The British Computer Society made a couple of interesting points last week about small businesses and the use of VoIP for their telecoms. They state that:
“The take-up of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) among small businesses is currently rising at a faster pace than that seen for larger firms, according to one expert.
Maren Bennette of the Communications Management Association said that this could be attributed to the fact that the very first users of VoIP at the turn of the century were mainly medium-sized enterprises that quickly outgrew their existing telephony systems.
They were then followed by larger companies that have now realised VoIP is ‘here to stay’, he explained.
‘Smaller companies and organisations were the last group to adopt VoIP, mainly because they had little reason to change the telephone systems they had in place already,’ Mr Bennette commented.
He added that VoIP’s perceived costs and complexity put off small firms from adopting it as they did not have the finances or the technical resources to make the shift.
According to research firm In-Stat, worldwide VoIP subscribers could surpass the 55 million mark in 2009.
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This is good to hear, as it exactly matches our experiences talking to customers.
It’s far too common that many small and medium businesses struggle on with very old telephone equipment that most people wouldn’t even let in their house, let alone their business. It just does nothing to help staff communicate and work together.
Our process of moving businesses to VoIP makes business owners look at their phone system and decide if their whole way of communicating to customers, staff, and partners could be improved. More often than not, it can - and it is only this change that triggers people to step back and look at what they actually want to do with their telecoms - not what they were told they could do by BT all those years ago.
Its interesting how telecoms companies like to talk, but most often don’t like to listen - I hope we’re different and I hope by listening to customers we’ll help businesses of all shapes and sizes realise just how useful a change to VoIP can be.