If you work in a small/medium enterprise (SME) when was the last time your company undertook any form of major technology refreshment for your telephone system? If your small/medium business has been established for five or more years, are you running VoIP? I would guess you are probably not.
Chances are, if you are working in an SME that has been established for some time, the notion of a unified communications platform is still a far off dream.
While we are often on the lookout for new ways to enhance performance, enable productivity, and save money, there are still some areas that even us in IT approach with caution – telephony being one of them. Tinkering with the "bread and butter" technical operations can be a no-go area for an SME – the last thing you may find anyone messing around with is the telecommunications systems, and for good reason - it's one of those areas that as long as it's working, everything is fine. Being able to take calls and make calls is often the absolute minimum requirement for a small company.
That is if the telephone system is even considered part of the information technology infrastructure in your business. Telephony may fall under the Finance or Office Administration team, which can make a technology refresh even more complicated as it may be driven more directly by available budgets and immediate costs than any technological benefits.
It's interesting then that I recently heard a sales person for a telecommunications company say that they really don't understand why small and medium-sized companies are wary of upgrading their telephone systems. It's because when everything else fails at work (and the internet connection is often one of the more frequent ones – especially during a power outage) the one thing that has to take priority is the telephone system – and who wants to be the one to tell the management team the telephone system is out of action?
