If you are driving a car you would probably recognize warning signs, that is, if you are looking for them. The warning signs would caution you to take action. If you do not act, then you may find yourself running into bicyclists, a farm animal, or an intersection ahead. The warning signs are there for you – if you recognize them. Once you recognize these signs you’ll need to take some actions; however, the longer the time to act the bigger the potential for risk. The same is true for your business telephone system, the communications heartbeat of your business.
With something as critical to business operations as the phone system, which the business depends on for every call, how could anyone miss the warning signs? Actually, it is very simple but there were warning signs along the way. You would think that the phone system would provide some warning signs, and it may have. But since the method it uses is archaic they were probably overlooked.
Lack of Business Telephone Service Companies. If you purchased a business phone system 20 years ago you more than likely will struggle to find someone to service it. Most good technicians required a solid paycheck. Just like the computer repair business, good technicians were hard to find. Subsequently, the business model became unsustainable due to hardware breakage cycles. In the aftermath of the economic instability during the years of 2008 – 2012 the people who once serviced business phone systems were laid off, forcing them to pursue more stable forms of income.[/span4]
Repetitive Service Visits. If you purchased your business phone system over 5 years ago you probably are seeing an increase in service visits. Electronic hardware ages and needs service as it ages. Sure, it sat there in the closet for those 5 years working fine but never was turned off. On the weekends it remained running, holidays, nights, etc. – all aging the hardware. Electronic gear left on for 5 years is going to require service.
Uninterrupted Power Supplies Missing. More than likely at some point over the last few years the UPS failed. Rather than purchase another, someone just plugged the phone system straight into the electrical outlet and it is no longer protected from the surge protection offered by the UPS. All the while giving surge hits to the phone system. Once the system takes enough hits the capacitors that were designed to hold system memory fail. The next brownout you have, or worse yet multiple surges, the system programming is lost. And all those programming changes needed to make it work the way you want it to just go the way of the horse and buggy.
Aging Service Parts. Older systems will have system components that fail more frequently than newer systems. These parts are no longer manufactured so only used parts are available and the used parts are increasing in cost. If it was not for the shift towards cloud solutions, these used system parts would not exist. If you purchased your business phone system some 20 years ago, the replacement parts will be as old as the system and in some cases will be hard to find as fewer and fewer exist on the market.
The Manufacturer Is No Longer In Business. Nortel filed bankruptcy in 2004, Toshiba ceased business phone system sales operations in 2016 and dissolved in March 2017, many of AT&T systems made 10 years ago are obsolete. AT&T and Samsung broke apart their technical support for distributors who still serviced their products. Panasonic has discontinued the DBS and many of the KT versions of systems. The NEC IPK was replaced with the IPK II, then the 8100 and 9100 series of products. NEC also discontinued the DSX line and moved on to the SL series. You can see that there are warning signs to those who purchase and maintain business phone systems and you would be wise to consider other options, such as hosted solutions or rented systems.
Copper Line Services Have A Sunset Date. If you are a business that uses copper lines the sunset date is approaching fast. There is no guarantee of a repair on the day you report an issue to a carrier. It is not unusual for the local exchange carrier to have a 5 day waiting period for service. We recommend every customer to move off of copper lines to SIP, which is easier for us to troubleshoot and support without site visits, thus reducing costs.
Now if you are ready for some good news, we have some Good News for you! We can provide the best VoIP platform, provide you with the phones you need, build the entire configuration, train the users, and modify them as needed. We’ll even record the company greetings so that you will sound professional to your inbound callers. You can have it all in just a few days No sales gimmicks.
