Tag Archives: #NewLocation

How VOIP Phones Can Secure Your Post-COVID Business

Hand of man using ip phone with flying icon of voip services and people connection, voip and telecommunication concept

VOIP technology can ensure a seamless transition for your remote workforce.

Every business on the globe is adapting to the need for post-COVID protocols and business practices. A big part of that is emphasizing remote and online working instead of in-office and face-to-face work. If you have been relying on meetings and phone line calls, or if your business does not yet have an integral phone system, it’s time to rethink your infrastructure.

VOIP offers fully remote phone services tailored to the needs of a modern business. From customer service pools to official office phone numbers, a VOIP system can do anything a traditional business PBX system can do and more. But what do virtual phones have to offer in the post-COVID era? Being able to communicate remotely and set up your offices anywhere in the world with the same numbers will come in handy in the days of remote business. Let’s take a look at some of the key ways that VOIP phones can secure your business in a post-COVID economy.

Turn Office Phones into Home Office Phones

VOIP phone numbers are assigned and accssed based on employee login accounts, not physical phone lines. This means that your employees can take their office phones home with them for remote work.

Clients, customers, and business partners will still be able to find each in-office contact as if they were still in the office, at the same phone numbers and often during the same hours, even though your team has gone home to work remotely in COVID-safety. In fact, companies already equipped with VOIP experienced some of the least shake-up when transitioning to work-at-home policies.

Remain Available During Phone-Line-Cutting  Disasters

One of the overlooked consequences of COVID is lack of preparedness for local disasters. Floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and wind storms are still happening this year, but services are slower due to the need for extra care when in public. This means that natural disasters that take out phone lines can be devastating for local businesses. Unless, of course, your business runs on internet phones instead.

Rather than being cut off from the rest of the world. your offices and employees at home can continue taking calls even when competition with landlines are out for repairs.

Install Phones in a New Location Without an Installation

Business doesn’t stop either just because there’s a pandemic on the loose. If it’s time to open a new location or relocate your current business, phones are a big part of that. Normally, you would need a team of phone technicians laying wire and installing handsets. Not so, with VOIP. Internet phones can be installed via software.

Simply have your VOIP handsets delivered to the office and you can set them up without the need for strangers to enter your workplace. This allows for no-contact installation and, of course, helping your team set up in home-offices without the need for any serious hardware or technician-led installation as well.

Make Your Company Remote-Friendly and Remote-Accessible

VOIP is the single most remote-friendly business communication software. You can transform a once-limiting phone system into a full-featured and API-ready network for communication. Every member of your team can have their own number, access to a pool, or multiple numbers that can all be accessed from any internet-connected device.

New team members can be easily onboarded. Clients and customers can always find you at the same phone numbers, with or without a landline in between. Allow your team to be remote, your customers to be remote, and even remote onboarding and installation with VOIP phones.

Relocate or Disperse Your Office With the Same Numbers

Finally, remember how easy it is to take one system of numbers and reorganize. You can send an employee to a new office location with the same number. You can put together teams of people with numbers that follow them or assign new numbers just for team use. You can send everyone home, still able to answer their office phones or move to a new location, keeping the phones, access, and numbers all exactly the same.

For remote communication at business class, VOIP is up to the challenge. Contact us today to consult on your business’ VOIP expansion.

How to Set Up VOIP In a New Location

A business owner sits amongst her moving in boxes setting up VOIP, waiting for new desks. She is using a digital tablet. In the background her assistant is checking the files

Having a VoIP phone system eases the pain of relocating or opening another location for the business.

In the long tradition of business phones, establishing a new office location is notoriously tedious. With old school phones, you would need to cancel the previous service if you were moving offices. Then purchase an entirely new phone plan including complex installation costs for all the lines and phone locations you’d need.

But not anymore. With VOIP rapidly replacing old school PBX phone solutions, setting up phones in a new office location has never been easier. Of course, it’s only natural to ask how this is done, what with the old system being so involved, costly, and tedious. Many businesses who have expanded or changed offices in the past have a whole system that needs to be re-written for VOIP.

So for those of you who are worried about opening a new location, this guide is for you. Rest assured, you won’t need a technician to make it happen and, in fact, can start making VOIP calls in the center of your yet-unfurnished office if you cared to.

Step 1: Secure Your Location

VOIP works no matter where you are, so feel free to pick your office location based on everything except the kind of phone service you need. When you’re working with VOIP, you can secure just about any commercial property that suits your business needs. Your VOIP has no special installation requirements and will work anywhere there is a strong wifi signal.

If you’re looking for VOIP-friendly parameters, then make sure you have access to high-speed internet, though broadband cable or strong satellite internet will both serve the purpose. You can even run a remote office off cell-network hotspot depending on how strong a signal you can pick up. Your new office location can be absolutely anywhere that gets internet service.

Step 2: Bring the Desks and Computers

Once you choose the location, bring in all the usual office furnishings. Desks and chairs, computers and laptops, cashier workstations and mobile device charging stations; any and all of it will do. The one and only requirement of the VOIP phone system in your new office location is that there be some internet-capable end-point devices. Meaning computers, laptops, phones, and/or tablets.

Take a little time to make sure your internal network is properly configured during this stage. Don’t just place the router, optimize it. Test signal and decide where you’ll put wifi repeaters or run internal lines if there are rooms that receive a lower-quality wireless signal, as happens from time to time.

Step 3: Up Your Extensions (If Expanding)

If you are moving your office with all the same staff and the same number of extensions. Don’t even worry about this step. You don’t have to do anything with your account or even tell your VOIP provider that you’re moving locations if you don’t need any changes in service. VOIP is just as capable of being used in a new office location as it is on the road and away on business trips, so no need to worry about any service transferring hassle.

