Setting Up A New Office

The technology of telephony is always changing so when deciding on your phone system, it’s always worth keeping in mind that today’s latest technology, will almost certainly be outdated in just a few short years. That said, there’s no denying that right now there is a big shift taking place as traditional analogue and ISDN services are being phased out, making way for new IP Telephony such as VoIP (Voice Over Internet).

These new systems offer many more opportunities to improve communications and productivity greatly within your business with one of the great advantages of a VoIP phone system being its scalability. VoIP technology makes it easy for businesses to add, remove, or change extensions, making expansions simple and completely seamless. When you are setting up a new office you want a phone system that’s going to grow with your business and a VoIP phone system does just that.

When installing a telephone system for the first time when you are setting up a new office, there are three main types of telephone line you can consider:

PSTN telephone lines… This is the most basic type of telephone line available. You will need a PSTN line to support any of the following devices or services:

• Fax machine connection
• Intruder or fire alarm systems
• Emergency lift telephones
• Analogue dial-up modems
• Remote access for maintenance support
• Franking machines.

With a PSTN line, it is only possible to have a single telephone number per line. This can be restrictive if you are planning to have multiple incoming call numbers for departments, or want individual direct dial numbers to increase the efficiency of your incoming call handling.

ISDN telephone lines… ISDN lines offer the very highest level of resilience and quality available for connection to the telephone network.

With ISDN lines, you can take advantage of supplementary features such as the ability to transfer incoming calls back out from your site to any external telephone number along with the ability to have additional numbering options for incoming calls known as DDI (direct dialling inwards) ranges.

There are two types of ISDN line available:

ISDN2… These are generally connected to phone systems with less than 8 external lines. ISDN2 lines are delivered in pairs so you can only operate with an even number of individual line rentals. They are powered from the local exchange with no power connection “on-premises” required to operate them.

ISDN30… This option is available if you have a requirement for 8 telephone lines or more. ISDN30 lines are presented on a single connection which can be upgraded to provide up to 30 telephone lines without the need for any additional cabling or engineering site visits. ISDN30 lines require power to be provided locally “on-premises”.

VOIP… A VOIP service connection allows you to make and receive telephone calls via the Internet as opposed to the telephone network. It offers a very high degree of flexibility with regards to numbering options. You can choose to have any UK STD code as your incoming number irrespective of your geographic location. This can prove very useful for some businesses when relocating “out of area” as you can take your fixed-line telephone with you anywhere.

The voice quality of speech via SIP trunks is very slightly lower than with ISDN lines and is a similar quality to a UK mobile telephone call. The quality of service level is also slightly lower because the response options to faults are traditionally slower with Internet providers than with telephone line providers. That said, the cost savings involved with VoIP telephone lines; no line rental, cheaper calls including International calls, and free calls between your organisation’s offices, make VoIP appealing to most businesses.

It is also worth keeping in mind BT’s intention to switch off the PSTN and ISDN networks by 2025. Businesses will need to migrate to a single IP core network that ultimately will replace all legacy networks and platforms. Thinking about migrating sooner rather than later could be very beneficial to your business, and it’s a good time to move onto new technology whilst setting up a new office.

Once you have decided who is going where in your new office, it is essential to ensure that each position has a socket available to connect a telephone, a computer and any other equipment needed such as printers, scanners and fax machines etc. If you’re setting up a new office that has been used previously by a business, it is likely that you may be able to make use of pre-existing cabling and this could save you money.

It is important to understand if any pre-existing telephone cabling can support your telephones, you may wish to consider extending or replacing any pre-existing cabling system with a new flexible cat5 or cat6 structured network cabling system if this is not present already.

Once you have a basic floor plan detailing what connections will be required, we will then arrange for the free on-site survey and give you a detailed account of what you need to do next if anything whilst you are setting up a new office network.

Following a free site survey, we can provide you with feedback in what cabling work may be required, how much this will cost and how long it will take to complete the work to build into your set up costs. We can even consider your electrical provision at the same time as part of this process.

No one likes to pay out for maintenance service cover for their telephone systems as for many people it’s a service they never see the benefits of. However, if you’re unfortunate enough to experience problems with your telephone system or network, then having a maintenance support contract with a telecoms provider you can trust, could be the lifeline you need in order to return to normal business in quick time.

