Best Business Phone Plans in British Columbia

Of all the multitudes of hair-raising, panic-inducing, and otherwise overwhelming decisions business owners face in British Columbia, of the ones that seem to get tripped up on often is anything revolving around the dingy business phone system. What to do?

So many techie-type terms to learn. So many different providers are available in BC. So many types of equipment.

Then there’s the laundry list of questions:

to go with an on-premise solution, or
to contract out to a hosted solution?
Which one is better for the budget?
Which gives more control?
How does the implementation work?
What about the ongoing maintenance and support?

Gaahhh! There’s just not enough coffee in the western hemisphere for this, is there?

Well, the truth is that thanks to platforms like GoneVoIP are that arriving at that decision is not as complicated as you might think.

Believe it or not, there’s a shift happening in this field. It used to be you had to spend big bucks to pay for the on-premise system that gave you the control and implementation you wanted and needed to have the kind of communication you wanted with the outside world.

Today, PBX hosts are making some pretty big waves in the industry. Let me break it down for you here:

Control of the Network

Interestingly enough, control can hurt you as much as help you with respect to the phones. So, let’s be real here. We don’t exactly have an abundance of time to be checking up on yet another system frequently throughout the day.

The plate is full. Start throwing more stuff on there, we might find out what it’s like to ugly-cry in front of the staff.

Paradoxically, once we hand over the reins to a PBX host or cloud PBX, we actually get to breathe a little easier knowing that someone is out there looking after our communications needs.

Budget

Ah, yes. The discussion of the value: the almighty dollar. Do you want to know the funny thing? Long term, the costs are nominally close. many business owners in British Columbia have discovered this already. The total cost of ownership among reputable providers is close enough that the main considerations are the up-front expenditure and customer service.

And there’s really no contest there. Hosted solutions will almost always be cheaper than purchasing and owning the equipment.

Implementation

For this, British Columbia business owners have to just think about one thing: time. Time is the most precious of resources because is a finite, and sometimes infuriatingly expensive resource. There’s just never enough of it to go around. And when you start comparing an on-premise system to a hosted solution, one of the greatest advantages a hosted solution will have will be the lower amount of overall time involved in rolling out new features.

There are business owners that will tell you that doing it yourself is probably faster. And they may be right some of the time. But long-term? Hosted systems will always win. Especially on those days when everything is going wrong and you’re the only one not losing your mind about it.

This is not meant to slam on-premise systems. Indeed, if you are needing a system for, say, three hundred people, an on-premise system is probably going to be the best choice. However, for just about everything under that, the limitations of the on-premise PBX systems can end up outweighing the benefits. And that’s not a call that any business owner wants to make.