FT11 Business Systems

By Michael Marquardt

If you own or represent an organization with multiple branch offices which are positioned locally, regionally or even out of the state or country, and you don’t have telephony system networking in place for voice services, read on because your business productivity and the way you communicate with customers vendors and co-workers can change for the better with mind boggling, money saving results.

When offices need to communicate between other offices electronically, wide area networks (WAN’s) are usually implemented utilizing a wide variety of connectivity options such as; Frame Relay, Point to point (private lines), Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and Voice over IP (VoIP) technologies, just to name a few of the available service offerings. If you have any of the above services in place, the final step toward enhancing your communications is a single step away by adding telephony networking equipment and software.

IP telephony utilizes your companies existing Local Area Network, converging telephony and data networks, thereby reducing local and long distance toll charges. Other benefits of networking branch offices include the ability to monitor distant locations just as if those stations were all under the same roof, providing direction station selection (DSS), busy lamp field (BLF) and one touch transfer and monitoring capabilities. In addition, your primary voice messaging system can be centralized providing one touch record capabilities when responding to internal messages. Broadcast capabilities are greatly enhanced as a single message may be sent to the entire organization. Also you minimize equipment failure and increase productivity by eliminating the need for multiple voice mail devices. Up to 5 external branch offices (6 in total) my be added to each network configuration, so you may have multiple clusters of branch offices with the ability to communicate with each other, provide call coverage, and much more.

Advanced Voice Processing with Unified Messaging is yet another technology that works well in a networked environment, and enables end users the ability to stay in touch with customers and prospects more efficiently and effectively. You can be automatically informed of new sales, prospective sales, client emergencies and much more. Voice mail messages and even a fax transmission can be instantly and automatically sent to your email account as an email attachment. Speech to text technology can translate your voice message into text, or you may decide to receive your message in an audible format, the message is then immediately sent to your email account or wireless device, providing you with the ability to respond quickly. Fax messages can also be sent per your unique instructions.

The network can be provisioned to enable ANY of the networked locations to act as a primary answering point for the organization. This of course adds another layer of added functionality and enhanced productivity, especially in the event of system outages or other unforeseen system and human events.

Voice over IP devises may be able to provide you with an extremely limited version of networking, providing only voice communication capabilities, where a networked system can offer so many more cost efficient and cost saving features and results. The Vodavi Triad system for example has excellent networking capabilities, and is an affordable alternative to some more costly and convoluted product offerings, and is expandable to over 600 ports.