If you’re working from home, you will know that being able to communicate, be it with clients, suppliers or partners, is essential, because this communication is what allows you to stay at home rather than work on site. For that to happen you will need a business phone number, unless you are willing to receive business calls on your personal phone. One option is to get another land line, or a new cell phone, but the best option by far is to use VoIP.
Using a VoIP service for your office phone will allow you to use the full functionality of a telephone system plus a host of features that might help you in your business for a mere fraction of the price. You probably have a good idea of how VoIP is useful to the individual user, but here is a list of benefits using VoIP brings to a small business:
Cheap calls
Using VoIP you can now talk for as long as you want with your partner across the country without having to worry at the back of your mind about the phone bill. Since service providers usually charge a fixed monthly rate for what often is unlimited access, you are free to use the service whenever and as long as you want.
Conference Calls
Another nifty feature for people who work at home is the ability to make conference calls. This eliminates the need for a venue, and to travel whenever you need to discuss something with others. VoIP networks are usually capable of hosting a large number of participants, which means that if needed, everyone connected to your network will be able to take part in the meeting wherever he is.
On a smaller scale, but equally as important are video conferences which allow for face to face meetings. This is especially useful during presentations or whenever graphic or visual data is shared. Both these services allow for people located in different parts of the country to get together and discuss their ideas without a great disruption in their schedule and budget.
IP Faxing
For companies that still use faxing or need to handle hard copies of documents legal files a lot, the IP faxing feature would be a great help. It allows the user to send and receive faxes as usual, but instead of relying on phone lines, it still uses the internet. This means that you won’t worry about busy signals or the time consumed. IP faxing also allows you to send a copy of the document to an email for easy access.
Hosted PBX (http://www.ringcentral.com/cloud-pbx/hosted-pbx.html)
This is used by companies that have a large number of employees on the phone like in the telecommuting or call center industry. This feature eliminates the need for companies to set up and manage the complex phone network needed, as it is all taken care of off-site, by the service provider, which means the business saves both on the installation and on the maintenance. Another advantage is that due to its independence from the traditional telephone network infrastructure, the network is infinitely expandable and can be modified to suit the need of the company.
Advanced Voicemail
Along with the PBX function comes the benefit of advanced voicemail features which save both time and effort. This service can be synched to a user’s email, so that the voicemail along with an audio file of the actual message is sent to the users email address. This allows the user to check his voicemail when or wherever it is convenient for him by simply checking is email. The voicemail feature also alerts the user to any incoming calls or voicemail to ensure he does not miss anything.