If you are opening a new location and expanding the number of staff making calls, then you will need a few additional extensions to add and configure. Fortunately, this is incredibly easy to do with no installation required. Get in touch with your VOIP provider. All you need to do is request the right number of new extensions and configure them to the use the correct settings. The extensions will be provided, along with new logins, and your bill may not even go up if your just relocating.

Step 4: Install the VOIP Software On Office Computers & Devices

Next, make sure your endpoint devices can access the VOIP cloud service. Simply install the software on each computer and laptop and download the app on any mobile devices. Make sure the software loads correctly and that employees are able to log into the cloud phone platform from each one.

If there is a device that seems to have trouble, reset the device’s app settings and try a fresh install. VOIP platforms are not complex and should work properly on every device. For workstations that will involve a lot of at-desk calling, consider a few VOIP handsets or simply checking to make sure the soft-phone programs are working properly.

Step 5: Have Employees Log Into Their Extensions

Everyone on your team should already know how to manage their VOIP accounts because, as we said, location doesn’t matter a bit. Have each person display that they can still log in, just to be sure. For new employees, you will want to walk them through the very first login, changing their passwords, and the settings/configurations that their team uses to integrate VOIP into the workflow.

Whether your team is in the old office or in the new office; the only thing you need is the software on your devices and an active login for every team member who will be making or receiving calls. IF anyone’s login does not work, go through the usual channels to reset their password.

Step 6: Return to Normal VOIP Workflow

Now you are completely ready to return to your normal workflow or begin innovating your process in the new location. Expanding or transferring your phone service to a new office location is as easy as that. With a VOIP platform, expanding may not even increase your costs unless your adding devices. The only installation is software if you are adding new devices. The only interaction you need with your VOIP provider is to scale your extension count up or down. How’s that for replacing your old PBX relocation process?

Even more interestingly is that your customers need never know the difference because your service numbers won’t have changed. From venders and suppliers to your audience of buyers, changing offices or expanding into new locations is incredibly easy with VOIP.

Ready to make the transition from hardline PBX phones to VOIP or expand your VOIP business to a new location? Contact us today!

10 Instances When Should You Call Your Managed IT Team?

Mature business man at an office desk looking at a laptop while calling his managed IT team for help

Your managed service provider is here to handle all of these issues plus many more, let us handle it and you can get back to what you do best!

Working with a Managed IT service comes with a surprising number of perks. It’s like having an on-staff IT team, only instead of you taking care of them, they take care of you. A managed IT team makes it their business to keep an eye on your system and make sure your business tech performs exactly the way you want it to. They’ll help you build the perfect tech stack, select and setup the right hardware, and make sure all your software services work together. But they’re also there for the tough times when your team needs tech support.

So today, we’re featuring ten times when you should absolutely call your Managed IT team for assistance, guidance, or to make your other services shape up and act right.

When Your Computers Malfunction

If your computers stop functioning properly, in any way, then you can call your managed IT team for help. Sometimes, it’s as easy as turning the device or app off and back on again, but often technical problems are beyond the skills of your service teams. After all, there’s a big difference between being able to use software that’s working correctly and fix something that is not working the way it ought.

When Your Internet Stops working

One of the most common calls we get is when the internet for your office building goes out. Internet service providers are not always reliable, and worse, they don’t often put a rush on getting your service back online even when your entire business depends on availability to your customers and partners. A managed IT team will get on the phone and get to the bottom of your ISP outage.

When Your Software Won’t Work Together

Every modern business has a tech stack that is supposed to work synergistically. Each piece of software supplies data or infrastructure for the next. And when they stop working together, everything can come to a crashing halt. When your system stops working together, it’s time to call your managed IT team who will get your software all neatly stacked once more.

When It’s Time to Upgrade Your Software

Upgrades are a delicate part of any business’ lifecycle. When one piece of software in your tech stack is about to change its code, you need the rest of the stack to stay put and to ensure that the changes won’t wreck your current system. Your managed IT team can handle that for you.

When You Want to Rebuild Your Tech Stack

Likewise, you need to add new software to the stack or replace an older piece of the stack with the latest best variation, call your managed IT team to make sure everything integrates just the way you need it to.

When You Need Your Current Software to Do Something New

Interestingly, your managed IT team can also help when you’re not changing a thing, except how you use the software you have. When your business evolves, expands, or adopts a new practice, it can be necessary to find new ways to use your current technology. You can trust your team’s expertise to know how to put the features of your business software to new and creative use.

When You’re Worried That a Hacker Might Have Infiltrated

If everything is going well except that you’ve seen signs that perhaps a hacker or malware has infiltrated the system, your managed IT team is where you turn to for advice. They can help check for defense breaches and get rid of any lingering scripts or malicious software that may have taken root. As well as knowing what to do when there’s risk of a data breach.

When You Have New Regulations to Meet

Speaking of data breaches, the latest wave of data security regulations is ever-more strict and your managed IT team can help you get compliant. When there are new regulations released or your business starts doing something that requires new regulations, we can help make sure your standard operating procedure is within the new parameters.

When You’ve Lost Data to a Common Data Disaster

When fire, flood, or human error causes your business to lose a chunk of important data or access to data-handling devices, your managed IT team can help you restore everything from backups and sometimes even recover the latest data from a damaged source.

When You Need to Set Up a New Location

Finally, if your business is moving or expanding into a new location, your managed IT team can help you get everything set up in the new place exactly the way you need it, from the hardware and workstations to integration with your cloud services.

Contact us today to find out more about what managed IT can do for your business and how to get the most from your managed IT services!