Even small businesses can take advantage of far-reaching technology advancements in business communications. Converged /Voice over IP (VoIP) networks are now becoming mainstream for many companies as the associated business benefits have evolved from simple costs savings to encompass improved employee productivity and raised levels of customer service.

The next phase of technological evolution centres around the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) which is an open standard built on top of existing, mature standards such as TCP/IP, DNS SMTP and HTTP. SIP is gaining growing acceptance by both service providers and enterprises as its openness allows carrier/service provider voice equipment to interoperate with enterprise voice equipment over an IP network. This interoperability enables enterprise businesses to create a single, pure IP connection to carrier/service provider networks with the following benefit

• Elimination of the need for and cost of separate PSTN and data circuits at the enterprise
• Reduced communication costs between a business and its partners and suppliers
• Support for multiple forms of real-time communication including voice, video and instant messaging, along with the benefits of user based presence
• Reduced long distance and local call charges from SIP services to the PSTN

More and more service providers are building SIP network capabilities and even traditional carriers are beginning to deploy SIP at the core of their network. Replacing hardware-based TDM networks with SIP’s software centric model provides greater flexibility, reduces costs, and provides a more open architecture enabling service providers to pass on cost savings as well as providing new and enhanced services to enterprise businesses.

For enterprise businesses, the initial wave of VoIP benefits has been primarily centred around intra-business communications but SIP extends these benefits to communications with partners, suppliers and customers.

SwyxWare is WorldxChange approved and we would be happy to talk with you about possible solutions.

Sample customer scenario

A retail business has multiple stores and employs a small call centre operation at the head office. There is currently no direct connection between the stores and the head office but there are multiple lines and employees who handle sporadic incoming calls. In addition, employees place many calls per month to the call centre asking for assistance with sales queries.

The current network topology creates several problem areas. The limited lines available within each store result in inconsistent customer service because of intermittent ‘engaged’ tones on the line. In-store customer service also suffers when employees spend too much time handling local calls.

Business improvements through SIP

Calls are converted by the local service provider to SIP and transported directly to the store’s call centre over IP. The enables the call centre to handle the majority of calls but call transfer to local stores can still be made for example, to check if certain items are in stock. The net result is a reduction in local PSTN charges, fewer trunks being required at each store, the potential to re-allocate staff to more business critical tasks and an improvement in customer service

The SwyxWare advantage