Business critical: telecom systems connect you to business.

PositionHow-To GUIDE

One of the key points in a properly managed operations plan is to have the most efficient telecom solution. This means having a phone and data solution that meets the needs of your business and will allow you to grow while staying within your operations budget.

So how do you determine your business needs and select the right business solution?

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Look at your phone line needs. Questions you should ask yourself include:

* How many employees do I have on the phone at any given time? If you will not have every telephone in use at the same time, lines can be condensed, which saves you money.

* How much long distance do I use in a given month? This will allow you to discuss competitive volume rate solutions with a telecom representative. Averaging your long distance bills from the past few months will give you a good idea of your usage.

* Do I have seasonal highs and lows in my business? Most providers will have discounts based on service volume and monthly charges.

* What features such as Caller-ID and voicemail do I need? Many of these features might be already included in your package.

* Would it be useful to have all my business office locations interconnect? Connecting offices, retail locations or even home offices can greatly affect the way you run your business. Being able to four-digit dial/directly connect to employees in other locations can reduce your need for office space and condense the needs of your outbound calling network. This is also an important question to ask when determining your data needs. By interconnecting offices, you can more easily manage operational and financial data providing real time information on the status of sales volumes, inventories and other important information for company needs.

When determining your company's data needs, some other good questions to ask are:

* Do I need to transfer personal data of my employees, customers or vendors? As a business, you have a legal obligation to protect personal and billing data. Security becomes a key feature when dealing with this information.

* What do the regulations...

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