7 Risks Your Office Phone System Poses to Your Business

Stop Risking Your Business with Outdated PBX Phone Systems

Saying goodbye is always difficult, especially when you’re bidding farewell to something that has served you well for so long. The traditional PBX telephony system has been there for businesses all over the country for many years, but the world has moved on and this legacy technology can no longer keep up. However, being outdated is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the drawbacks of legacy PBX technology. From surprise outages to business disruption caused by the PSTN Switch-Off in 2025 and being left in the dark when it comes to your customer’s experience calling into your business, old PBX technology leaves your business open to many risks.

You may be thinking that 2025 is a while away, but as the saying goes, ‘fail to prepare, prepare to fail’. The 2025 deadline is just that – a deadline. BT Openreach are already starting to eliminate this technology, which means disruption for businesses who aren’t ready. But you’re not going to be one of those businesses, because you’ve clicked on this article and, with our help, you’re going to be ahead of the game and fully aware of how to prepare your business for a future without the PSTN.

So, let’s jump into seven top risks that your legacy PBX technology poses and how cloud communications provides the answer!

1)  Complicated Contract Management & Overspending

Most PSTN-reliant business phone systems are made up of different, separate solutions to serve specific purposes, such as:

• A PBX for core call control

Plus, different solutions for services, such as:

• Instant messaging
• Directory/Presence
• Web collaboration
• Video conferencing
• Contact Centre solutions

With separate solutions working on different contracts, trying to keep track of your accounts with multiple providers as well as the costs incurred by these solutions, can become a bit of a headache. From deployment to management and troubleshooting, multi-vendor solutions cause issues at every turn.

As well as your Finance team having to spin lots of administrative plates, another issue caused by this risk is overspending. With costs spread out on different bills, it can be difficult to monitor and assess how much you’re spending on your solutions, which can lead to you overspending or paying for services/features you don’t actually need.

Cloud VoIP (Voice over IP) consolidates your solution into one platform that integrates:

• Voice
• Instant messaging
• Directory/Presence
• Web collaboration
• Video conferencing
• Contact Centre solutions

With all services within one solution, there’s no more spinning multiple contracts as everything is consolidated within one plan on one easy-to-manage bill. You will only pay for the features you use, and you will have clearer visibility on how much you’re spending on your solutions. So no more overspending and easier management of your solutions – two big wins to start us off!

2)  Lack of Scalability

Your business has grown? Result! Except if you want to expand your on-premise PBX solutions, prepare yourself for a slow process filled with long installation periods, lots of wires, routers, and switches and, essentially, a lot of faffing. To put it bluntly, if we treat communication technology as generations, PBX is the elderly. In general, slow, inflexible, and quite tired. It’s allowed to be – it’s served it’s time and deserves a rest, ready for a new agile, solution that is capable of bending, flexing, scaling, and adapting to:

• Business changes – particularly unexpected changes like the pandemic
• Hybrid work models
• Mergers and acquisitions
• New locations
• Accommodating new hires

Cloud communications is that new, young, hip solution that is capable of this flexibility. Only one connection is required – the internet, so there’s no phone wires to worry about, no infrastructure to baby sit. All of the complexity of running a business phone system is taken away from your premises and out of your to do list, leaving you with more time to focus on the important stuff.

Deployment is reduced from several months to a matter of weeks or even days. Scaling your system to suit the number of people in your team is a breeze, taking only a few minutes and can be sorted from any location and without assistance needed from vendors or IT specialists.

3) Basic Features Slowing Down Business Operations

Where businesses simply relied on voice calls and emails to stay connected, both employees and customers demand a new realm of communications that traditional PBX technology was never designed to support. Features such as call-forwarding, ring-groups, auto-attendants, and mobile voicemail notifications are looked upon as the bare minimum within business phone systems. Further to this, with the introduction of widespread remote and hybrid working, communication has advanced to a point where integrating business applications, CRM systems and features such as video conferencing and instant messaging are required to facilitate efficient productivity.

However, where it’s even possible to implement any of these features within traditional PBX systems, it requires expensive customization services. The result: an expensive solution, that really isn’t fit for purpose anyway, that ties you into hardware which limits choice, increases costs, and keeps you tied into your old system.

Cloud communications allow you to deploy the full range of features, applications and tools that enable your team to be productive, collaborate from anywhere. From basic call monitoring and management to the integration of sophisticated applications and features, cloud communication solutions enable easy deployment from any location, remotely, via the internet with minimal IT assistance. Your solution is always up to date, with regular upgrades that are rolled out without any disruption to your users.

