A phone system is basically a hub for all your phones and phone processing. Traditionally we would order phone lines from our provider then once they were installed at our location we would install a basic phone that we would purchase from Office Depot or any similar store. However, as businesses started to grow, they needed to have a better solution; a solution that allowed intercom between extensions, capability of having more than 2-4 lines connected to the system, voicemail, auto attendant, etc. All these features are not able to provided by these phones therefore the need for the phone system arose.

All the cabling for your office will run to a back closet somewhere and will be terminated onto a block. Your phone system will install on that wall with that cabling. The phone lines from your provider will connect into your phone system and your in-house cabling will connect into your phone system as well. Now the job of the phone system is to provide every phone with those phone lines. The phone system acts as the center of all communication both inside the office and calls made externally.

There are many stages of phone systems that you can purchase. There are some systems that are "616" phone systems meaning they come ready to support 6 lines and 16 extensions but will never grow larger. There are some systems that will grow to 12 lines and 40 extensions, then others that will grow to hundreds of extensions. The safest bet for smaller companies would be to go with the system capable of growing to 12 lines and 40 extensions. This system is often not much, if at all, more expensive than the smaller 616 phone system and will offer good growth for the future.

Most phone systems offer both voicemail and auto attendant cards for their systems. More and more the line between the two systems is fading which is not necessarily a bad thing. What voicemail does for your company is that it provides you with a way of leaving messages for people who are not in the office at the time or for after hours. Auto attendant is a feature where all incoming calls are answered with an automated response. The caller then navigates through the menus till they find their correct destination.

Most voicemail systems today, including the Samsung voicemail systems, can do either. Many companies do not like to have their incoming calls answered by an automated response because many times customers don't like this solution. However, that is no reason not to purchase a voicemail system. Keep in mind that you can always use the voicemail feature without ever using the auto attendant feature.

More and more voicemail systems are offering solutions for your company that will make your business more efficient. With features like forwarding messages, cell phone alerts, cascading mailboxes, inter-office reminders, unified messaging (we will talk about that later), your business can operate much more efficiently than ever before.

What is unified messaging?

Unified messaging is a technology that allows all your voicemail messages, emails, text messages, etc. to be consolidated into one box. Every company has a different name for their messaging system that they use with their systems. Samsung uses the phrase "Email Gateway" to describe their system. What this means is that when you get a message on your phone at the office the phone system has the capability of converting that message to a .wav file and sending it to your email as an attachment. You then have the ability to save that file for future use, listen to it, forward it to someone else, etc.

There are a few things to keep in mind when thinking about this feature. One is how much is it going to cost and what extra equipment do I need? Some systems have this capability built into the actual voicemail card and some systems require you to buy extra equipment that is not installed in your system. You want to try to keep all the features the phone system provides in the phone system without having to buy external servers and equipment.

Secondly you need to find out how much it will cost based on how many mailboxes you use. Most companies charge per mailbox for this feature. The more mailboxes you use, obviously the more money you will spend. There are some systems like the Samsung system that charge one rate for unlimited mailboxes that have this capability. This would probably be the best solution since it can save you money in the long run.

VoIP stand for "Voice over Internet Protocol" and simply put it is the technology that allows for telephone communications over the Internet. There is a difference between a VoIP phone system that you can purchase and a VoIP phone line that you can get from Vonage, Time Warner, etc. They both use the same technology but one is a way of providing phone lines (Vonage) and one is a way of providing phone system capabilities across the Internet (this is what we will focus on).

There are so many things to keep in mind when you start talking about VoIP phone systems and we will not touch on everything. But I will do my best to touch on the things that I feel are important when choosing whether or not VoIP is right for you and which VoIP system is right for you.

First off, do you need a VoIP phone system? More and more phone system manufacturers are making sure all their phone systems are easily upgraded to be VoIP capable. One question you should ask when getting quotes for systems is that if in the future you decide to upgrade the phone system to make it VoIP capable, what equipment and cost would that entail. Sometimes it is as easy as popping in a VoIP card and sometimes it can be very complicated and very expensive. a VoIP system comes in handy when you have multiple offices around the city, state, country or even the world. It also can be very useful when you have traveling salesmen or representatives. It allows the employee the capability of unplugging his phone from his desk at the end of the day, taking it home, plugging it into his Internet connection, and still being a part of the office. He can still be reached by dialing his extension and all the other features as if he was still in the office.

This can be a big money saver for companies that have representatives traveling all over the country and the world. It can save them hundreds of dollars on long distance charges and save time when trying to get in contact with the person they need to talk to. It also offers a good solution for those that have offices they need to stay in contact with. They can transfer calls between offices as if they were in the same location. It is truly a great solution for companies.

There are two types of VoIP systems, there are Pure VoIP systems and there are hybrid systems. The pure VoIP systems are basically a computer server with VoIP phones sitting on the desks. Much of the major VoIP companies like Cisco, Shoretel, etc. use this type of setup. This setup has major drawbacks though. They are not traditional phone systems so features like paging over a paging system, paging all the phones, software upgrades, etc. are much more expensive and a lot of times not even possible.

With a hybrid phone system you get all the features of a traditional phone system plus all the features of a VoIP phone system. There really is no drawback to this solution. It is tried and true technology mixed with the new technology of VoIP. It is also, in most cases, much cheaper. This is a solution that I would suggest with looking for a VoIP phone system.