A Simple Small Phone System for Low Tech Small Businesses

There are several phone solutions on the market which are designed purely for a small office. Easiest to use and simplest to install is the basic Panasonic KX-T 308 phone system, which is a good phone system for simple users who only need to make and answer calls occasionally.

If you do decide to buy one and install it yourself, for goodness sake dont loose the manual, cos you are bound to forget how to do the things you want to do, and they are hard to find online.

The Advantages are:

1. It is really reliable once installed - I've put in lots of them and never have to go back to sort them out once they are up and working.
2. It comes with full paper documentation how to install and set up the system so if you can read and understand a manual and run phone cabling/sockets yourself it is possible to install and set-up the system yourself.
3. It uses simple 4 wire phone cabling so it can often be installed into old offices by re-using existing old phone wires.
4. It is does not have to be administered by a computer, so you can set up the system using key presses on a master phone - but you also get administration software with the package and a programming lead.
5. Panasonic Digital Phones give "Key and Lamp" working - ie. if a call comes in, lights flash on the correct key to press to pick up the call.
6. The system is simple and intuitive to use, and unskilled staff can pick it up quickly.
7. Because it is widely used, it is possible to hire a local Telecoms Engineer to install, setup and change it for you, if you cant do it yourself.

The Disadvantages are:

1. You need to buy Panasonic Digital Handsets and they are expensive.
2. It cannot be expanded above 3 lines (Analogue) and 8 Phones - so when your business grows you have to throw it away.
3. You cannot make it do clever things in the same way as a Computer Telephony enabled Telecoms System can - things like Call Queueing, Call Reporting, interacting with a Customer Database etc.

Panasonic also make larger Phone Systems but they have to compete with many other Phone System manufacturers in this very competitive marketplace, and are not as simple a proposition to install and manage yourself. If this is the sort of system you need it is better to find a good local supplier - a Telecoms Reseller - by talking to other businesses in the area, and go with the suppliers reccommended brand - it will most likely be Panasonic, Toshiba, Avaya, Nortel, Siemens or Mitel. All these traditional PBX (Private Branch eXchange) systems have their strengths and weaknesses, but the most important thing is to have a good local Reseller that actually has engineering skills and experience on the system they sell you.

Planning Telecoms and Data for Small Businesses - 1

If you are starting a Small Business you will need to bear in mind the following:

1. Will you have Fixed Offices, with Staff, or will you work from home or be mobile?
2. What is the cost to your business of missing Calls or Emails?
3. How important are Calls and Emails to your business - ie. will it be New Business Customers calling/Emailing, will it be Customer Support Calls, or do you win business in some other way?
4. Do you need to have a local presence ie. Local Telephone number, to win Local Business
5. Do you want to appear to be a larger National Company by having a National Rate number?
6. Do you need to have Out of Hours answering, or can you simply contact Callers back the next day?
7. Will you be getting many calls from Overseas customers in different time zones?
8. Do you have the skills and the time to manage Telecom and Data systems in house, or do you need to buy them in?

If you have Fixed Manned Offices and they are Serviced, then Telecoms and Data may be part of the package, and this is a good low cost option initially - however you are likely to find them restrictive or of poor quality in the longer term. It is VITALLY important that you contact your own offices frequently as a "Mystery Shopper" - this is the experience new customers have of your company, and if it is poor, you won't win their business! They will quickly look elsewhere.

It is much more important to have good internal procedures and training than the latest gadgets! A good concept is that all phone calls must be answered within 3 rings, by any member of staff - they know calls are usually answered by Reception, so if the phones keep ringing, Reception must be busy, so PICK UP THE PHONE! Its not Rocket Science!

Emails are often forgotten about, but they are a vital source of new business if your company has a website, or on-line trading presence. Again good internal discipline is required to make sure all email enquiries are handled quickly and properly - and for goodness sake dont forget Holiday cover........... there is nothing worse than having to answer a hot sales enquiry 2 weeks late because you went on holiday, it is such a wasted opportunity.

So what alternatives do you have to choose from?

