drives the point home.

Does Your Phone Use the Cloud? If it does not, it could well be on its way to obsolescence. This is not to say that all on-premise phone systems are going to be obsolete. There are still many cases where such systems are essential and nothing else will do. It’s just that I can’t think of one at this moment! Using a cloud based phone system aka a hosted phone system essentially makes sure that your phone system cannot become obsolete. The entire system is in the cloud and the vendor ensures that the system is kept updated all the time. If you are running a small company, you really stand to gain by letting go of that PBX and going in for a cloud based solution. The key advantages are •

No upfront investment in complex equipment - you only need to use a broadband Internet connection.

•

Maintenance is the responsibility of the vendor. The user simply has to ensure that the LAN inside their building is serviceable.

•

Practically unlimited scalability is ensured. If your needs increase, you can scale up and if they decrease, simply scale down. Pay only for what is actually used.

•

Handle multiple locations – if you open new offices, just include them in the service. No new systems need to be purchased.

•

Mobility – the system comes ready to work with the iPhone or Android systems. Users can work wherever they are.

Caveat on Cloud-Based Systems Just because you use a cloud based communication system does not mean that your company is at the cutting edge of technology. Upgrades to software are expensive. Every cloud service provider may not be very careful about keeping his / her system updated. You will need to check this by visiting the vendor and actually seeing the software upgrade plan.

Disaster Recovery Does your phone system have adequate redundancy and capability to withstand disasters? Many small and medium enterprises know that in the event of a disaster, if they cannot get back on line within 24 hours, then they many never be able to get back into business. A phone system that is able to switch over to a back up in the event of a disaster is a great asset. In some cases, businesses have found that even if their entire offices are unavailable, their key staff can drive to the nearest Motel and login to get back nearly all the services they had before. The cloud based service; data center and the hosted PBX ensure that business continuity is taken care of.

In Summary Any technological system will eventually become obsolete. However, smart executives will ensure that this is catered for and factored into their operational plans so that there is no loss to the business.

Your Phone System is Obsolete Whenâ&#x20AC;Ś | Compare Business Products ÂŠ 2013

References Avoiding the pitfalls of outdated disaster recovery plans, IBM Paper Cisco Smart Business Productivity Applications; Cisco.com 6 Signs That You Need to Upgrade Your Business Phone System; Focus Whitepaper Phone System Disaster Recovery

Your Phone System is Obsolete Whenâ&#x20AC;Ś | Compare Business Products ÂŠ 2013