Business Telephones

The business telephone is the lifeblood of a company, which makes choosing the right telephone system a very important decision. Where do you turn for business telephones? What should you look for?

Begin by mapping out on paper how many offices you have in your business and which ones need telephones. Remember to include extra necessities like faxes, credit card machines, and Internet connections.

In order to decide what kind of phone you need in each location, determine the function for that location:

• Do you need to see each telephone line or will one button do?
• Is it a speaker phone for a conference room?
• Will an executive with a secretary or a receptionist be using this telephone?
• Do you need a less expensive telephone for courtesy calls in a lobby or telephone calls from the break room?

Next, decide how many lines you need. In general you need one line for every two or three people. Remember that extra lines not being used can add up to hundreds of extra dollars every month.

Large business corporations - over 40 employees - often use PBXs, or Private Branch Exchanges. These systems allow multiple telephone users to share fewer lines; the underlying assumption being that not everyone uses their telephone at the same time. The PBX systems have many features including voicemail, auto attendants, call cascades and the system is totally programmable it can be catered to fit the business' needs.

Smaller businesses - 5 to 40 employees - generally choose key systems to better fit their business. Key telephone systems have a central unit which allows for special features not generally found with regular telephones. A PBX that would potentially work for a small company can be found at Talkswitch.com.

For businesses with less than 10 employees there are KSU-less systems.

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