Most business people don’t like to think of any added expenses if they can help it. Fair enough, but some outlays on new systems can prevent catastrophic losses. A good example is the outlay related to upgrading to new business phone systems. This is a case of technology to the rescue, rather than to the point of exasperation.

The Dinosaur Phone Systems: A Study in Inefficiency

The business phone is so much a part of life that it’s really part of the furniture, ignored until there’s an obvious problem. The trouble is that the old phone systems can be problems and largely unnoticed for years, then become expensive issues that have to be fixed.

A very large proportion of business phone systems are essentially obsolete, particularly the big systems. They were usually introduced prior to the big boom in mobile business applications and the switch to real time business phone transactions. They’re semi-useless for ecommerce, and often still have the ridiculously inefficient queue systems the world has learned to loathe.

Compared to the new telephone systems these old clunker systems are basically scrap. The new drivers for business phone systems are all about cost-efficiency. Business phone costs are irritating enough, surely, without having to pay for the privilege of owning a system that doesn’t work.

The New Approach: Private Servers, Contact Centres and Productivity

The truth is the old systems were never designed for the work they’re now expected to do. The really inexcusable fact is that so many businesses apparently assume phone systems designed for the technology of the 1980s have any place in business now.

The new approach is practical:

• Use private Servers: This is the best possible solution for high call volumes, with the server managing call streams far more effectively than a centralized system will ever be able to do.

• Use Contact Centres: These contact centres are able to handle up to a thousand extensions, and in conjunction with private servers, they’re ultra-efficient. They’re the literal equivalent of a call centre in a box and they’re fully customizable to suit your business.

If you’re getting the impression that new phone system design is based on rationalizing the complexities and simplifying multi-faceted communications environments, you’re quite right. This design approach is based on real need.

Big, expensive, inefficient dino-phones are an actual threat to businesses, a real liability.

There are several reasons for this, and they’re all business-based:

• The old systems are functionally too limited.
• They’re extremely costly to run and maintain.
• They’re quite unsuited to many modern apps and dataloads, because they’re simply too slow and their design doesn’t allow them to manage heavy loads well.
• They create backlogs in real time, meaning extra costs across the board.
• The queues are inefficiency and underperforming technology incarnate.
• New technology is leaving them way behind.

In a world where everyone expects to get things done with a few clicks, the dino-phones are heading for extinction. The problem is that they’re dragging some businesses down with them.