Money Talks: How to Save Cash with a Hosted Communications Network

Slick, efficient communication is vital at various tiers of a business—and small businesses are no exception, especially when they are reaching out to potential new customers. All the same, you might currently rely on a traditional, onsite PBX unit for your company’s phone system.

While this system might not seem “broken” to you, there are dividends to be reaped from switching to a hosted network, despite reticence you might understandably feel about doing so.

From an onsite PBX to a hosted solution

You might have commonly heard of a “hosted” phone service, but wondered what exactly “hosted” means in this context. It refers to how the phone system is hosted in the cloud, allowing you and your staffers to access that system via either a standard IP handset or a screen-based digital phone.

Hence, this approach can inject a significant degree of flexibility into your business processes. In transferring your phone system from a PBX-based solution to the cloud, you can also save money.

Spare yourself the hardship of handling hardware

With a PBX system, your expenditure on hardware can be dauntingly hefty. This hardware can include handsets that are each placed on an employee’s desk. Furthermore, keep in mind that, as your business attracts more custom, you might need to buy new hardware to handle this demand.

Even just keeping your PBX system reliable can depend on you purchasing new hardware, notes UC Today. Furthermore, when you want to add new lines to the system, your business will need to buy more than it first requires, while technical issues that arise will need an engineer’s attention.

However, in switching to the cloud, you can save yourself needing to spend upfront on hardware, while upgrades to the system wouldn’t need to be funded out of your own pocket. The provider of your hosted network can handle both the hardware and software on your firm’s behalf.

How a cloud solution can help on-the-go workers

Another problem with sticking to this ageing PBX system is that it wouldn’t lend itself well to mobile working practices. That’s because it’s a system ultimately built for the workforces of about two decades ago, when people would routinely carry out all of their work in a single location.

You might want to occasionally send staff out to work with a client in a distant location. Alternatively, you might want to open an additional office of your company, and rerouting PBX-based phone calls to that office’s location could prove expensive and time-consuming.

However, mobile phones—even your workers’ personal devices, rather than necessarily phones bought specifically for work purposes—can be integrated with a hosted system. Your employees could have their usual, office-based phone lines and phone numbers in tow even when travelling.

As a result, you could reduce your usual corporate expenditure on travel, fuel consumption and even, in the wake of maternity leave, staff retention. A solution like Gamma’s Horizon hosted phone system can take you along the path leading to unified communications.