Go for it. Sharpening your pencil and calculating exactly what an investment in an Internet Protocol (Internet Protocol) PBX (private branch exchange) telephony system—a highly sophisticated business telephone system designed to deliver voice and/or video over a data network—amounts to, is an eminently worthwhile exercise.

To start, the savings you’ll enjoy on equipment purchases and ongoing telecom costs will be apparent from your next bill. Less obvious are those fuzzy benefits a sharp new telecom system lends a firm, such as the breathless decline in frustration experienced by those customers charged with navigating your particular telephony path.

Working that pencil is worth the effort.

Herewith, five hard-number reasons a new phone system is a sound investment.

1. Establishing a corporate IP network and running all your lines through it will translate into immediate savings on your phone bill, particularly if your folks journey back and forth a lot between branches, or engage in any kind of long distance. Also, if your employees are on the road at all, working their mobile phone keypads and racking up charges on hotel bills, this kind of investment will bear fruit right away.
2. You’ll appreciate a material cost cut in equipment purchases, too, if you choose wisely. A country-hick phone system can actually have a steeper price tag than its IP city-slicker cousin. It certainly has fewer features. What’s more, once you’ve got the IP system in place, you can ditch those old-fashioned phone contraptions altogether and install company-wide software that will transform your corporate computers into high-functioning tools of telephony.
3. Bypass the infrastructure costs for this new arrival by doubling up on your preexisting data network. Doing so represents a cost-savings that could amount to more than $100 per desktop. And if you ever add another user, or move office, you can enjoy the ease of self-administered setup (versus calling in an expensive “expert”) that this more sophisticated system offers.
4. One of the neatest features a snazzy new IP system brings to bear is how it, married to a broadband Internet connection, means anyone can get on the line from anywhere. Remote and telecommuting employees are suddenly a real possibility for a company so equipped.

In the very first minute after the earthquake, 106 people filed status updates with the word “earth” in them. In the first three minutes, that number jumped to over 700. Since then, updates with the word “Haiti” have been coming at the rate of 1,500 a minute, according to the Mobile Giving Foundation.

But not only are texting, Tweeting survivors alerting the world to their plight, many of us on the receiving end are responding with our keypads, too. Springing from text-giving inroads dug after the South Asian tsunami in 2004, the cellphone is rapidly becoming the most popular means of pledging financial help to charitable initiatives.

Texting Your Donation

The Mobile Giving Foundation, the company that pioneered the technology behind “text-to-give” campaigns, reported this week that Haitian donations are arriving at a rate of US$50,000 an hour.

On January 20, the Canadian Red Cross set up a text-messaging campaign that lets cellphone users donate $5 to the Haiti Earthquake Fund by texting “redcross” to 30333. After users respond to a confirmation message, a $5 charge is tacked on their phone bill.

In the U.S., the American Red Cross has raised more than US$22 million in cellphone-administered donations since the January 12 quake.
But there’s more in store for this modest instrument of interaction.

The phone is gaining new prominence as the unwitting central character in an unfolding drama that will ultimately send up an across-the-board revised definition for this critical instrument of modern life.

Unified Communications Infrastructure

It’s why, more than ever, managers need to be mindful of the communications infrastructure inside which they organize their companies, and with the corporate partners with whom they align themselves in pursuit of same.

But there are limitations to these sharp new methods of communication, especially when messages are too wordy or complex for such bite-sized dissemination. It’s why attaching voice integration to data-based devices is more important than ever.

Indeed, this concept of “unified communication” is gaining ground for its usefulness in corporate environments where workers increasingly recognize the value of the marriage between computer and phone, and its promise of speedy and reliable communication.

Devices that can accommodate the dual demands of voice and data, business and personal, media consumption and individual interaction, are the current darlings of the buzzing telecommunications world.

Managers considering a commitment to a new communications system in 2010 need to select one that addresses all of their requirements—old school and new age alike.