4 Steps to Making a Smooth Transition to a Cloud Business Phone System

1. Initiate a quick business/technology assessment:

• How many lines will you need?
• How many locations do you have, and do they need to connect?
• How do your employees communicate now—are they mostly in the office, on the road, or in home offices?
• What types of devices do they use (phones, mobile devices, fax machines, conference phones, special lines for customer service or sales, etc.)?
• What’s your budget for new phones?

2. Decide on your goals for the new system:

• Do you need support for mobile and distributed employees and consultants?
• Will you want an auto-attendant, call groups, hunt groups, and call routing?
• Do you need fax functionality?
• Will your business benefit from the latest collaboration features like video and audio conferencing, web meetings, voicemail to email, team chat, and cloud file sharing?
• What’s your timeline for rolling out the whole system?

3. Perform a cloud voice readiness assessment:

• Do you have sufficient bandwidth from your ISP and internet connection?
• Do you have a LAN with Ethernet connections at everyone’s desk?
• Is your company’s existing data network ready for voice, or will it require upgrades such as a voice-quality router to support excellent call clarity?
• Do you have good Wi-Fi performance in buildings? (The service provider should provide a free tool to monitor performance, which helps to avoid wasting time looking for the source of problems elsewhere.)
• Most important, find out in advance if your service provider or dedicated service advisor provides quality 24/7/365 support to help with the steps above.

4. Identify number porting capabilities:

• Be sure your service provider can help with number porting, including temporary numbers to ensure zero downtime.
• Make sure they offer access to true local numbers, not just “VoIP” numbers.
• Find out how they handle toll-free numbers—if you need one or if you already have one and want to keep it.

Moving your business phone system to the cloud can offer significant cost savings over a traditional phone system as well as enhanced features that your employees want and reliability your customers expect.

Do your research and choose your provider with the answers to these questions in mind!