1. Do you want a hosted or traditional business telephone system?
Technology savvy customers will already be considering the benefits of hosted telephony over a traditional phone system. To make your decision consider the following:
Reliability - you need to be able to make and receive calls during business hours with no issues. Research the underlying technology, the uptime guarantees and disaster recovery options. Some hosted solutions allow you to use mobile devices as desktop phones and make and forward calls remotely to ensure business continuity.
Cost - add up the number of handsets and lines you need and do a cost comparison. Hosted solutions tend to be cheaper, due to their pay-monthly payment plans, inclusive call packages and option to choose the call features you require. Traditional phone systems can be more expensive when you add up the cost of the PSTN lines, the often upfront cost required to buy the phone system, handsets plus any additional maintenance and training charges.
2. What is included in the package?
Review the licence levels and understand what is included and what is considered an 'extra', for example how basic is basic? Do you need voicemail to email, laptop and mobile apps or more than 3 people on a conference call? If so what are the additional costs?
3. Are calls included in your package?
The average UK SME employee uses around 200 UK minutes a month. On a 2.25 pence per minute call tariff, £5.50 is added to the monthly seat price.
4. Are handsets charged as extras?
Is it the latest handset and the best price?
5. What are the installation costs?
Some service providers charge a £100 connection charge and this is in addition to the on-site installation charge, which varies with the number of extensions on each site.
Jola
Jola is a UK business communications supplier that uses the market-leading, hosted telephony platform Broadsoft. They supply local IT support and telecommunications suppliers, who can work with you to understand your business requirements and find the right solution for you at the best price.
The Jola Broadsoft offering is called JolaPhone which comes in two versions, JolaPhone Standard and JolaPhone Lite. JolaPhone Lite licences are on rolling monthly contracts and for £8.50 pcm (RRP) they include shared call appearance (up to 30 devices), busy lamp fields, voicemail, voicemail to email, hot-desking, hunt-groups and JolaPhone Anywhere disaster recovery. JolaPhone Standard (RRP £15 pcm) has all these features plus it includes all your UK landline and UK mobile calls, auto-attendant, queues and all the call centre features for supervisors and agents.
If you are looking for a partner to help you find best-of-breed hosted telephony solutions for your customers, contact Jola.
