SMEs 'choosing VoIP services'

Small businesses are increasingly turning to VoIP services due to the productivity and customer service benefits they can provide.

That is the view of Hugo Harber, who told IT Director a recent survey by his company Star revealed more than 40 per cent of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have already adopted VoIP services.

This figure is set to rise, he continued, as a further 20 per cent of those polled said they planned to deploy hosted telephony within the coming 12 months.

VoIP is cost-effective and can greatly enhance customer service through functionality "such as directly connecting web users with customer support staff and using automated functions such as call forwarding and three-way calling," he stated.

Another key benefit is the ability to converge IP telephony systems with other infrastructure to fit with a unified communications philosophy, he added, meaning voice, data and video can all be integrated.

VoIP solutions allow small businesses to create global presence quickly and cheaply, Suneet Tuli, chief executive of Montreal-based wireless device company DataWind, told Canada's Financial Post last month.