Recently, an HPA staff member was reading an article that
talked about ten mistakes businesses make when purchasing a new phone system.
We thought we’d share some of these with you this month! The article was called
“10 Mistakes when Buying a Business Phone System”, by Kristen Stanton. Here is
a synopsis of some of the more critical aspects from the article:
1)
Make sure you have a backup analog line if you
are buying a Voice over Internet Protocol Phone System (VoIP). This may become
quite important in case of a system failure or power outage.
2)
Have you thought about a backup Internet
connection? Depending on the size of your business, this may be vital to
keeping your office running in case your main connection fails.
3)
Should your phone system be Session Initiation Protocol
(SIP) based? This is a signaling protocol that works well with Internet
applications such as click to call web pages, multimedia conference calls, etc.
4)
Do you need to get a phone system that’s
scalable? This way a new system won’t need to be purchased if your company
grows or changes in the future.
5)
Check to make sure the new system is compatible
with your other technologies so more money isn’t needed to be spent to tie
different systems together.
6)
By all means, test the sound quality of your new
system before you purchase it to be sure it works the way you expect it to
(conference calls, speakers on phones, etc.)
7)
Plan for the features! Know what you need or want before you make
the system purchase.
8)
Avoid long term contracts since systems and
technologies are always changing!
Finally, this wasn’t in the article, but remember HPA is
expert at analyzing a company’s system needs and we are always glad to offer
this service to our Clients!