4)  Insufficient Data Preventing Efficient Decision-Making

Effective communication is at the heart of the experiences of both your team and your customers, so it makes sense to measure and monitor it. With traditional PBX, there is very little in the way of reporting and data, which means you’re left in the dark when it comes to analysing whether you’re providing the best experience for your customers when they call into your business. What meagre insights you can squeeze out of your legacy technology is usually difficult to produce and if you’re looking to monitor the success of your communication, this data is about as useful as a chocolate fireguard.

Cloud-based communications swaps guesswork for rich, real-time data-driven insights that are created from advanced analytics. With a wealth of data at your fingertips, you’re empowered to make informed business decisions and make improvements within your business operations that boost employee collaboration, improve your service and be the business your customers can rely on for great service.

5)  Outages Threatening Business Continuity

Ok, so all the risks we’ve mentioned so far are pretty severe and can have a negative impact on your business – but this is the big one. The lack of adequate disaster-recovery within PBX systems poses the most serious, costly, and damaging threats to your business. The technology is simply not designed to provide continuous connectivity when a disaster happens, such as severe weather or disruption caused by construction projects. When your system goes down, your business is cut off from the world until the problem is fixed, resulting in missing potential sales, your customers becoming frustrated and your employees struggling to complete day-to-day tasks. Not only is this threat costly, it has the potential to cause lasting damage to your company’s brand and reputation.

Disaster-recovery, business continuity and high availability is woven into the very core of Cloud VoIP. As long as you source a provider that guarantees no single point of failure in a cloud implementation and offer a financially-backed 99.999% uptime SLA for maximum reliability, downtime and outages are something that you’ll never have to worry about. Cloud communications systems that are hosted on geographically-disperse data centres are incredibly reliable – if one server in one part of the world fails, connections are continuously maintained on other mirrored servers in the system. In a nutshell – no service disruptions.

Furthermore, as the connection is secured over the internet rather than physical lines, should a disaster strike on-premise, calls within your cloud-based system can be automatically routed to mobile phones. So, no matter what is thrown your way, cloud-based telephony ensures that your employees can still connect with each other and your customers using your business number via mobile, whilst keeping personal numbers private.

6) Ineffective Systems Causing Employee Frustration and Lowered Morale

If your current office phone system has been in place for several years, chances are you are working with slowing technology or technology that has become outdated when compared to more recent alternatives. Not only is this slowing technology a danger to your business’s productivity, but it is also a thorn in the side of dedicated employees who may struggle to perform their day-to-day activities to the fullest of their ability. According to data featured by S&P Global, 49% of respondents to a survey cited “a lack of proper tools and technologies” needed to perform their job effectively as a reason they were not able to add value to the business in their role.

On top of this, 24% of respondents to the same survey stated they would be likely to accept a job with another organisation should that organisation present them the opportunity to work with faster, more efficient technology. This highlights a serious morale issue with employees who are stuck using outdated systems. By updating an office phone system to a more recent, seamless and versatile communications system with fewer glitches, delays and crashes, it is understandable to assume employee morale will be boosted significantly, with a better chance of employee retention and increased productivity rates.

7) Reliance on too many communication platforms

As discussed in our first point, companies spending a fortune on multiple application vendors can quickly become a nightmare for any office phone and communications system. This isn’t just true from a financial perspective, it’s also difficult from an employee perspective. If your office phone system demands the use of multiple communication applications for employees to easily converse with customers and each other, your workforce could be wasting hours of precious productivity time toggling between different applications – 4 hours per week, per employee, according to a Harvard Business Review report.

However, by replacing your current office phone system with an up-to-date UCaaS system, all your essential communication apps can be consolidated under a single platform for easy accessibility, significantly cutting the amount of time it takes for workers to switch between one app and the other. When examined on a wide scale over a long period, taking this step could help raise your workforce’s productivity exponentially.

Call on Us for Efficient Cloud Communications with 8×8

Ready to make your move to the cloud? An 8×8 communications solution from Elite Group is here to ensure your business is ready for the (not-so-distant) future without the PSTN and take it to new heights. The 8×8 X Series is the first financially-backed, platform-wide, 99.999% global up-time SLA across integrated cloud UCaaS and CCaaS solution. It’s the new benchmark for cloud communications that keep your operations efficient, your teams more productive than ever before and your customers impressed. The time-tested deployment process from 8×8 ensures that migration to the cloud is straightforward and risk-free.

Alongside a top cloud phone system that blows all the risks we’ve mentioned out of the water and out of your mind, you have access to dedicated account management, expert support and outstanding service from Elite. We’re here to ensure you’re getting the most out of your contract and to be there for you whenever you need our help. Leave your legacy PBX behind and take your communications to the next level with cloud communications from 8×8 and Elite.

Check out our free eBook to find out more about how moving to cloud communications can future-proof your business.