Migrating to VoIP - Why The Hesitation?

I am constantly amazed by the number of emails I receive monthly providing rationale for why companies should move their phone service to some form of IP telephony. Having worked in the environment for a number of years one tends to forget that not everyone understands the benefits available to them for using VoIP. A recent white paper I looked at stated that “there are business owners the world over who, for whatever reason, haven’t caught on to VoIP’s new status in the business world. They still remember a time years or even decades ago when Internet phone calls were a gimmick, unsupported by the bulk of users.”  I still remember the poor service I got as a business with a local phone company over the PSTN but in those days that was just a part of doing business and was accepted and long forgotten. Why is that not the case with VoIP, especially as there are so many ways to ensure the service is better than ever before available?

Everyone discusses the cost savings available with VoIP, be it on monthly service charges, charges per call or the cost per service (call waiting, forwarding, caller ID, etc.) so why has not everyone already migrated to VoIP. The fact is that cost savings is not the only factor other than quality of service that is being looked at.

I speak with a lot of people about VoIP migration in my day to day activities. I have also spoken at numerous conferences and in conversations afterwards am fascinated by the number of people who are reluctant to change out their desk phones. There are so many changes in the business world these days, Cloud computing, Smartphones, Tablets, SaaS, Computers in general etc., that the standard office desk phone is one of the one few items remaining in the office that people have not had to change. It is an island of stability in an ever changing world. A lot of companies are saying no to migrating to VoIP because they don’t want to change.

Now, many of you are probably wondering why I am going on about remaining the same when this blog has highlighted some of the benefits of VoIP. Well that’s easy. You can still obtain the benefits of VoIP without changing out your phones. With Citel’s Portico TVA, you can SIP enable those existing legacy desk phones so that they can remain in place even when you move to VoIP. You can get the costs savings from VoIP without having to change anything on your users’ desks. You can set up the phones to do exactly what they did when tied to the PABX and the PSTN so your end users do not know that they are helping their businesses save money. In my next blog we will look at how those savings are magnified by adopting the Portico TVA as part of your VoIP migration.