Voice over Internet Protocol(VoIP) technology, over the years has helped businesses grow immensely by making communication easier and significantly reducing costs. A lot of companies adopting VoIP systems have seen the advantages first-hand. Yet, there are businesses that do not understand the technology and are unable to gain any kind of competitive advantage as a result. VoIP systems use SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) to convert phone conversations into data packets that can be transferred through the internet instead of the conventional phone lines.
SIP is a standard protocol that enables VoIP, and how the connections are maintained affect the call quality. Some carriers connect multiple networks instead of one network that delivers SIP from end-to-end. Working with a service provider that uses a native network made for carrying the SIP is the most reliable method because it is specifically designed for IP traffic.
Fortunately, for businesses that have a shoestring IT budget, SIP enables them to purchase bandwidth in smaller increments rather than fixed ISPN via using Current Call Paths. Call Paths can be shared across all of the enterprise office sites, eliminating cost and waste by using the SIP trunking solutions. But the problem generally arises because enterprises don’t generally think about the bandwidth they’ll be needing.
Most of the businesses like the idea of using the internet to receive and make phone calls they do not take into consideration the required bandwidth necessary to keep the phone system running smoothly. Businesses that are adopting SIP have to carefully consider their bandwidth needs by accounting and evaluating all their network traffic and then if it is feasible, add voice data to the total.
SIP phones, if implemented properly, can be a great resource that helps you reduce your costs, allow you more flexibility and improve your efficiency. Here are a few tips that you need to consider so that you implement your SIP successfully:
The first thing you need to do is clearly understand the communication plan and its purpose for your business. While using SIP, include Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) plans in your conversation. Services adopting SIP which are provided by the telephone company are more customizable and adoptable than other telephone systems. Therefore, always ensure that you consider features like phone number coverage, unified communications applications, built-in redundancy and call path sharing.
One major mistake that many organizations keep doing when they first deploy a new system is that they do not inform the end users about the change. It is critical that such information is communicated to everyone who would be using it so as to make the whole process easier. The businesses should tell their employees what they can expect from the new system, so that they can be briefed about how the system works and the set of instructions that they need to follow in order to use the system like how to make calls, how to redirect calls to a specific person or an extension etc. Elaborating on the list of advantages that the VoIP has to offer can help in making the transition process simpler for everyone and also increase the overall productivity.