VoIP and the SMBs - Tapping the Market

Despite the benefits of IP telephony, only a small percentage of small to medium businesses (SMBs) use VoIP as their primary means of voice communications. While there are many reasons why the adoption rate is growing slowly, VoIP has quickly become the newest, most promising, yet most disruptive voice communications technology within the telecommunications industry today.

VoIP promises a vast array of cost-saving and productivity-enhancing benefits ranging from reduced toll charges and network management expenses to advanced calling features and a more unified and flexible mobile workforce. However there exists a great amount of uncertainty surrounding the growing VoIP market, including technology issues regarding voice quality and service considerations, undefined TCO and ROI metrics, a fragmented vendor landscape, and a rapidly evolving regulatory environment. It is for these reasons that VoIP is still in the early adopter phase, with only 5 percent of SMBs using VoIP as their primary means of voice communications (See Exhibit 1), although it is gaining momentum as the telecom industry as a whole is expanding its footprint with equipment and services to support VoIP.

VoIP represents the shift to converging an organization’s traditional POTS-PSTN voice network onto its IP data network, allowing organizations to gain cost and productivity efficiencies from leveraging a single IP network for both voice and data. Since VoIP allows organizations to operate a single packet-switched network instead of managing both packet and circuit-switched networks separately, maintenance, management, and staffing costs are reduced. The high recurring costs of running separate networks are driven out of the business, freeing up operating revenues to be made available for other parts of the business.

The new converged IP-based communications vehicle enables new advanced call features and communications applications. These allow workers to increase mobility, improve communication capabilities, and ultimately enhance productivity. For example, unified messaging platforms mean that workers will have a single mailbox for email, voicemail, faxes and pages, providing simplistic access to, organization and management of all inbound communications. Similarly, the ‘find me, follow me’ feature found in most VoIP systems assigns users one phone number that, when dialed, reaches them whether they’re on their home, office, soft or cell phone. It can even forward calls to a personal voicemail account, meaning that users are never out of communication regardless of their physical location.

Users can also integrate their VoIP communications with existing applications. For example, by tying their customers’ voice communications into existing CRM software, sales reps gain a greater visibility into individual transaction histories, improving the accuracy and efficiency of the sales process.

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