VoIP offers many advantages, but companies of all sizes often prioritize just one: cost. By choosing VoIP over conventional phone lines, businesses can save as much as 50% on local or domestic calls in the United States. The savings shoot up to a potential 90% for international calls.
Saving money is one big initiative, but it's far from the only benefit global voice solutions bring in 2024. If your enterprise is considering switching to VoIP and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) communication models, now is the time to make serious moves to integrate a new system.
Organizations that evaluate the gaps in their landlines and disconnected phone systems and then look for solutions that target those issues are in the best position to capitalize on savings opportunities and unlock all the benefits of global voice solutions.
Growth Problems at a Glance: What Goes Wrong Without Global Voice Solutions
International enterprises face major problems in any conversation about moving to new technology solutions. Even with simple decisions like updating an operating system, enterprise-level organizations face hurdles when embracing the latest technologies regardless of the provider.
Switching established vendors, software, and hardware will be even more difficult. Some executives think that it's simply not worth it, no matter the potential gains. This line of thinking may have made sense for telephony solutions in the 1990s and early 2000s—it was hard to know what the long-term path would be. However, VoIP has been locked into place as the upcoming status quo for all business contexts.
The business world has passed the tipping point, and now enterprise organizations that fail to adopt cloud-based global voice solutions are losing out and losing ground. Take a look at these problems that can haunt organizations staying locked into landlines and conventional network providers:
- Your hardware doesn't easily scale. Physical networks like phone lines and local servers are holding today's businesses back because they don't facilitate growth. Suppose you need 100 new phones for 100 new salespeople. In that case, you also need 30 more phones for the payroll, legal, financial, and administrative service providers to support those sales reps. As your network grows, you'll need more wires, servers, and analog technology. It's inefficient and expensive.
- Opening new offices will become more expensive the longer you wait. Scalability problems apply whenever an existing office location grows. But it's even more problematic when you're creating a new office. You have to purchase the same hardware and ship it to the new office. You have to install a new network and get sufficient support staff. While the expenses might not be cost-prohibitive, they can weigh on the decision-making process.
- It creates a disorganized approach to remote and hybrid work. There's a lot of noise in both SMBs and enterprise organizations about the pros and cons of RTO versus WFH, with valid arguments on both sides. The last thing organizations should want is to be trapped on the RTO side of the debate because of old hardware. VoIP and UCaaS solutions give organizations the option to have staff in the office, on the go, and in-home offices, and that means your organization can pull from a larger pool of talent.
- Your global locations will have localized, unapproved, and unsecured solutions. As enterprise organizations sprawl, procurement becomes more difficult to manage. Each business unit might have discretion when choosing phone systems or tech purchases below a specific dollar amount, and they might stick to old processes instead of adopting new hardware. As a result, each office will have networks based on local options, which can result in non-standard pricing, non-standard security, and very little oversight.
The implications of these problems can go even deeper. If you have government contractors, the assortment of vendors can invalidate you. The sheer inertia of being unable to modernize your hiring practices or have employees on the ground in locations can cause you to lose markets to your competitors.
Outdated telephony will negatively impact every aspect of your long-term business strategy. The key questions are: how much are these costs now, how quickly will they grow in the future, and at what point will switching to global voice become a business-critical decision rather than just a strategically sound one?
Benefits of Implementing Global Voice Solutions in 2024
Global voice solutions can counteract all of these problems. VoIP and UCaaS are software-based solutions that can give users virtual access to phone lines and telephony software with managed licenses and portals. They don't require all the physical hardware of older phone systems. Instead, they rely on an internet connection and can run from company or personal devices (with extra layers of protection).
For a brief overview of how global voice solutions can resolve all those problems for enterprise organizations, consider the following:
- Software scales as an office grows. Your organization can simply purchase more licenses as teams evolve.
- Software scales even better for new offices. You can piggyback off of the internet connection requirements for other business operations without purchasing phone systems and hardware.
- UCaaS facilitates in-office and off-premises work without sacrificing security, so each business unit can choose the right hiring policies based on strategy, not logistics.
- You can have an organized telephony system completely managed by corporate IT.
Future-Proof Your Business Operations Now by Setting the Right Foundation
Today's businesses require multiple communication channels for internal and client-facing communications. VoIP systems offer far more than conventional systems to meet these multi-channel demands, including:
- Advanced call routing that allows callers to easily reach the right contact
- Voice-to-email options that ensure fewer messages are lost. Along with voice-to-email, VoIP can provide transcripts of calls, recordings of calls, and even translation services so that there are clear records of phone-based communications. Companies can also use these services to manage quality control, use AI to find communication patterns that facilitate better sales and account management and summarize internal calls so everyone has the information they need.
- Conference and video calling. With global voice solutions, teams can quickly host video calls with multiple participants, allow video or audio feeds, and record the calls to share with other relevant parties.
Better communication tools mean fewer barriers to collaboration and communications across different locations.
Don't Let Poor Connectivity Ruin New Business Opportunities
When you're breaking into emerging markets, good communication is one of the most powerful factors in whether new ventures succeed or fail. At a minimum, your local offices need telephony options that offer call reliability, allow users to reach sales or support personnel, and ensure prospective customers have a seamless experience across different channels.
Global voice solutions allow your corporate IT unit to easily duplicate the systems of successful offices and then customize them to suit the new location and specific personnel. With VoIP and software-based calling, your teams can also:
- Have conference calls across different time zones with less confusion
- Ensure everyone has access to the same resources through summaries, recordings, and off-hour access to phones
- Fully comply with local and national Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) replacement requirements
Get More Data for Powering Business Operations
Software-based solutions that convert audio files into searchable or analyzable text files give enterprise-level organizations more resources for optimizing business operations. Consider these potential use cases of phone calls managed through UCaaS systems:
- Web conference hosts can send participants AI-generated summaries and follow up instantly after a meeting.
- Sales enablement teams can comb through client call data to measure the value of leads and the health of existing client relationships.
- AI sales enablement tools can pull out tactics from a large bank of call data.
- Organizations can gain insight into every phone number associated with the business, easily manage different licenses and extensions (even during turbulent hiring seasons and turnover periods), and keep directories up to date in real-time.
- Global IT teams can assess usage and business requirements for each location, region, or team to make sure everyone is getting the resources they need. Depending on your providers, you can access Private Branch Exchange (PBX) auditing features, which allow you to monitor and analyze your organization's telephone system usage, as well as managed services tailored to your business operations.
Choose the Right Enterprise Voice Solution for Your Global Market
In today's digital landscape, conventional telephony systems are no longer sufficient for meeting the communication needs of businesses of any size. In 2024, your enterprise needs virtual telephony, web conferencing, the ability to answer and make calls from any location, and simple backend management that you or a trusted third party can manage. Contact us today to see how Pure IP can create a rapid deployment plan and help integrate your new voice solution before the end of 2024.
