Upgrading your office communications: Is it worth it now?

Deciding whether and when to upgrade your communications is a challenge for every small and growing business. Today’s new communications solutions offer many advantages, but are they worth it? What’s the best way to make an intelligent judgment? Here are three options to help answer that question:

Survey employees: One strategy that many businesses use is to survey their employees. Employees are a great source of insight. Complaints that ring true in terms of impact on the business—lost productivity, poor customer service, and unnecessary costs—may give you all the information you need to build a case for an upgrade.

What If?: Another option is to play a bit of “What If?”: what would be the impact on your business if your communications gave you:

The ability to recognize your top customers and route their calls for priority attention
Enable your employees to give out one number—their work number—and get their mobile phone, office phone, home phone, etc. all working together
Get built-in call recording for analyzing customer service or simply catching everything said on a critical call
Eliminated the need for outside conferencing services
Many companies that upgrade their communications report that the impact is huge, but they really couldn’t “see it” when they were just getting by with an older system. Playing a bit of “what if” can help identify real benefits.

Calculate the Value: Perhaps the best way to determine if an upgrade is worth it is to take a cold, hard look at the finances. A new communications system can lower the costs of long distance, mobile phone plans, conferencing services and more. It can eliminate the need for technicians to visit your company for routine system administration and reduce the time that employees (such as front desk personnel) devote to answering the phones. It can help make your business greener, giving options for employees to work from home: cutting energy costs and possibly the cost of office space. These savings can add up to tens of thousands of dollars a year.