Every major technological advance is accompanied by changes in our habits. The telephony sector is no exception to this immutable rule. The “Community Telephone Network”, the traditional system, is living its last hours. Internet telephony is gradually taking its place. More than just a logical evolution, IP telephony represents the future for businesses, bringing a host of advantages and relieving professionals of many constraints. It’s migration time.
To better understand the definition and operation of IP telephony telephony, read our detailed article.
Plan your migration
For some time now, France Telecom has been sounding the death knell for telephone lines as we knew them. The end of the networks of the past has been in sight since the beginning of 2023. For companies, this means implementing a number of significant changes within their business. If you still haven’t started making these changes, there’s still time to prepare the ground for a successful migration. IP telephony dematerializes fixed telephony for professionals. It’s essential to plan your migration project so that each stage can be completed smoothly. What does this mean for you?
A precise assessment of your needs
A migration to IP telephony doesn’t just mean a change of hardware. You need to be able to access an offer that is truly tailored to your needs. To better define them, we need only answer a few basic questions:
- What does your company’s telephony department currently consist of?
- do you use analog fax machines or old-fashioned low-speed modems?
- Is every line you own still fully useful in your business?
- will your needs remain the same in the future, or will they evolve?
- does your current system lack options?
- what professions are involved in day-to-day telephony, and what are their respective needs?
- do you need to use different international numbers on the same terminal?
- do you need to stay connected all over the world or just within your company?
- do you need to record and play back calls?
Answering these questions will help you clarify your project, based on the real needs of your teams.
Evaluating future investment
In the long term, IP telephony will represent substantial cost savings. However, when you migrate to it, you’ll have to pay a fee. It’s important to anticipate this spending niche as well as possible. This evaluation must include the price of the offer, the cost of the equipment, the support and the various additional options.
Choosing your Internet provider
Faced with the current offer, it’s easy to think that all operators are equal. It’s true that advertising campaigns seem to indicate this. However, if you look at the guarantees and options on offer, you’ll see that the gap quickly widens. So how do you choose?
- compare offers: generally speaking, you need to choose between a 100% cloud offer and an IPBX (using physical terminals),
- List the functionalities available with your offer: for example, an interactive voice server, powerful integration with your CRM solution, or a call dashboard updated in real time,
- check the speed of implementation: your operator must give you a deadline for your migration. This makes it easy to find the most efficient one,
- check call quality before signing any contract,
- ask if your offer is flexible, it’s important to be able to adjust it over time, according to your needs,
- also check that the offer is compatible with your existing equipment.
It’s also important to understand the types of IP telephony servers, their role, operation and selection criteria, to make an informed choice. Find out more in our detailed article.
Migration to IP telephony
A migration to IP telephony will impact all your teams. How does it work in practice? Integration is generally carried out in stages, allowing everyone to get to grips with the new system.
Organization chart
The first step is to create administrator accounts. You will then link your staff to them. To do this, you can transpose your usual team organization. In doing so, each will have its own functionalities and access rights.
Set up your system
You don’t need to be a master of the subject for this step, but if necessary, your operator will accompany you. Now is the time to program the various parameters of your new system, starting with the welcome message and the announcement of the time slots during which your employees are available.
Integration and portability
Technically, you will finalize your installation by integrating the system with your existing equipment. For greater efficiency, we recommend that you request portability for each number, especially if your company is already well established.
To find out more about network types for IP telephony, their bandwidth requirements and how to manage them, see our dedicated article.
Train your teams
Sector by sector, support your teams through this transition. The sooner your employees get to grips with IP telephony, the sooner you’ll be able to grow your business.
What are the main advantages of IP telephony?
Migration to IP telephony is inevitable, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t highly profitable for businesses. In fact, this imperative represents a great opportunity for your business. The benefits are legion.
Find out more about the advantages of IP telephony in our dedicated article.
Total mobility
An IP telephony offer frees up your teams, geographically speaking. By using a dematerialized system, the usual boundaries and constraints are simply annihilated. Your employees can use this system on all current media (landlines, smartphones, computers and tablets). This also applies to your meeting rooms, provided they are equipped with an audio/video system.
A modernized company
It may seem trivial, but a company modernization impacts your business on a number of levels. Your teams benefit from time-saving options that help them to be more efficient and closer to your customers. This small detail can be an important factor in your development. IP telephony also impacts your brand image. You become more responsive, more competitive. This change will be felt by your customers.
Perfect budget control
Diving into a new technology can be scary, financially speaking. But with IP telephony, there’s no such risk – quite the contrary. A paperless system considerably reduces long-term costs.
- all your Office365 tools on a single platform,
- possible integration of add-on modules,
- no annual equipment maintenance,
- no expenses for repairs and maintenance.
What precautions should I take with IP telephony?
The real challenge with paperless telephony lies in securing the system.
- In addition to isolating your corporate network, we recommend using a high-performance, reliable VPN,
- encryption and proxy tunnels must be integrated right from the start,
- this migration can be an opportunity to find a better firewall,
- restrict access to sensitive data to responsible persons only,
- plan a good control of open sessions,
- create an alert system,
- Regularly review safety and network usage reports.
All these good habits complement the cloud. This alone is a good way of securing your system. With it, you can manage the entire network remotely. Administration is simple, intuitive, precise and reliable, allowing you to be particularly responsive when you need to be. What’s more, in the event of equipment damage or a major problem, IP telephony makes all your online data secure.
