VoIP becoming central to business change

IP telephony is now having a significant impact on the way organisations run their businesses, with 80% of firms believing that IP telephony will help transform their working practices within the next two years.

More than 265 UK companies were questioned about their voice over IP and general IP telephony experiences and plans, as part of a survey undertaken by Business Intelligence, in association with mybusiness.net. 

The survey found that the top five drivers for adopting VoIP and IP telephony are: communication cost reduction (53%), improved customer service (41%), flexible/location independent working (41%), improved cross-company communication (40%), and teleporting (39%).

For more than two thirds of respondents, getting people to change their working practices topped the list of implementation issues.

Large companies are finding this harder than smaller organisations - 30% of companies with a turnover of more than £100m rated this as “very challenging”, compared with 21% of those with a turnover of £1m.

The number one technical issue was ensuring quality of service. This was rated as “very challenging” by 31% of the respondents. Managing interoperability between manufacturers’ products and other business systems was ranked second, while security emerged as the third most common technical challenge.

In 2007, 44% of companies plan to spend more on VoIP and IP telephony, while 25% expect expenditure to remain the same. 

Telephony and business join in unified comms

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