How to Convince Your Boss to Upgrade Your Legacy Phone System

How to Convince Your Boss to Upgrade Your Legacy Phone System

It’s time. You know that the legacy phone system is becoming obsolete and switching to VoIP is the best move: There’s little shortage of benefits, and it makes sense from both administrative and business standpoint. That said, how do you persuade your boss to make the jump?

Upgrading a phone system is no small feat. And sometimes, your boss simply doesn’t realize how legacy phone systems are holding the business back. To convince the upper management of the essential phone transformation, your job is positioned to present the case tangibly while providing essential evidence of overall return on investment (ROI) – including the problems it could solve, the additional business advantages it could bring, and the potential savings in the long run.

Here are several power-packed arguments to help you get started.

1. Issues with Your Current Legacy Phone System

There are a number of factors that can cause a legacy telephone system, or a traditional TMD PBX system, to fail when you need it most. Try to remind your boss of your current issues. They may include the customers’ complaints on the ability to reach employees, the difficulty of adding phone lines, complex system administration, escalating phone bills, and maintenance costs, disaster vulnerability, etc. Below are several key points to bring up.

  • Legacy PBX is marking company growth cost-prohibitive

Legacy phone systems often referred to as analog or TDM PBX systems, rely on hardware and physical phone lines to carry your voice traffic. The means: if you need to add new phone lines or cover more users, the costs can be fairly expensive because there are new hardware and copper wiring to settle.

In contrast, IP PBX systems can be scaled up and down effortlessly and cost-effectively to meet your business growth. Whether with an on-premises or cloud-based system, new phone lines (SIP Trunks) and users can be added over the Internet at any time without any wiring work and any installation fees. All it takes is to make a few point-and-click changes in your administrative portal or to call your service provider for an additional PBX extension/line package. In effect, upgrading to an IP-based telephony solution like Yeastar will allow your business to grow and expand phone system capacity at any time in a much simpler way, and most importantly, without breaking the bank.

  • Legacy PBX falls short of demanding mobility and integration capacity

A physical desk phone that sits in the office won’t help an employee who is offsite for the day. Businesses are now in demand of a highly mobile and integrated communications system to accommodate the growing on-the-go workers and efficient data processing. Unfortunately, legacy phone systems aren’t capable of such capacity. Your employees should always “stay in place” to not to miss a call. And unified communications is simply not allowed for the legacy PBX’s outdated IT infrastructure.

A VoIP PBX phone system could change things, however. For example, with the IP-based Yeastar PBX system, your employees may move throughout the office with mobile devices and laptops to collaborate or work remotely: all voice telephony features alongside the advanced UC capacity like IM, presence, and file sharing are always at their fingertip. Besides, business-critical applications like CRM, Hotel PMS, Call Center can also be integrated to auto-process mass data, bringing your business efficiency and productivity to the next level.

Blog 6 Signs It Might Be Time to Upgrade Your Phone System

  • Legacy phone systems bring escalating phone bill and maintenance costs

Legacy phone systems don’t require frequent updates, but making changes to meet your businesses’ needs can cost you an arm and a leg. With a legacy PBX, you may be required to purchase additional hardware for advanced features. And whenever a problem occurs, you’re often asked to pay for on-site tech support from the vendor. There is little remote tech support option and things can’t get fixed on time, which may cause unexpected business with system downtime.

In addition to the maintenance costs, phone bills with a legacy phone system are also substantial. Your calls are transmitted via antique PSTN lines that charge at a much higher rate than VoIP, especially for long-distance and international calls. After all, the telecom carrier needs to invest in wires, cables, and satellites to support your phone lines.

Blog ISDN Switch Off – What the Future Holds?

2. Business-Enhancing Benefits with the New VoIP PBX

The key step to gain upper management support is to prove the upgrading is the right move. Listing the advantages that your legacy PBX isn’t capable of is most straightforward. Based on your complete network and infrastructure assessment, present your proposed solutions, and state your case as to why it’s the best option. Here are several common VoIP advantages to help dissipate your boss’s concerns.

  • Unified, integrated communications: having the ability to embrace multiple collaboration and communication features in one platform. Bring the company together with advanced features like mobile softphone, conferencing, messaging, presence, etc. And fuel your sales and support process with robust CRM integration that enables quicker access to customer data.
  • Simpler system management: an IP-PBX system will be much more familiar to computer-savvy people. This can be especially true for Asterisk-based systems that have a front-end GUI such as Yeastar. The adds, changes and moves can be done in a web-based administrative portal in minutes.
  • Remote extensions and softphone: employees can plug in a compatible IP phone at home to their Internet connection and be extension dialing. Coordinated mobile softphone also allows your road warriors to have their business extensions always with them.
  • Branch offices: a best-in-class IP-based phone system allows for the creation of bridges among office locations over IP phone lines or internet connection. If you’re having a cloud-based phone system, IP phone will be the major cost of the hardware needed for a new office location.
  • Eliminate phone wiring: connect hardware IP phones directly to a standard computer network port which it can share with an adjacent computer. Software phones can be installed directly on the PC. By eliminating phone wiring, adding or moving extensions is much easier, and new offices can completely eliminate the need for wiring extra ports.
  • Fast migration to VoIP: finish your whole system migration to VoIP in less than one day. Most VoIP PBX systems now arrive plug-and-play ready and are easy to configure with easy-to-understand buttons/drop-down on the Web GUI. The advanced IP Phone auto-provisioning can also help to deploy multiple handsets in bulk.