1. Buy a phone system, data switch, firewall and email server, learn how to manage them properly, test them frequently, keep them secure and up to date - ideal for IT Literate Companies that have several PC's in their offices.
2. Rent the phone system functions you need from a Hosted Telecoms Service provider and use Hosted Applications accessible via Web Browser - Better for lesser skilled or time poor Companies.
3. Use an outsourced Answering Service to handle your Telecoms and use a Hosted Service for Emails - ideal for small mobile Companies, that dont want to be breaking off every 5 minutes to answer calls.
4. Rent serviced offices that supply Telecoms and Email services - simple but can be expensive.

Telecoms and Data in 2008

If we look at emerging trends in 2008 we see a proliferation of low cost one box devices for Small Business users - for example BT Micro, Xcelerator etc. These offer Smaller Businesses an extremely low cost way of having both a Data network and a simple Telecoms System in a single box, and are expandable up to a certain point - and fair to say that point is about when a growing business would need to be reviewing their Telecoms and Data solutions anyway. A capable IT Manager can install and manage this type of solution themselves, if you can install a Router and Wireless LAN you should be able to get your head around configuring a Basic Phone System, if you take the time to undersand the Telecoms Terminology (and different Manufacturers use different terms for the same thing!)

A word of warning about this type of system - which to be fair applies to most PBX solutions - they only do what they specifically say they can do. The PBX software is hard coded onto a dedicated chip and so is not very flexible at all - so dont expect the system to do anything that the sales information doesnt promise!

Also growing in popularity are Hosted PBX solutions - you pay a few Pounds a month per user, and get all the functionality of a "proper" phone system, without the big up front cost. Most Hosted PBX solutions are based on IP for the telephony side, however some are flexible enough to send calls to any type of destination ie. old Analogue phone at home or in an office, Mobile Phone, old PBX office phone system etc.

A trend I expect to see more of are "niche" Hosted Telecoms solutions, for example the very clever GoHello system, which is designed for Business Start-ups that need the features of a phone system (Call Routing and Queueing, Presence Management) but only use Mobile Phones as their Call Device or "Endpoint" (Endpoint - is the term being used in IP Telephony to indicate where you want to send and make calls from. This can be an IP phone, a mobile phone, an analogue phone, a PDA, whatever you want). http://www.gohello.co.uk/eclic

Other emerging niche Hosted Solutions are for companies that need a specific function, for example Call Recording, but dont want to or cannot afford to buy expensive dedicated Call Recorders, for example small Debt Collection Agencies. A good example of this is CR2 http://www.nsd.co.uk/

As more interesting solutions like this arrive on the marketplace I will review them here ....

2005 - Telecoms and Data Marketplace Snapshot

Whats the point of this? Well, if we look at what was happening in the Telecoms and Data marketplace in 2005 (with due regard to what went before), then compare it with 2008, hopefully we can have some idea where Telecoms and Data are going in the next 1 - 3 years.

Around 2005 the Telecoms Industry was in a phase of stable but unspectacular sales growth. Emerging technology included VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) - which Telecoms System Resellers were (completely wrongly!! - more about that later) talking about as the Holy Grail of communications and also Hosted Systems were starting to emerge into the marketplace. What are Hosted Systems? Well, the idea is that instead of the Customer buying an expensive Telephone System that needs maintaining, programming and upgrading they rent the capabilities of a much larger more powerful system that is hosted centrally, managed and maintained by dedicated expert staff.

The idea of only paying for what you need when you need it, and leaving all the clever stuff to a provider rather than having to employ and train your own staff to manage complex systems is definitely a trend that is common to both Telecoms and Data as we shall see.

Another trend emerging by 2005 was the used of ADSL (Asynchronus Digital Subscriber Lines) by businesses to connect their internal Data Networks to the outside world - as a much cheaper alternative to dedicated Leased Line circuits. ADSL is not a technology ideally suited to business use and if we were to choose technology on any basis other than cost ADSL would not be used by businesses for either Data or Telecoms. In the real world, however, price is extremely important to all businesses, and so "Business Grade ADSL" services were springing up everywhere.

