If you’re in business, you’ll constantly have an eye on costs; sometimes a penny saved is a penny earned and that’s been particularly important for many businesses of all sizes in recent times.

In the retail sector, sales failed to rise for a record fifth month in a row in December, with household spending in high street shops and online plunging by 0.6% from the previous month, according to the Office for National Statistics. It’s reflective of general economic slowdown related to the uncertainty that surrounded Britain’s exit from the European Union and other wider economic trends — with people unsure of what’s going to happen, we’re all counting our pennies that bit more closely.

Whilst this may therefore seem like the worst possible time to be investing, the impending shut off of BT’s standard analogue and ISDN exchange line services in 2025 combined with potential savings as much as 80% on existing phone, call and systems costs actually make it the best and most opportune moment to make the switch to VoIP.

So how does VoIP lower those costs?

While you might think that setting up a new phone system would be too costly, the installation cost of VoIP is relatively low. You’ll likely already have the internet in your office so all you’re going to need are the actual handsets.

Once your new VoIP system is set up, you’ll see costs drop almost immediately; as VoIP uses your internet connection, that reduces costs on multiple phone lines. It also eliminates the need to pay for added services, like video calling, voice mail and video conferencing — all of these functions are included and done effortlessly with VoIP.

If your business makes calls to overseas, VoIP reduces long-distance charges because you’re making the calls via the internet, while if you ever want to add phones as you grow the business, you won’t need to add costly phone lines to every office or cubicle, as phones just plug into your existing data connection.

Are there other benefits?

Having an internet-based phone system will be the norm in years to come, as BT plans to “switch off: all the country’s traditional phone lines by 2025”. Businesses will be forced to swap over at some point, so it’s worth getting ahead of the curve by upgrading now.

As well as its attractive price, there are other huge benefits to a business investing in VoIP:
• As your business grows, adding new lines and numbers with VoIP is easier and cheaper than traditional systems.
• When you plug your VoIP phone into a data connection anywhere in the world, it retains the same phone number and other details — which is great in an age of increasingly flexible working. Employees can work from home and take their phone with them.
• VoIP has a wide range of fantastic call handling features — hunt groups, auto assistant, easy transferring, automated receptions and emergency messages are among them.

If you’re considering moving away from your current business phone system and want to find out exactly how much money you could save by making the move, give us a call on 01237 420010.