You might easily overlook the need for a reliable phone system, but it's critical to the success of any business.
With a distinguished phone system, you can communicate effectively with your employees, ensuring that the daily operations go as planned. This also ensures that you establish a link between your other company branches.
While looking for the most efficient office phone system, you will mostly have to decide between moving your communication to the cloud or sticking with an on-premise phone system. You will have to assess various factors before deciding on a final answer.
Top 5 Hidden Costs Of Office Phone Systems
Although you may opt for an on-premise phone system because it is highly customizable and complex, you'll also have to deal with the drawbacks in its hardware and the phones connecting to it.
Also, acquiring a new on-premise phone system will cost you considerable money. The costs can reach thousands of dollars in cases where multiple pieces of hardware are needed to support more network upgrades, like digital switches and the hardware needed to support branch satellite locations.
Still, when you take time to look beneath the surface, you will be surprised by the many hidden costs of your office phone system.
These costs make your total cost of ownership more than what you initially expected. Sometimes, these costs might be higher than your initial capital on the bare hardware.
Below are some of the most notable hidden costs you need to watch out for.
1. Office Phone Systems Require Maintenance, Trained Resources, and Upgrades
Once you purchase your office phone system, you must factor in the installation, license fees, separate building wiring, and network upgrades. These expenses can rapidly add up to a surprisingly large figure.
Still, current phone systems offer additional functionality and technologies that require highly trained individuals to maintain the system's hardware and software.
The roll-out system upgrade will also be an extra expense for your business. Also, although you have the right to get software updates from the manufacturer due to the software subscription plan or software assurance, these fees are sometimes included in the initial year only and rarely in subsequent years.
Although you may agree to an annual maintenance plan with the manufacturer, you may have to pay the installer an extra fee to perform software upgrades on your traditional phone system. Again, this is sometimes included in the initial year but rarely in subsequent years.
Depending on your plan, the contract will mostly offer lower rates for changes your installer might perform in a specific year. In most cases, it doesn't cover all the fees or even the extra hours of labor, so you'll have to pay from your pocket. If an installer makes any software upgrade past the usual working hours, you'll also have to pay more.
Apart from these cost implications, you have to consider the time spent on hardware maintenance, which can end up wasting valuable business hours or days.
Sometimes, the server hardware of the PBX phone system can also fail due to overheating or spikes in the power supply. As the system gets older, the maintenance costs of the phone system hardware and software may increase, which means more expenses and more time lost.
2. Integration Costs
The cost of integrating an office phone system with the other software you use in your business also adds up. Integration costs can range from installation to training, project management, and programming.
These elements are necessary to enable the software from a given manufacturer, X, to work with a different manufacturer, Y. You may incur a considerable amount, especially if you've never tested manufacturer X with manufacturer Y.
You should find out if your Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and accounting systems are already integrated with the office phone system you are considering for your business.
If you want a PBX system, the most common integration requirement is the CRM system. By the way, a PBX phone system has copper phone lines that connect to the on-premises phone system and then to the PBX box within an office or business site. The PBX box then uses telephony switches to direct incoming calls to phones within the premises.
You will need a system integrator to perform the integration, which can be a somewhat complex task, and it comes at a cost.
Your phone system should also have Microsoft integration, voicemail to email, and more. All these features require an installer, so you'll incur another expense.
3. Connecting Locations Adds Costs
Today, most businesses have offices spread out across multiple sites. As a result, it's necessary to have PSTN and MPLS, among other business exchange lines, to ensure that they meet the demand for bandwidth-intensive communication on these sites.
However, this complex issue causes headaches for IT teams and increases your operation costs.
For larger businesses with many locations, you'll need additional IT resources to meet the demand. This includes managing the connectivity and other phone system hardware. Even if you don't have different locations, you might have a dispersed workforce that you must serve.
4. Stand-alone Services Have Accumulative Charges
Office phone systems lack a unified business communication solution that encompasses team messaging, web meetings, video calling, conference calling, and more. You'll have to get these additional phone services from third-party vendors, which will add to significant line items.
Also, you may find other expenses for services like online fax that managers, employees, or small business units may have signed up for overtime. These charges are usually applied per minute, making it difficult to budget for such bills.
5. Telecoms Costs Can Strain Your IT Budget
Once you've installed the office phone systems, you'll need trunk lines to connect your phone to the local telecom provider.
You'll also need 800 long calls and line items for locals. While some of these costs may seem a bit straightforward, the hidden fees come from the overprovision of phone lines and the fact that you'll have to continue paying for them.
Related Article: What Is a SIP Trunk and PBX Trunking?
The Final Say: The Hidden Costs Of Your Office Phone System
From what you read above, it's clear that your office phone system costs more than just the installation expenses. You'll have to factor in all these hidden costs while choosing a phone system for your business to avoid overstraining your IT resources.
At AIS, we’re more than just a company that sells phone systems—we are an office technology solutions provider. We want to see your business grow and succeed and are here to help you with your technology needs every step of the way. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your organization.