Another trend emerging (from as far back as 2000) was that Data Manufacturers (eg. Cisco, 3COM) were adding Telecoms capabilities to their Data Switching products - and Telecoms Manufacturers were selling small business one box solutions giving Data and Voice Network solutions in a single "low cost" package - as well as adding the ability to send Voice Calls over Data links.

2000 - the Millennium boom

The year 1999, leading up to the famed Millenium Bug was the last year that the Telecoms market enjoyed a real sales boom. The uncertainty in the minds of the public (and to an extent the minds of the boffins) was used as a springboard to sell large numbers of "Millennium Proof" Telecoms and Data systems into Businesses worldwide.

I think it's fair to say many businesses benefitted overall from this technology refresh, however there was also many inappropriate sales of immature and unstable systems from manufacturers many of whom should have known better.

It also saw the reinforcement of the Telecoms Maintenance contract business model. A fair proportion of Telecoms system manufacturers based their business model on selling a Telecoms system as a loss leader, with most of the profit on the deal coming from a 5 year maintenance contract.

Unfortunately many Telecoms Resellers saw it as their right to hold the Customer to a substantial annual maintenance fee, and then charged for all other works required by the Customer as chargeable being outside the contract. Outrageously high maintenance charges were taken in return for shockingly poor customer service.

These poor experiences helped accelerate the trend for Telecoms provision becoming the responsibility of the IT Department rather than the Receptionist, on the grounds that "someone technical must understand all this complicated stuff" - rather than leave it all to the person who uses the complicated stuff the most.

1995 - Opening Windows

Moving on 10 years we find the Telecoms Industry has become a feeding frenzy of Telecoms Resellers madly competing to sell Phone Systems, cheaper Call Minutes, Cheaper Phone Lines and System Maintenance to businesses. A lot of Resellers made a lot of money during this period, and a lot of Business Customers paid for it!

1995 was also significant due to the launch of Microsoft Windows 95. This heralded the era of "cheap" graphical computing and also "easy and cheap" networking standards for data.

However networking PC's together requires a lot more data transfer than for Green Screen terminals, so Modems became ever faster and it was but a short step to leased lines between Business Offices transferring data around the business.

It also became possible to link PC's to Telephone Systems and enable calls to be queued and handled - which led to Call Handling Centres and Call Centre Systems becoming cost effective for Telecoms intensive Businesses.

Also emerging was the idea of sharing Leased Lines between different Business locations for both Telecoms and Data traffic - Private Networks for Voice and Data. To make the sharing of Voice and Data bandwidth between sites more efficient companies started to break Voice calls into packets and feed the data packets into the voice stream - which eventually became Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP.

1985 - the Big Bang and all that..

Why do we call 1985 the Big Bang? Well it was the year that British Telecom stopped being a State Monopoly, became privatised, and started to have to allow competition.

Because all the Infrastructure (wires, exchanges, phones - everything!) was owned by BT, the Government had to legislate to allow access to all of BT's infrastructure by its competitors. This created a somewhat artificial competitive market, where access to exchanges was controlled tightly by BT, BT engineers only were allowed to install lines to business premises and equipment in exchanges - but it was labelled an "open market". The intention was fair, but I think everyone involved in telecoms from that point to this would agree BT have been fighting a rearguard action ever since.

Anyway, 1985 was the first year you could buy a telephone system for your business from anyone other than BT.

You could also get your phone lines from Cable & Wireless and other companies. So all of a sudden UK Telecoms became a new frontier and, like all new markets, a bit like the Wild West!

All sorts of companies sprang up selling all sorts of Telecoms equipment and also buying call minutes wholesale from BT, C&W etc. and selling them on to business customers at lower rates than BT.

To bring Data into the picture, this was the era of the Mainframe Computer - typically Green Screen shared session computing, accessed by users remotely via dedicated computer cabling. Because Mainframe Computers were so expensive, it was also the era of centralised Computer Departments with rooms full of equipment serviced by men in white coats, driving other rooms full of terminals used by Data Entry staff. Because Green Screen terminals only need a very little data it started to become practicable to allow Users from far locations access to the mainframe via Modem boxes (which MOdulate/DEModulate the information from the mainframe to the Terminal along a telephone connection).

