Digital transformation is a marathon, not a sprint. Successful businesses continually integrate new technologies to stay ahead of the competition. However, when it comes to your telecoms system, this can seem like a daunting task. Where should you begin? How can you minimise the impact to both your staff and customers? Should you even bother?

Yes, you should. Following an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality will only set your business up to fail in the future. Here are five signs your telecoms system needs an upgrade:

1. Your business processes are stagnating

A telecoms systems upgrade unleashes a wealth of innovative business processes for your enterprise.

For example, half of the UK workforce is predicted to work remotely by 2020. With an upgraded telecoms system, you can seamlessly introduce remote working options for your staff, boosting both staff morale and productivity.

How does this work? Let’s look at a quick example. With 3CX, our recommended PBX Unified Communications solution, your staff can use softphone technology to connect their office extension to manage calls in the office, at home or on the road using a desktop PC or laptop.

By installing softphones on your employees’ mobile devices, they can also pick up calls remotely, as long as they are connected to the internet or a cellular network.

This also means you can offer “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) strategies to further boost your productivity. This could help your employees gain an average of about nine extra hours of work every week.

You’ll also get access to a range of Unified Communications services to further improve the efficiency of your business, including web conferencing, email, voicemail, messaging, and presence facilities.

2. Your customers can’t get through

During peak times, does your current telecoms system crack under the pressure? If your customers cannot get through or your staff cannot communicate, then your business will be adversely affected.

In the short term, you will accumulate missed calls and complaints from your customers. However, outages could damage your brand into the long term. Some 95% of customers will tell at least one friend about a bad customer experience and more than half will share it with at least five other people, according to a recent study.

3CX includes several advanced call centre features to improve the customer experience. For example, calls can be linked to customer records before the agent takes the call. 3CX also integrates with a large number of CRM and helpdesk packages so your staff are prepped and ready to take on whatever your customers throw at them.

There are also the cost implications of a network outage, which will vary depending on the size of your organisation and the industry you operate in.  A recent survey revealed the average business loses more than £98,000 per incident. Gartner estimates the cost is almost £4,000 a minute. These figures could increase significantly if an outage occurs during peak times, frequently and for long periods of time.

3CX offers various backup and redundancy measures to keep your business connected, protecting your business from a wide range of threats. For example, all information passing through the cloud is protected by the most advanced encryption systems.

3.  You can’t scale

If your business expands, either in staff numbers or if you need to open another office, you need a telecoms system that can grow with your organisation. Legacy telecoms systems can struggle with such change, resulting in costly installation and maintenance processes as you scale.

An IP PBX phone system, however, is highly scalable. It allows users to add phone lines via the internet, eliminating the need for physical wiring and the labour associated with installation and maintenance.

Furthermore, if you need to open a new office overseas, you can just add a VoIP service provider so your entire enterprise telecoms system is available over one interface. VoIP also cuts out long distance fees, compared to a traditional PBX by using least cost routing.

4. You’re wasting money

If you have a legacy telecoms system, you could be overpaying for the services you may (or may not) use.

Often, traditional PBX systems use expensive license fees and ineffective bundles. A 3CX system can save you up to 80% per year by switching from a traditional phone system to an IP PBX. Its annual licence price starts from under £2 per user per month and there are also no additional costs for remote employees.

You can also eliminate interoffice call costs and leverage low-cost SIP trunk pricing. 3CX is also an open platform so you don’t get locked into a particular SIP trunk, phone or hosting service. Simply put, you stay in control of your systems with 3CX.

5. You can’t use your data

Data is the new corporate currency and insights from your telecoms system could give you a competitive edge. But your legacy telecoms systems may not collect that all-important information. If they do, then you will have to spend time and money to extract valuable insights from this unstructured information.

3CX has an inbuilt call detail record service. This allows you to log phone calls and a record is then created, which can be directly saved or instantly sent to another application for analysis. This record contains various call details such as time, date, duration, source and destination numbers as well as the cost.

3CX also goes one step further, adding much more information such as call types, call information, “From” and “To” names and final display names, which is crucial information for your staff members when transferring a call.

In conclusion

Upgrading your existing telecoms system will provide your business with many features, ensuring you never miss a call and connect your enterprise from any location while realising extensive cost savings.

At Zen Systems, we specialise in upgrading legacy telecoms systems, often with minimal cost and disruption to your business. If you’d like to find out more, request a free trial.