At some point, every business will inevitably face the necessity of evaluating new business telephone system technology. Does it make more sense to upgrade the old system, or should I buy new? That is one loaded question that requires a loaded answer. The initial step in determining the best option for your company is to lay out the reasons you are considering a new option in the first place. Is there a feature your current system lacks that you feel you must have? Has maintenance been a nightmare and an ever increasing cost? Are parts increasingly hard to find? Is the voice mail going out? Are you getting dropped calls? Are you running out of capacity? Do the phones look so old that they do not properly represent the professionalism and the desired image of your company? Are you faced with buying additional station cards, line cards, PRI cards, etc, and not sure it is worth it? Do you do so many Moves, Adds, and Changes that you know your phone system service guy on a first name basis? Do you want to implement VoIP?
Are you trying to connect offices together? Do you want to implement remote users with phone access off the switch? Often, the cost of the move is so labor intensive, an organization would be better off installing a new system at the time of the move. Remember, when moving a system, there is the cost to "de-install" the existing system, label it, pack it up, move it, and then to "re-install" it at the new location. It costs just as much labor to install an old telephone system as it does a new one, so the financial case for a new system is often a strong one when considering the rapidly depreciating value of old electronics. The cost of moving a system could easily surpass the value of the system itself. 3. Do I need features that I don't have right now? Is not having them costing me? This is a biggie!
What features are available on the market that you wish you had? What would it mean to your company if you did have those features? How much would it save you? Would it impact your professionalism? Would it impact your efficiency? Would it impact your average customer hold time? Would it retain customers? Would it give you more effective management tools? Would it allow you to increase your average sale? Many new business telephone systems can be cost justified simply by implementation of new production enhancing capabilities that you may not currently have. Any number of those applications or functions could pay for themselves many times over in the right organization. It will be up to the one evaluating the options to determine the actual benefit, and to assign those benefits hard numbers. 125 service call every time you made one, that could be a major expense. Some organizations have high turnover rates or play what is commonly called "musical cubes" in the office.
375 a month, and perform the changes at YOUR convenience. That is only one feature. Chances are there are several available cost effective features that can and will improve an organization's productivity, and that will justify the cost of a new system based on current quantifiable cost savings alone. Your task will be to identify the time saving or cost cutting features and assign them a dollar value. 4. How much will the upgrade cost to the old system, and are the features available I want and need? This is a tricky one. Your current system may very well have the abilities through software and hardware upgrades to accomplish what you want done, but will it be cost effective? Call accounting software made today has so many more features and costs so much less than it did just five years ago, that it would be silly to install an old call accounting package on an older system. Does the system have the ability to do VoIP? Maybe, but at what cost?
Did I have to add a special card, upgrade the CPU, and then buy special routers, bring in my data guru, etc to hook it all up and make it work? Or will the new system have the capability built in, plug and play, ready to go? Is the old call logging software cost effective anymore? For some of these options, DEPENDING on the application, it is a question of technology advancements and cost effectiveness. Would you buy a five year old computer for your office today? Are you still running any five year old computers in your office at all? Why or why not? The same answers you give to that question may very well answer your question on whether you should buy certain old applications for older phone systems. This will apply to some features and not others. In many cases it will make no sense to retrofit your Volkswagen to be a Motor Home, or your Oldsmobile to be a Ferrari.