A telephone system maintenance contract from Tech Advance ensures you will have a qualified engineer working on your problem within four working hours with all parts and labour costs covered. We use a network of qualified and experienced telecoms engineers across the UK, which means we can respond fast and provide your business with a reliable service at very competitive rates. Support contracts are available on all manufacturer’s products, including all BT supplied Nortel (Norstar) systems. To find out more about this service you can visit our System Maintenance & Repairs page. Available for connection to the telephone network.

As a rule, we would recommend considering your options for telephone lines and Internet connectivity in your new office at least 8 weeks before you plan to start working the office. This way we can make all the relevant checks, explain options and costs, make decisions on which services to order and manage them in a timely way. It also gives us time to handle all required surveys well in advance and push back any delivery dates we may need to in order to fit with your start dates.

It’s not uncommon for expected installation dates to run past their normal recommended lead times for telephone lines, especially if any unforeseen snags appear, such as additional equipment is needed in the local exchange, the telephone network requires additional cabling or more cabling is required to your new site.

Every business wants fast broadband and we have the skills and knowledge available to us to determine what is available in terms of speed and providers at every location. For example, a location that has fibre broadband will enable you to have very fast speeds without the need for expensive dedicated circuits. If you speak with us when you are considering setting up a new office, we can provide you with this information even before you decide on a location for your new business.

If you provide us with the full postal address for your new site, we can do this for you by carrying out checks in the local exchange to establish which Internet service providers can provide Internet service to your new site and which of these offers the fastest, most cost-effective and reliable service available.

You can visit our Internet services page for more details.

Cost is a concern in any business decision, and when you’re setting up a new office, what you spend can impact greatly on the profitability of your business.

We understand how important cutting costs can be for a business, especially in today’s economic climate when many companies are just trying to stay afloat. That’s why we’ve put together a few pointers for you to consider before setting up a new office.

• Consider your one-off installation and set-up charges for the new site systems and services. Savings can be made by securing lower costs on contract terms from your providers.
• Try to reduce the number of different suppliers you use. If we handle many of your services, not only will you save money on the amount of time you will spend managing different suppliers, you will also save on each product or service by placing more business with fewer suppliers through obtaining a lower purchase price.
• Evaluate your current operating costs for services such as telephone lines, calls and Internet access, indeed we can offer for free to benchmark these against many alternative providers and in many cases, produce operating cost savings in the region of 25% to 50%

Consider new technologies and systems that can provide cost-efficiency benefits such as access control for staff access to the site, remote worker systems or voice messaging systems.

Yes, look at what technology is available and how it can be used to enhance and improve your business. Consider new technologies and systems that can provide cost-efficiency benefits. Access control for staff access to the site, remote worker systems or voice messaging systems, could all save your business money.

For those of you relocating premises, you should consider migrating your IT infrastructure to a data centre and eliminate hardware management in your new office. Look at moving your business into the Cloud and what managed services you need to maintain on your premises for success. You should always be thinking about your IT infrastructure moving forward. If this is your first office then you should consider which technologies will provide you with the most streamlined services now and in years to come.

0800 numbers have always been free to call from any UK landline and are now included in UK mobile phone bundles. They are recognised nationally as being Freephone numbers and act as a great way to encourage sales enquiries. They can be quite expensive though as the number owner gets charged for the incoming call and so are often used for marketing campaigns where extra cost can be regarded as a marketing investment.

Geographic Numbers, also referred to as UK Virtual Numbers or 01/02 Numbers, are the most familiar among consumers and are believed to be the cheapest to call. They allow any business regardless of location to apply local area numbers to generate more calls. This means that your business can be based in one city but your customers think they are dialling an area code for somewhere else.

The benefits of this are that you can have a prestigious telephone address for your business whilst being somewhere else entirely and because geographic numbers are portable, it also means that if you should move offices in the future, your telephone number goes along with you.

These numbers are universally understood and should be your first choice for a normal businesses number.

Tech Advance know how important inbound calls are to your business. With our intelligent telephone numbers and routing service, we guarantee you have access to all available standard UK local numbers beginning 01 or 02 and with around 650 area codes across the UK to choose from, that’s a lot of scope for your business.

It is also possible nowadays to configure any of the above types of inbound telephone numbers to ring in a way that you choose, by using the technology in the network or the cloud, without having to spend thousands on an expensive on-site phone system.

With our intelligent routing platforms, you can enable features like automated answering with greetings, queue announcements or press 1 for “sales” and 2 for “service” type systems. You can even make your calls ring different locations at the same time or in order. This includes mobile numbers and landline numbers which can prove critical if you have a mobile or distributed workforce.