Sometimes, the best way to find answers is to turn the question upside down
So to conclude, phone systems need not be antiquated, bloated or expensive and cloud telephony is certainly an alternative . If there is one thing I want you to take away from this article, it is that the world is ready for an intuitive and cool phone system. You do not need an operating manual or a maintenance engineer to help you handle your smartphones. Now, allow me to address the elephant in the room.
What isn’t cloud telephony?
Telephone systems on the cloud or virtual PBX aren’t like regular on-premise business phone systems. Regular PBXs require purchases of phone-related hardware including (and not restricted to) local servers, network interface cards, desk phones, cables, etc.
With cloud telephony, there’s no need to buy any of that stuff or download any software. Application data is available even if a particular country or continent gets affected by geophysical or political forces. Being cloud-based ensures that you do not need anything but a web browser and a working internet connection to make it work. There is no necessity to purchase any hardware except for laptops (if you do not already have one) for the system to work.
However, is cloud telephony the right fit for every business?
Who shouldn’t use it?
Basically, no one. Unless, you
- Do not want to provide your teams with the choice of working remotely on a snowed-in day or when a nearby volcano is about to spew ash.
- Want to keep your supervisor, sitting in a different continent, guessing how their team is performing 1600 miles away.
- Want to hire a team of engineers to just to maintain your phone operations.
- Desire to purchase phone-related hardware for tens of thousands of dollars or equivalent currency to start your phone system.
Most importantly, you do not want to use cloud telephony if you want to sit down, set up a team, and launch the operations in months instead of days.
What aren’t the benefits of cloud telephony?
Nothing! It is easy to learn a cloud-based telephony product and use it effectively. You can supervise your entire phone operations from anywhere in the world. You do not need to spend all your working capital on buying hardware for phone support, scale up or down your operations as and when required.
There is a complete and overwhelming imposition of a long-term contract and upgrades to the system requires a complete overhaul. Just kidding! There isn’t. I hope you are equally curious to know what features aren’t available while using cloud telephony.
What features aren’t available on modern phone systems?
So will you miss out on anything if your replace your on-premise systems with cloud telephony?
Yes, I know the answer to your question but why reveal everything immediately?
Dragons. Ice Wall. Valyrian steel. Scorpions. Poison. Swords. Wildfire. Direwolf. Daggers. Sparrows. Stark, Arryn, Baratheon, Tully, Greyjoy, Lannister, Tyrell, Martell and Targaryen families.
What’s this got to do with phone system features?
Godswood. Essos. Dothraki. Children of the Forest. Castle Black. Casterly Rock. King’s Landing. Kingslayer. Night’s Watch. Riverrun. Pentos. Storm’s End. Wildlings. Winterfell. Essos.
Am I being accused of not answering your actual question and lumbering around instead?
Eddard Stark. Robert Baratheon. Jaime Lannister. Catelyn Stark. Cersei Lannister. Daenerys Targaryen. Jorah Mormont. Viserys Targaryen. Jon Snow. Sansa Stark. Arya Stark. Robb Stark. Theon Greyjoy. Bran Stark. Joffrey Baratheon. Sandor Clegane. Tyrion Lannister. Khal Drogo. Petyr Baelish. Davos Seaworth. Samwell Tarly. Stannis Baratheon. Melisandre. Jeor Mormont. Bronn. Varys.
So why shouldn’t you use it all the time?
In terms of features, there is nothing that isn’t available in modern phone systems that are currently available on legacy systems (except for clunky hardware). You can definitely use cloud-based phone systems for all your business use cases.
When shouldn’t you use a cloud-based phone system?
Trick question. No matter what, never say never to cloud telephony.
You can waste thousands of dollars on purchasing phone hardware for non-cloud solutions. Buy really expensive hybrid systems which claim to be a cloud-based system to get your money. Download and run local instances of your call center. Increase the risk of a single point of failure for your business.
No matter how you look at it – whether upwards or downwards, the writing on the wall is clear. The world is moving to a cloud-based system. Your business will be caught off-guard if you do not get aboard the cloud train now. Can you?
Can you trust a cloud-based system?
Absolutely. The success of Dropbox, Google Suite has ushered in a world where there are no more physical files or unlimited emails with attachments sent back and forth. Collaboration is happening virtually with colleagues sitting in different parts of the world working together to solve potent problems.
Cloud systems also mean that data is omnipresent across different teams, geographies, and devices. Online banking has shown us that you can conduct transactions securely over the internet without having to physically step into a bank’s premises. Cloud telephony is slowly but surely growing in stature and bringing in more and more people into the cloud ecosystem.
So, where do we begin?
Sometimes, it makes sense to take a step back and review the whole thing from bottom to top before making a decision that can affect your teams. And that is because, the closer you are, the harder it is to see through the imperfections.
Cloud-based phone systems provide you the ability to take that step back and virtually monitor and analyze your entire phone operations. It is important to understand everything about cloud-based phone systems before making the purchase Cloud telephony refers to being able to make or receive phone calls, set up advanced routing rules with just a web browser and a working internet connection. You can understand everything better if you put on your thinking cap and define the problem.
Illustrations by Nikhil Kanda
