Phone systems for the small business are in many respects, unusual.

Why? There are several reasons including:

• the requirements of a very small business for business telecoms support may actually be greater than those associated with a much larger company where more personnel are perhaps available;
• small businesses may be more innovative and technology-minded than some major organisations;
• inevitably, the smaller business may be more cost-conscious;
• smaller businesses may be far more aware of the need to procure business phone systems that are capable of easy and rapid growth in support of their trade.

This means that the manufacturers and providers of such systems need to ensure that their phone systems are ready to support this wide ranging set of requirements.

That is why companies such as Siemens business telephones, provide a range of systems that offer very sophisticated functional support to a business but which are capable of being started at a level as low as perhaps 2-3 handsets.

These systems are capable of being incremented and grown to what may eventually become a very large and functionally complicated system.

So, it is possible to make a case that phone systems for the small business may actually only be different to the extent that they may have fewer handsets attached. 

Some small companies may actually have a more complicated system than their far larger corporate counterparts!

What does this mean for your selection of a telephone system for your business?

Only that it is important to get the selection right.  Some systems may be advertised as being ideal for the small business and they perhaps are – but you may not be able to say for sure until you have fully analysed your requirements and received professional advice on the solutions available.

That may save you from making an expensive mistake based upon assumptions that a small company is necessarily a simple one – it may not be!

Systems for business need to fit into and be capable of supporting you.  You do not want to end up needing to shape your business so that it has to fit the capabilities of your phone systems.

Source:  John A. Darby, Director of Telcare

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