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What to know before you buy
Premise PBX Checklist
Before you begin to negotiate with a premise PBX provider, you'll want to gather some basic information about your current situation. Use this checklist to get organized:
- How many employees are in your organization?
- How many locations do you have that need VoIP service?
- How many remote or mobile users do you have that will not have a local office?
- Current broadband connection details — bandwidth, type, lines, and so on.
You should make sure to have all the information you can available including supplier and level of service.
- Current network load and available unused bandwidth — your provider may want to test your network to determine this information and if you don't have enough, you may need a network or broadband upgrade.
- Type of servers on which your system runs — your service provider may need manufacturer, model number and certainly operating system details.
- Existing phone system details — manufacturer, number of lines, connections, and so on.
- Will you need to or want to keep existing lines?
- Will you be upgrading only part of your organization?
- Budget — your total project cost limits and cost per-month per-user target
- Mix of calling — internal, local, long distance, international. If you don't know this, be prepared to show your service provider a few months of current phone bills.
- Percentage of inbound vs. outbound calls.
Once you have this information, you're ready to begin talking to a premise PBX service provider. Specify your business requirements up front and make sure you know which you are prepared to drop in return for a lower cost. In practice you are likely to have a few business-critical features in mind that, along with basic phone features, you must have. Everything else will be optional, but keep an eye to the future if possible.
Typical issues that can change costs involve:
- Need for an incoming toll-free number
- Do you have a receptionist/phone operator or do you want an autoattendant?
- Conference calls – how large and across how many locations?
- Do you need a call center?
- Do you need integrated voice response (voice menus)?
- Do you have someone available to manage the system for your employees or are they going to have to do it themselves?
- Do you need to integrate with Outlook or other office systems?
- How fast are you going to need to grow the system and how frequently?
- What level of service and SLAs (service level agreements) do you need?
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