Related: Conquering 6 Fears of Upgrading a Legacy Phone System

Related: 7 VoIP Features That Boost Small Business Customer Service

3. The Potential Savings of Upgrading to VoIP

The best way to appeal to upper management is to focus on the cost-effectiveness of the new solution. But don’t just say, “It’s cheaper!”. Provide concrete figures that spell out how much you’ll save with a VoIP system when convincing your boss. Do a side-by-side comparison of your current phone system spend, including the cost of individual features.

VoIP reduces operating expenses enough to pay for itself in the near term. And it can save the company a whole lot of money going forward. Here are several statistics to help you prove the point:

  • A business that adopts VoIP technology can expect to see between 50% and 75% cost reduction. And businesses with 30 users using a new VoIP system save around $1,200 per month. (Harbor Network)
  • Small businesses that switch to VoIP reduce their local call costs by up to 40%, and international call costs by up to 90%. (TechCo)
  • Businesses can save up to 75% on communication if they opt for VoIP. (BullsEye Telecom, 2017)

4. The Best Practice: Show, Don’t Tell

It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words. If the points and facts above alone don’t convince your boss. Let him/her see it in action. Set up a time for everyone to hop on a webinar or join a demo that showcases VoIP phone systems. Yeastar offers 14 day full-access free trial to Yeastar VoIP PBX system, so you can experience how VoIP and unified communications could make a change to your business at no risk. You can also prepare some case studies to show your boss your solution in a real case.

If there are any blockers in your path to convince your boss, let us help. Contact us here and we’ll see if we can help your team decide to join the thousands of businesses enjoying the cost-savings, ease, and flexibility of VoIP technology.

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User Login

Instantaneously receive user login credentials via email once the extension has been deployed by the adminstrator.

Log in conveniently via any web browser for access to the user portal.

Integrations

Integrate various CRM software for better customer service and satisfaction.

Enable transcription of audio messages into text with integration of third-party transcription service.

Enable API for integration with various third-party integrations for advanced performance such as call center and hotel reception services.

System

Provision email SMTP and template settings for event notifications to be sent out.

Manage storage allocation and duration of various types of data being stored on the PBX.

Determine the types of event notifications to be sent out, and the parties receiving them.

IVR

Add various audio voice prompts to be played according to different call scenarios.

Add voice prompts on multiple levels for more effecient and precise inbound call routing.

Voicemail

Customize default voicemail settings for each user extension.

Add various voicemail messages for allocation to different call scenarios and users.

Provision specific rules to how voicemail messages are played over the PBX system for better caller experience.

Reports and CDR

All call log activities are stored, with the option of having audio conversations recorded by default or for specific extensions.

Use intuitive visual call reports, to check various call statistics over extensions, trunks, queues, ring groups, and more.

Call reports can be viewed and downloaded directly from the PBX, or scheduled to be sent via email to respective parties.

Security

Restrict a general group or specific IP addresses to prevent unauthorized access to your PBX.

Limit the number of otbound calls users are allowed to make within a time period to protect against toll fraud.

Restrict certain country codes for outbound calls either company-wide or on certain extensions.

User Login

Determine extension ranges for different functions.

Define use of different voice prompts depending on call scenarios or intended function.

Provision basic and advanced SIP settings to be used on the PBX.

Recordings

Record all calls made on specified trunks, including inbound and outbound calls.

Recordings

Record all calls made on specified extensions, conferences, or call queues.

Paging and Intercom

Create different types of paging and intercom broadcast groups for selected extensions.

Set a time schedule to automatically start your broadcast.

Maintenance

Check for and download firmware upgrades to ensure that your PBX is always up-to-date.

Perform back-ups to prevent data and settings from getting lost.

Perform troubleshooting on your own to debug.

Conference

Pre-set conference settings and dial-in passwords for security, and allow internal users to send conference invites to external parties.

Speed Dial

Create multiple speed dial numbers to respective external numbers frequently used for outgoing calls.

Speed dial is activated when the set prefix (default or customized) is dialed.

Ring Group

Create multiple ring groups and determine custom ring strategies and failover settings for each.

Call Queue

Create different call queues with specific ring strategies and failover settings.

