6 Great Benefits of PBX Hosting for Small Businesses
As with most business services and operations, everything is being migrated to the cloud. As a business or IT manager, you may wonder whether a cloud hosted PBX will work for you or not. It’s not just a buzzword. It has actual benefits that can translate into cost savings, and increased productivity and efficiency.
So here are the major benefits of PBX hosting for small businesses.
1. Save Costs
Opting for a PBX hosting solution will mean that you won’t need to invest in building that infrastructure yourself. The software and hardware installations will be handled by your hosting provider and the same goes for upgrades and maintenance. You’ll essentially be able to shift to an OpEx standard from a CapEx standard.
You will also only be charged for the services you opt for and use. Hence, you won’t really install anything you won’t use, which is the case for many businesses. Not only does that save you from the massive investment cost, but from the hiring of labor to operate technology.
Finally, since thousands of users will be opting for the services of your hosting provider, you will enter a shared cost model. That means, all costs of upgrades and maintenance will be divided between consumers. This will greatly reduce the per unit cost of any damages, repairs, etc. It will also reduce the cost per call.
All in all, one of the benefits of PBX hosting for small businesses is cost savings all around.
2. Save Time
This relates heavily to cost savings. Since you won’t have to build and install your own hardware and software, you can invest that time in something else. You won’t have to book time to hire technicians or specialists to handle problems either. Let your hosting provider handle that without any problems on your end.
Instead, on a cloud hosted PBX, provisioning is almost instant. Adding a phone line barely takes a few clicks or minutes since everything is software based. At the provider’s end, there are always specialists working on upgrades and installations. Hence, you can just concentrate on your clients’ projects.
3. Keep Your Existing Phone System
For certain companies that don’t want to disrupt their existing connections and solutions, PBX cloud hosting doesn’t disrupt anything. In fact, PBX cloud hosting can integrate with legacy systems or devices with a few clicks.
If the legacy system you currently employ supports SIP Trunking or VoIP, there isn’t even any additional hardware required. The interface of PBX solutions is such that it can interface with existing infrastructures. That way you can have greater flexibility on how to route your calls. You can transfer calls from one branch to the other with the push of a button or a simple click.
One of the best benefits of PBX hosting for small businesses is, users on both systems can call each other. Legacy PBX system users can even make calls via cheaper VoIP routes. Again, this is a great cost savings solution that doesn’t force you to revamp your entire system.
4. Endless Scalability Potential
Scalability is more than a buzzword today. Every business wants to expand into every territory, and gain a larger market share, and do it without a hitch. With PBX hosted solutions, you can scale up or down depending on your requirements.
Legacy PBX solutions allow you to pre-allocate space for expansion and reserve resources. However, that means you would have to pay for unutilized resources. With cloud hosted PBX solutions, that doesn’t happen. You can scale to meet usage capacity as your demand rises or falls.
You can begin with a few lines and grow from there. This is an asset for seasonal businesses which always experience peaks and valleys throughout the year. They can commission new lines before major events every year and decommission them once demand falls below a threshold.
5. Disaster Recovery and Greater Redundancy
Cloud hosted PBX differs as much in operations as it does in its hardware and software. Old PSTN systems relied on fixed copper lines. These were susceptible to damage through vandalism or accidents. With cloud hosted PBX, your service provider manages your services through highly redundant infrastructure.
Dedicated teams and resources are located in different cities. Failover is automatic and software based, hence, servers can be relaunched in seconds in the event of a natural disaster. So, a single copper wire doesn’t determine the fate of your network anymore.
6. Real-Time Monitoring and Security
With a cloud hosted PBX comes security as well. Not only do you have access to real-time statistics about your customers and operations, but also monitoring of all activity. This means that any missed calls, active or available agents, and subscription costs are accessible through mobile and desktop devices.
You may analyze employees by performance and can view instant call recordings to make informed decisions, hence. The reporting tool doesn’t just collate data, but organizes and presents it using intuitive visualizations. That makes the understanding easy for a layman as well.
With this comes security as well. Your hosting provider will handle software upgrades to prevent any security compromises. These will include security patches and firewall access grants. Even if your local network is compromised, VoIP providers have algorithms in place to prevent unauthorized use of the infrastructure.
Real-time monitoring combined with upgrades and selective access makes for a very reliable PBX solution. Keeping in mind all the other benefits, a cloud hosted PBX upgrade is a very safe and economical investment.
PhoneOne PBX Hosting Services
PhoneOne provides premium PBX hosting services for small businesses. There are three tiers of services that you can apply for including Home Office, Professional Hosted Extension, and Professional UC. Features of these services included Unlimited Calling, Mobile Apps, voicemail, a dedicated phone number, as well as a Web Portal.
So what are you waiting for? Sign up for PhoneOne today!