January 23, 2008

Combining Your Office and Cellular Phones: Easy and Efficient

Just about everyone I know has two telephone numbers - cell and land line phone in the office. What often happens is they have two voice mails to check. Two phones to answer. This "duality" leads to not only annoyance but higher costs and less efficiency.

Companies like Gotvmail, Ringcentral, VirtualPBX and Onebox specialize in providing virtual telephone systems to enable companies to have a "big sounding" phone system - like larger businesses with full scale and more traditional PBX systems do.

Managed phone providers like M5 Networks provide a managed PBX - wherein the entire system is outsourced to them via dedicated high-speed data connections.

A third category of telecommunication products are mini PBX's. This includes Talkswitch, Bizfon and Microsoft's Response Point

Yet a fourth, quite promising alternative, is a service that provides you with ONE phone and ONE telephone number and ONE voice mail. This service, from Sotto Wireless, Inc, based in Seattle, is pretty simple.

With their newly launched Sotto@SOHO you do three things to start:

• order online from the Sotto website
• power everything up, and
• begin using the service

As a hosted Web-based service, Sotto's press release claims that it eliminates expensive, complex equipment installation and configuration. Sotto is one of the first hosted telecommunications service to tightly integrate robust PBX functionality with full-featured cellular service.

Sotto's service is more than just one telephone number and voice mail, but it provides full featured PBX functionality such as call forwarding, transfer and dozens of other features, found here.

A growing number of start-ups and small businesses are relying almost exclusively on cellular phones in lieu of a traditional office phone system and the complicated infrastructure that goes with it. Sotto@SOHO provides a simple way to make cell phones work harder and more effectively for businesses while providing users with unlimited minutes from the handset using Wi-Fi networks. This allows even the smallest business to appear like an established corporation overnight, while providing visibility and control over costs. Sotto’s hosted service is the fastest and easiest way to get an office phone system.

Sotto's pricing is pretty straight forward, but does have to be considered in your purchase decision (this goes for any product). It consists of:

• $50 per month per user fee for the VOIP telephone servcie,
• $81 per month (and up) fee for the cellular service plus per minute charges
• $300 (and up) for each phone

Are you confused about the est telecommunications for your business?

Don't be.

There are a variety of very good telephone services and systems for your small business. This is a good thing. Your decision is to work with your local technology consultant, who has experience in telecommunications and find the solution that works for you and your business. Every business and every business situation are not the same.

You have several options, with a variety of price points and features. Carefully consider the best combination for you, your business, employees and customers.

tags: bizfon , gotvmail , m5 , microsoft , onebox , pbx , reponse point , sotto wireless , talkswitch , telephone , virtual phone system | 1 comments