Static agents permanently answer calls in queue, while dynamic agents can log in and out. Allocate different extensions to each group.

Determine what actions are to be allowed for Mangers or Agents to manage on the Queue Panel.

Call Control

Have calls received on specific SIP trunks routed to designated extensions or destinations within the PBX.

Set-up dial patterns so that outbound calls are routed to their intended destinations.

Determine how calls are routed and received at different times of a day.

Contacts

Store, retrieve, and share company contact details easily on your PBX.

Organize company contacts into dedicated phonebooks and determine accessibility rights to extension groups for each.

Bulk import a list of contacts instead of having to key details in individually.

Role and Client Permission

Pre-defined user roles within the PBX are conveniently available for allocation, or create your own set of permissions.

Restrict users from viewing specific extensions, departments, or extension groups with Extension Visibility.

Allow or resrict specific users from managing or viewing certain company contacts

Auto Provision

Pre-defined setting parameters specific to respective IP phone models are conveniently available for easy set-up.

IP Phones can be quickly provisioned to your Yeastar PBX with just the pre-defined template and device MAC address.

Trunks

Register multiple SIP trunks on a single PBX as needed.

Different types of trunks can be created, Caller ID can be customized.

Extensions

View, deploy, add, and remove user extensions within your PBX system.

Configure default call and user settings for individual extensions.

Customize allocation of user extensions to specific ring groups.

Portal Login Page

Receive your administrator log-in credentials and set-up guide via email.

Log-in on any web-browser to get started with PBX set-up.

Installation Wizard will guide you through basic configurations.

User Login

Access all company contacts made available to you by the administrator.

Create your own personal contacts list for easy reference and dialing.

Bulk import contact details for convenient data entry.

User Login

Access and manage user settings for softphone application and voicemail.

Manage call routing and presence status for your individual extension.

Retrieve or download your personal call logs and recordings.

User Login

Receive your log-in credentials and set-up guide via email, sent by your admin.

Log-in on any web-browser to get started with PBX set-up.

Configure contacts and personal settings from the web portal.

Auto Provision

Add, remove, or modify IP phone settings from your web interface.

Upgrade IP phone firmware conveniently from your PBX.

Upload various default setting parameters specific to respective IP phone models for greater convenience during set-up.

Contacts

Store, retrieve, and share company contact details easily on your PBX.

Have detailed contact information for your vendors and clients conveniently stored .

Bulk add a list of contacts instead of having to key details in individually.

PBX Monitor

Monitor the status extensions, whether they aren idle, in use, or unavailable.

Know whether your SIP Trunk running properly, or experiencing problems.

Monitor the number of call conferences currently running on your PBX, and their individual durations.

Maintenance

Check for and download firmware upgrades to ensure that your PBX is always up-to-date.

Perform back-ups to prevent data and settings from getting lost.

Perform troubleshooting on your own to debug.

Call Detailed Report

All call log activities are stored, with the option of having audio conversations recorded by default or for specific extensions.

Filter by date, time, or extension number to retrieve specific call logs or recordings

Playback call recordings directly from the PBX or download to store externally.

Event Center

Determine what events and logs are to be recorded and/or have notifications sent.

Specify particular notifications to be sent to respective authorized personnel.

User Permission

Set up vaious groups of users for allocation to certain sets of access rules.

Determine what features a certain group of extensions can or cannot access.

Determine if users can access, play-back, or download call logs and recordings from the pbx.

Security

Restrict a general group or specific IP addresses to prevent unauthorized access to your PBX.

Determine specific the range of SIP ports for connection between your PBX and endpoints.

Restrict country codes for outbound calls either company-wide or on certain extensions.

Voice Prompt

Upload and designate customised audio recordings at multiple levels of a call journey.

Upload recorded music to fill the silence that would be heard by callers on hold.

Upload customised voice prompts to create a professional call experience.

General

Customize general call preferences either company-wide or for individual extensions.

Set-up feature dial codes for convenient user navigation to specific call features.

Determine how voicemails are retrieved, and also upload custom voicemail recordings.

Call Features

Add multiple automated responses to be played at different phases of a call journey.

Designate specific extensions to ring concurrently based on an external caller's dial pattern.

Customize messages and waiting times to keep external callers engaged when put on hold.

Call Control

Have calls received on specific SIP trunks routed to designated extensions within the PBX.

Set-up dial patterns so that outbound calls are routed to their intended destinations.

Determine how calls are routed and received at different times of a day.

Trunks

Register multiple SIP trunks on a single PBX as needed.

Provision SIP trunk settings and dedicate them to particular extensions.

Bulk add DDIs on each SIP trunk, for allocation to an individual or groups of extensions.

Extensions

View, deploy, add, and remove user extensions within your PBX system.

Allocate and deploy specific extension numbers to respective users via email.

Set-up default ring and presence status settings for individual users.

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