Top Telecommunication Concerns for Small Businesses
Smaller organizations have plenty of hurdles to overcome on a routine basis. With smaller staff sizes and fewer financial resources at their disposal, a small business must be careful with its decisions.
Smaller companies also lack the luxuries of bigger infrastructure to fall back on. This goes double for telecommunications, a cornerstone for any business.
This is because there are several factors small businesses have to consider when employing their telecom solutions. Some rely on legacy systems, and some try modern methods such as cloud-based VoIP.
One of the major concerns for a small business related to telecom is cost. Spending can include maintenance, monthly fees, and new infrastructure. Traditional telecom installations incur monthly fees based on the provider, which may scale with use.
Additionally, traditional telecom options require physical installation and cabling, which may have initial “startup” fees associated. Then, they will likely need routine maintenance, such as managing the cables or installing new physical phones for additional hires. Depending on the size of the business, some of these costs can escalate rapidly.
If choosing a VoIP solution, small companies have to ensure their infrastructure is compatible with cloud-based networks. This includes factors like performance and security. The latter is especially important, as cloud-based infrastructure – even with telecom – brings additional risk to the workplace.
Businesses are also shifting to VoIP solutions as their primary telecom providers. This is because VoIP models are more resilient to issues like downtime, while providing enhanced performance. They also run from the company’s Internet resources, versus the cabling and provisioned resources of a telecom company.
However, along with the security risks mentioned, migrating legacy systems to VoIP presents challenges for many small businesses. Not all organizations have shifted to VoIP, and for those that plan to, exchanging traditional landlines for VoIP can prove costly and time consuming. As a result, small businesses are faced with a difficult decision: maintain their older hardware or attempt to migrate to cloud-based telephony.
If they remain on traditional systems, they run greater risk of losing the hardware to age or failure. And, from this, additional problems occur. Depending on the age of the telecom systems, replacing them may be difficult because the parts or devices are no longer manufactured.
So, there’s incentive for moving into VoIP or modernized telecom solutions. But the challenges listed are obstacles to consider when doing so.
Small companies, for instance, may have to retrain staff on the type of software used by a VoIP vendor. They must also distribute security policies and practices so as not to lose data from user error or malicious third parties.
Primarily, the major challenge for small companies is a question of resources, time, and stability. VoIP solutions are often higher performing and more flexible. But it takes time to replace legacy systems, and VoIP comes with additional costs. Traditional phone systems are also stable but lose out on value every year and are more prone to irreplaceable hardware failures.
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