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What Is Hosted PBX and Can It Save Me Money?

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Hosted PBX allows different small and medium-sized business to have a complex telephone system without spending any money on the telephone equipment. The hosted PBX is operated and maintained by the VoIP service provider. It empowers employees to work from anywhere such as their house, a hotel or even on a cell phone. Hosted PBX offers features such as the ability to transfer calls, have music on hold, set up conference calls or the phone can be answered by an automated attendant that can direct the callers to their desired department.

Hosted PBX has the capability of working with your existing telephone system or it can completely replace that system. It can be used with landlines, mobile phones, and VoIP services.  It provides the best telecommunication system for small and medium-sized businesses.  Hosted PBX not only provides the facility of routing calls but it also offers other enhanced communication features.  Apart from routing calls, it allows number sharing in an organization, meaning one business number can be used by multiple employees.  The Hosted PBX also takes care of the incoming calls that were not responded to immediately by the employees.  Additionally, Voicemail, fax, automated greetings, touch-tone menus, conference calls, call records, directory and automatic call distribution are all the amazing services provided by Hosted PBX systems.

Because it is a hosted system, you don’t need to spend extra money in the initial phase of buying the expensive hardware.  Similarly, you will never need to worry about the upgrade cost of this equipment. In contrast to traditional PBX services, hosted PBX makes this high-quality business technology available to even small businesses.

Hosted PBX phone systems are easy to operate and install, as well as being cost-effective for businesses of all sizes. From the one person independent home business that wants to appear to be large and prosperous to the corporation of thousands of employees that wish to make the most of the company resources,  implementing hosted PBX is the optimal solution. It provides all the necessary communication facilities to a business.

WheelHouse Solutions provides exceptional service to businesses of all sizes. Understanding how our clients’ businesses function, on a day-to-day basis, allows our team to design IT solutions that align with their vision and objectives.

We take pride in the many accolades we’ve received, from business owners, who are now thriving by utilizing technologies deployed by WheelHouse. It’s easy to recommend a technology solution, but WheelHouse stands behind our commitment to provide customized and scalable solutions that are as unique as each of the businesses we are proud to serve.  Feel free to contact us at 314-492-2506 or fill out the form on this page and we’ll work with you to develop a solution that will meet your needs now, as well as provide for future growth and flexibility.

5 Tips For Reducing Expenses In Your Organization

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Technology has become an essential factor in almost every business operation and now business owners are looking for ways to reduce expenses in their IT departments, in order to achieve greater efficiency for less money.

To do that, as a business owner, the logical action would be to cut back on your IT costs, but it’s essential to avoid sacrificing efficiency when reducing expenses.  With that in mine, here are the top five tips and tricks to reduce expenses in your business without compromising its efficiency and/or destroying value:

  1.  If you’re a small business owner, try to find alternatives to your traditional telephone service; if you’re using a land-line or a regular cell phone, you can switch to VoIP service and virtual phone lines. There are many options available that provide provide great flexibility and excellent value for the money, not to mention a serious cost reduction when it comes to communications.
  2. Use open source software. This is an excellent alternative to the commercial mainstream applications, especially if you’re a small business. The software related costs may cripple your business, especially in its inception phase, and open source software is very attractive, because it’s free.
  3. Use cloud services, instead of investing lots of money in hardware/software, especially if you’re a small business. Also, you should determine what you really need, the latest high-tech services is not always necessary and it may cost you an arm and a leg. And if you decide to perform an audit of your existing computers, you may find an answer about what’s really necessary for your line of business, hence reducing your technology expenses.
  4. You can try to negotiate with your existing IT contracts because IT services vendors desire to keep their clients happy and on board for as long as possible. Keep in mind that the competition in this area is pretty tight and you can take advantage on that. You can proactively ask for discounts, freebies, cost reductions or even negotiate a customized plan. In the end, it’s important to ask if you want to get any advantages.
  5. Reduce expenses with online business training. Being a small business owner, you can’t afford to travel the world in order to expand your experience, to participate in live training /educational conferences and the like. But, in the Internet era, you can use online business training for you and your employees. There are lots of free online business training programs and you can use them from the comfort of your office or even at home. With these options available for ongoing training, the possibilities for you and your business are endless, and your costs related to training will be significantly reduced.

If your business is looking for Managed IT, Cloud Services, Consulting & Support Services, WheelHouse Solutions has a staff of experienced professionals to deliver outstanding results. We provide cost-efficient managed IT Services, backed by a professional IT Staff, with experience in multiple disciplines. Whether you’re looking to augment your existing IT staff, or if your business wants to outsource all your IT services, we have a flexible solution to meet your needs.  Feel free to contact us at 314-492-2506 or fill out the form on this page and someone will get back with you.

What is SIP Trunking

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What is SIP Trunking is another question we get all the time.  Organizations of all sizes can save a fortune from this technology.  It is the protocol which makes VoIP work and provides dial tone for IP Phone implementations.   SIP trunking is a huge cost saver because it eliminates the need to buy expensive PRIs, local lines or gateways. It basically increases the effectiveness of VoIP and opens a new scope of establishing more advanced communication applications.

What is SIP Trunking

SIP Trunking is a process of directly connecting your organization with an ITSP (Internet Telephony Service Provider).  SIP Trunking is basically based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) which is a signaling communications protocol which rides down an internet connection. In addition to VoIP calls, SIP Trunking also offers other features such as desktop sharing, web conferencing, voice and video streaming applications, whiteboard sharing and much more. As many organizations already have an infrastructure for VoIP which has made the implementation of SIP Trunking easier.

How can I save money with SIP Trunking?

When it comes to SIP Trunking, you can buy SIP Trunks based on the number of concurrent calls across all locations.  For a multi-location customer, this could be a huge amount of savings.  Here is a quick example.  Say you are a retail organization and you have 5 locations with 3 local lines at each location.   So you have 15 lines total in your network.  However, you are really not on the phone that often.   You really only have 7 concurrent calls going on throughout your organization at any one time.  With SIP trunking, you can share and pool your lines to 7 SIP Trunks and cut your phone bill by more than 50% in local line costs!   This is one of the huge advantages of SIP Trunking. Expansion of SIP Trunks is dependent on bandwidth, which can easily be increased by adding additional capacity.

With SIP Trunking, you can get a virtual number almost anywhere in the country.  So if you are looking to expand, this could help ramp up the business in a new city.  Expansion of lines is dependent on bandwidth, which can easily be increased by adding additional lines.  SIP Trunking is used by IP-PBX’s or other SIP applications. Since a SIP Trunk goes directly into an IP Phone System, it can be achieved without using any TDM cards or other gateways. This saves a ton of money on hardware.

SIP Trunking can be a huge productivity gain as well as a huge financial windfall for organizations.  Make sure to safeguard that your setup is correct and with a reputable SIP Trunk provider.

If your goal is to save money and upgrade to SIP trunking, please visit our WheelHouse Solutions website or call us at 314-492-2506 to speak with one of our knowledgeable staff.  We would appreciate the opportunity to become your technology partner and help you find the best solution for you and your company.