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Do you really need to take time away from creating a business plan, a marketing scheme, a personnel hiring strategy, and other really fun stuff in order to evaluate your options for the purchase of a phone system for your small business? The simple answer to this question is yes if your business will need an efficient and effective way to initiate and maintain contact customers, vendors, employees, or any other members of the business population who may impact your bottom line. Sources including Gartner and the VOIP Resource Center suggest particular guidelines that will support your efforts to ensure the effective communication by your business with the world at large.The following guidelines will assist you in the conduct of a careful and objective decision process, the identification of selection criteria that are of significance to your business, the achievement of stakeholder consensus in this process and ultimately, a more efficient implementation of the selected PBX product.

1) Identify both your current and long term requirements. Experts suggest that a 3 year planning horizon is appropriate for most businesses. This time frame will ensure that you avoid the mistake of planning only for your immediate requirements rather than for the long-term growth of your business. This longer time frame will also allow you to benefit from a better service rate in that the duration of the service contract is a major factor used by the service provider to calculate your bill. However, you should take care to stay within the 3 year planning horizon to ensure you have the flexibility to upgrade your system as required to gain access to any recent technological advances that may help you expand your business.

2) Gain an understanding of the functionality used by the various phone systems to add additional ports, lines, and phones to an existing system. Unlike a phone system, the number of lines and telephones that can be accommodated by a PBX system is determined by the system's number of ports. For example, if the system is configured with 45 ports, the system can accommodate any combination of lines and extensions that in total equal 45. However, the actual number of lines for the phone system is determined by the manufacturer during the construction of the particular circuit board.

3) Determine the specific phone system features that your business requires. Most phone systems incorporate a particular set of features. Therefore, be sure to compare the features that are

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