Should You Go Cordless In the Office

In our homes, cordless phones are pretty standard. In our professional lives cell phones are in everyone's pocket. However, for some reason on the desks of hundreds of thousands of businesses there is the traditional telephone on the desk wired on both ends - to the wall or network and to the hand set.

Maybe a few specialized positions in a company, such as a receptionist have cordless phones, but many of you and you know who you are, are tethered to your desks. When you are on the phone and need to move you have to put the person on hold. When you get a phone call you have to go to your office to take the call.

You have WiFi enabled in your office for your computers but you're not truly free until you can access your telecommunications from anywhere as well.

Talkswitch , makers a an easy to use PBX appliance, has a new phone system, the TS-850i. This is a high-performance cordless phone which provides the ability to break away from the desktop while retaining full TalkSwitch IP-PBX phone system functionality. So it's not just a cordless phone, but it's one that gives you the full functionality of your PBX system as well.

Another way to have "anywhere" access to your telephone system is to enable a 'soft phone' which is basically a phone whose interface is accessible via a web browser or software on your computer, Microsoft and Cisco lead in this type of telephony integration. This system functions similar to Skype's interface - instead of being Skype however its your full phone system on your computer.

Another option is to integrate your cell phone into your company's phone system. For example in December 2006 Sprint announced an integration of the cell phone and PBX Sprint Wireless Integration features include providing users with one phone number that simultaneously rings both the desk phone and mobile phone, along with one converged enterprise voicemail inbox. It also extends PBX features like conferencing and call forwarding to the mobile phone so users can get all the functionality of their desk phone even while away from the office. For example, mobile users can make intra-company calls by simply dialing the four-digit extension of the person they want to reach, just as they would from the office desk phone -- with no access numbers to dial or codes to enter first.

If you don't have a full fledged phone system, you could use a virtual telephone system like Ring Central or Gotvmail and have inbound phone calls seamlessly routed to your cell phone.

Whichever method works for you, consider if a cordless phone system will help boost productivity in your business.

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