On Thursday 16 November, AccountingWEB members have the opportunity to learn first hand about how voice over internet protocol (VoIP) can lower your costs and improve your service levels.
Internet telephony converts the sound of your voice into data packets that are routed via unused bandwidth around the internet to the recipient's internet node. Jim Greenfield, IT director of PKF (UK) LLP will explain how the top 20 accountancy firm moved its internal telephone network on to a centralised internet-based Avaya solution with survivable units in each office and describe the benefits that resulted.
The second presenter at AccountingWEB's Breakfast Briefing at the Law Society will be Bill Seddon, managing director of software house Lyquidity. Bill is the author of AccountingWEB's hugely popular 'Small businessman's guide to VoIP' and will give you solid, practical advice about VoiP.
"Our decision to use VoIP came about because there was no alternative that didn’t involve spending a lot of money with BT," Bill comments.
"I'll talk about how we, as small company, have used VoIP to reduce costs and increase flexibility with multi-locations, working from home and abroad, with points of presence in the UK and US.
"I will cover the technology with an overview of gateways and proxies and some security issues.
"Any company thinking about VoIP needs to consider whether they can either extend their existing PBX to accommodate the possibilities that VoIP represents, or replace the PBX with something equivalent or better that still works even when the internet connection is not working. I will focus on not abandoning the Plain Old Telephone System, rather using it as our safety net in case all internet connections are unavailable.
"I'll come along with a VoIP system so that attendees can get a hands-on look at how to make calls, use voice mail, see how calls can be transferred, see how the system is configured, see the call logs generated and so on."
For further details, and to book your place, visit the AccountingWEB events page.