Over time Telephone Systems became more sophisticated and feature rich as a natural result of competition, modems became faster, and traffic requirements for calls and data became ever higher as we entered "Modern Times" - and if you ever saw the Charlie Chaplin film of the same name you would have an idea of where the Telecoms Industry is now!

A bit of Telecoms (and Data Networks) History

Boring stuff first, right? A Brief History of UK Telecoms.......

Whats the point of reading this? Well the technology installed commencing early 1900s still underpins all of your phone calls and internet connections in the UK, so its worth spending 5 minutes reading about it, ok?

Telecoms is all about using 2 wires and a bit of electricity to talk between people who are physically apart from each other. The old phone systems had bells and handles, big batteries to drive it all, and sweet old ladies plugging things into sockets to connect you to the person you wanted to talk to. Simple. And we called it the Phone Line.

Then technology was applied to make things faster and cheaper and automated - how hard can it be?

Well, you need to apply a bit of chaos theory here, ie. the more time passes the more chaotic the universe becomes - which translated, means the more mature a technology becomes (Telecoms and Data) the more complex it becomes. Why? In a word, "standardisation".

Cars are easy to drive cos they all have the same controls, right? But we smile at Americans who are used to driving Automatics struggling with a "Stick Shift". If you have ever moved from driving a Manual car to an Automatic, tho, you know how confusing it can be. Then how about driving on the other side of the road, on the continent? - and how confusing is that French thing of "Priorite a Droite" at crossroads?

My point is that because the World is so diverse, the standards for Telecoms are diverse also.

Initially we all used Analogue phones - those Cream or Black Bakelite or Plastic things with a dial you turned to send numbers or letters = Analogue. This standard is still used in the UK (and many/most other Countries) as the basic phone system people use at home and also for quite a few small Businesses. So an Analogue phone will work almost anywhere if you can plug it in. this technology is also often called POTS (which stands for Plain old Telephone System).

However the need to stuff more calls down wires led to a technology referred to as Digital Telephony - which is more accurately called TDM (Time Division Multiplexing). The idea is you divide the Phone Line capacity into slots, then send different calls down different slots. In the UK the current "Standards" for Digital Phone Connections are ISDN2 (which can carry 2 calls at once) and ISDN30 - or E1(which can carry up to 30 calls at once). However different countries developed their own standards, eg. in America their version of ISDN30 is called T1 and only carries 24 calls. Of course E1 doesnt talk directly to T1 and vice versa - clever stuff needs to happen to make them compatible.

Still with the picture? Ok. One more paragraph and we have described the history of the phone system up until about 1985, alright?

Obviously if you start stuffing more calls into larger buildings you need systems to move those calls around the building to the right person. The early systems used Old Aggie sitting at Reception with a Plugboard to connect calls, same as in the early Black and White films that come around every Christmas - but again this process is costly and started to become automated. Clever boxes started to sprout up that made bells ring and lights flash, and calls arrived at peoples desks on their big Cream or Black Phones. However the systems needed looking after and Old Aggie (theoretically having a little more time on her hands now) somehow ends up with responsibility for buying and maintaining the Company Telephone System.

What happens in 1985? The Big Bang! Huge changes in technology, market competition etc. the emergence of Home Computing, the break up of dear old Aunty Post Office into BT etc. and the root of all modern confusion and evils!!

Phew, after that rant I'm off for a cup of tea and a lie down....more about Analogue and Digital Telephone systems later.

Inside Stuff about Telecoms

There are huge changes going on in Telecoms and Data solutions for Business and, after 15 years involvement in Sales and Engineering for Customers, I thought it would be useful to give some straightforward and unbiased information for Customers setting up or improving their Company Telecoms and Data strategy.

Why would anyone want to read it - well, most consultation or advice from Companies own Internal Staff, or from External Sales or Consultant people is biased.

If you think about it, Internal Staff have to justify their previous decisions, and can only talk about systems and technology they have exposure to.

Whereas External Sales and Consultancy people definitely want to sell you something!!

So the aim of this blog is to try and set out some simple guidance for non technical companies on how to evaluate and select solutions that are most suited to their requirements - rather than simply buy what you are sold :-)

So - more later