Business owners are often overwhelmed by the vast amount of IT solutions and tools. Investing in upgrading your IT solutions and changing your systems is daunting, so many business owners stick with what they know and add in new components only when necessary. This reactionary mindset may be costing their company more in the long run.
As we come to our fourth and final iteration of our Cost Reduction Series, we’re discussing voice solutions: traditional LEC landlines to VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol).
What you’ll learn:
LEC stands for local exchange carrier. A LEC provides telephone service to businesses and residents in a local area. This is your standard voice solution where your employees each have a direct line, and maybe you have a secretary that forward calls along as they come in. This system could utilize both landlines or mobile devices.
Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also referred to as internet calling, uses your internet connection to make calls. As demonstrated in the chart below, VoIP can be utilized by devices connected to your IP network. Though this sounds new and complicated, it is a fairly established technology. The first VoIP transmission was sent back in 1973.
As it has evolved, many households and business have replaced their traditional landlines with VoIP, as it is usually more cost-efficient. It is estimated that about 31% of companies utilize VoIP and that the SMBs will grow by more than 15% in the VoIP market by 2025.
The savings from switching to VoIP can range, but it understood that the savings are significant. Ballpark estimates put savings between 30% and 50%. In addition to these standard savings, data shows that as VoIP becomes more advanced and consolidated, the operating costs will decrease by 3% to 5% annually.
Beyond the savings on usage costs of VoIP, businesses are finding that their employees are more productive. On average VoIP can save a business 32 call minutes a day. This is primarily due to better availability, flexibility, and features that cut out extra tasks.
We hope that we have provided you with some solid advice and are happy to continue the conversation. You can book a consultation call with us here. If you missed our previous episodes, you could find them here: Episode 1: The Value of Outsourcing, Episode 2: Duplicate Services, Episode 3: Virtualization.
