Multi-location Organizations Are Balancing On The Edge Of A Precipice With Aging PBX Systems

Are you buried in the minutiae of administrative tasks? Are you relying on complex maintenance and support contracts that are required for PBX hardware from many different manufacturers? Or do your staff in one office find it difficult to easily extension-dial or transfer calls to staff at another location? Or perhaps you’re managing relationships with different service companies and multiple contracts that have varying SLAs (Service Level Agreements) and expiration dates?

Let’s take a look at an organization with 20 locations. This represents:

• 20 PBX / Key Systems
• 20 Service Contracts
• 20 Support Issues
• 20 Phone Bills
• 20 Long Distance Bills
• 20 Toll-free Bills
• 20 Internet Connections
• 140 Potential Headaches

Now, imagine 30, 50, 100 sites. Never mind the potential headache, you’ll have a thundering never-ending migraine. Wouldn’t you prefer 1 number to call, 1 bill per month? And 0 headaches?

The simple fact is that conventional, onsite PBX systems are not well-suited to organizations with multiple locations. A PBX system is expensive and time consuming, especially considering the demise of the traditional PBX—a device that has become for most an archaic and expensive piece of office equipment that is not equipped to meet the demands of the modern era of mobility and connectedness.

After all, the reasoning for maintaining an on-premise phone system, one that must be managed internally and continually updated and patched for security reasons, eludes most companies. The reasoning is even more puzzling when a company maintains an on-premise phone system in each of its multiple locations.

The infrastructure and cost—both upfront and moving forward—is neither a good investment nor feasible in today’s fast-moving, ever-evolving workforce. Simply put, the idea of being one’s own phone company no longer works.