The new era of business phone systems, vendors, and trunking providers – a comparison between yesterday’s model and today

The new era of business phone systems, vendors, and trunking providers – a comparison between yesterday’s model and today
Inflow Communications takes a unique approach to providing business phone system and Unified Communications for our clients.  Without rambling on in sales-speak and talking about our wonderful products and services (ShoreTel being our flagship product), I’ll present a comparison between the traditional phone system equipment, carrier, and vendor model and today’s  VOIP phone system models – the ones you should demand.  I’ll break this up into three different sections over a few days.

The traditional view of a business telephone system:

Yesterday’s Equipment:

A box full of electronic equipment and wires sitting on a wall somewhere in the dungeon of your business

It works (don’t touch it)

We know the BASICS of hold and (maybe) transfer

It’s still programmed to route calls to Betty, who hasn’t worked here in 5 years – we’ll work around it.  Programming it requires the possession of a manual that was lost 10 years ago, a vendor that will take your first born, and / or the knowledge of a long-lost programming language

Call Forwarding?  Ha!  That’s funny.

Today’s Technology

A VOIP application that sits on your network and interfaces with your mission-critical business applications (Contact Manager, ERP system, etc) and MAKES your life easier

A set of communication tools that works the way YOU want to – take your extension anywhere – to any phone and any office location and to your mobile / smart device.  Are you traveling internationally and want to turn your laptop into your extension?  No problem – Simply click a drop-down menu to change your extension destination.

Need to move a phone in the office?  Go ahead and unplug, move, and plug it in.  It’s a VOIP phone!  Nope, no barbaric wiring involved (sorry traditional phone system vendor).

Need to change your auto-attendant greeting?  Go ahead and access the EASY web tool, click drop-down menus and radial buttons to make system changes in seconds.  Can’t figure it out, call your new phone system vendor (Inflow Communications) – we’ll walk you through it or just do it for you.  The charge?  Don’t worry, we want to EMPOWER our customers, it makes us all happier.

Want to do more than just transfer and hold?  No problem, the built-in interactive VOIP phone menus and help files on your computer make it VERY easy!