In the Features World – Size Shouldn’t Matter

In the past, picking a phone company for your business was rather easy. Your choices were limited and the technology had not changed for eons. With the introduction to Internet-based calling like SIP and VoIP, the market started to change. Prior to the year 2000, if you wanted to access the benefits that come with VoIP or SIP, you were forced to purchase an On-Premises PBX solution from Cisco, Mitel, Avaya, Shortel and many others. This capital expense was enormous, but in comparison to what a company would receive, it was often worth the investment. Then, around 2001, a new category of telecommunications was created. Enter Cloud PBX, which allowed for smaller sized businesses to get the benefits of an On-Site PBX, without the up-front capital expenses. The wave of VoIP Providers for Business was created by this new technology.

Following is a list I’ve compiled from my personal experience that matter the most when looking at a VoIP Company. In the business of communications, you want to be able to offer your customers the best features and the best reliability or they will go somewhere else to find it.  You want to find:

• A company that owns its own technology, not a reseller.
• A company that has multiple data centers and uses innovative technology for its backbone.
• A Unified Communications company, not just a VoIP Company.
• A company with 24/7/365 support.
• A company that will sign an SLA (Service Level Agreement).
• A company that is HIPAA compliant and will sign a Business Associate Agreement.
• A company that has solid reviews dating back multiple years.
• A company that continues to innovate in the market with their own technology.

When a customer starts the process to find the best VoIP phone system for small business, they need to start by understanding the difference between a company that builds its own technology and a company that resells another company’s technology. Why does that matter? By working with a provider that has their own research and development team in-house, your phone system becomes future-proofed. If you go with a provider that resells someone else’s technology, then you are a small fish in a large pond with zero input. I learned this lesson the hard way a few years ago.

I had a customer with 200 employees – they were all using a feature called Outlook Integration. Our company was re-selling the technology from a larger company. That larger company decided that not enough users across their platform were using the Outlook plugin. In the next version upgrade, the feature was removed. My customer called to find out what happened to their key feature. I had to explain that we had no control over the technology that we offered and the VoIP technology company whose technology we were re-selling had determined that the Outlook Integration feature they needed was useless and removed it from their offering. Even though a 200-seat company was a large account for me, it was extremely small in comparison to the millions of seats to whom the technology company provided service.

Some companies like to tout that they resell service for a large technology company, but you should be able to see through the smoke screen. Please feel free to use the list I created when trying to determine which Cloud PBX company is best for your company to partner with. While PanTerra Networks is not the only company that fits the criteria that I laid out above, it is the company that I decided to work for because they meet the demands and continue to offer the key features that matter to business owners.