Communications are one of the things most defining modern society. People are constantly interconnected and being involved in those connections is crucial to keeping vital in today's economy. As a business, your phone system, or "PBX," is the key to keeping communications flowing, ensuring employees and clients alike are able exchange information. Before diving in though, there are a few things you should consider.

For the most part, home phone systems are simple to decide on, with very few options and a handful of providers to choose from. That's no big surprise, for individual use, there's not a lot of variety in terms of needed features or high tech abilities.

But a PBX is an entirely different decision. Businesses have many different needs and specific desires when it comes to communications. Features can make or break your PBX system, determining your ability to scale with future needs and expansion, your ability to leverage the power of the internet in your communications network (with technologies like VoIP,) and your ability to remain bulletproof and immune to services outages, with things like battery backup UPS systems and remote administrative capabilities. To give you an idea of just how crucial these features can be, consider how your business is impacted by this:

Employee salaries are the price of doing business. However, paying someone just to answer phones, or taking time away from an otherwise skilled employee to perform this menial task is really a waste of funds. The same tasks performed by receptionist on the phone can be taken care of by many of the current PBX systems. At the most basic level, these "Auto Attendant" features includes options such as allowing your users to navigate a (potentially huge) menu system, reach specific extensions or access information recordings. Now if only they had a phone system that will brew a pot of coffee...

Having your phone system perform automated tasks can save you time and money. Auto-dialing provides a means for the system to place calls (and more) all on it's own. At the most basic level, many of us associate PBX auto-dialing with robo-calls, or telemarketing. However, the systems can do much more than that, especially when blended with modern technology. For example, sending text messages to cell phones automated for informative personal, departmental, or company-wide alerts and notices. Voicemail from important numbers can be forwarded instantly, and many packages even provide text to speech for reading messages to the recipient, such as crucial e-mails, news or stock alerts, and more.

Cisco Systems have the reputation for being one of the leaders in all aspects of networking for years now. Having been known as one of the "four horsemen of the internet," for their powerful and stable routing devices, the same power and quality transfers over noticeably into their PBX systems.

The Cisco "Unity" line of products are a popular choice, for delivering expandability and flexibility at many business sizes. They also bring budget PBX power to the market with their SPA-400 and SPA-9000 which can work in conjunction to provide precisely the kind of performance demanded by small businesses, at an affordable price point.

No one can say for certain how their business will grow over the coming years. One thing is certain though, your choice of business phone system will be one of the crucial factors in shaping those coming years of expansion. As you can see, the technology and flexibility of today's business phone systems is astounding. The PBX forms the nervous system, the core of all your business dealings. Without choosing a powerful and business phone system though, that nervous system is left lacking, and your business crippled. Whatever your choice, the benefits brought by some of these new features will undoubtedly bring a serious boost to your productivity and capabilities.

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