Hosted Phone System Saves Time, Money and Hassles

If you've ever had to add or move employees, you know that one of the biggest hassles is dealing with the telephone system. While many companies are deploying IP-based phone systems to ease their PBX hassles, still others are turning to hosted phone systems to eliminate their ongoing operation and management responsibly altogether.

Hosted phone systems work especially well for companies that have highly mobile employees. With a hosted system, employees can just log into the system to automatically forward calls to another designated number.

One big advantage: employees need only give their clients one phone number. This eliminates the complexity of dealing with multiple phone numbers and voice mail systems.

Helios Realty, part of Real Living, the Midwest's largest independent real estate firm, has taken advantage of this concept. Helios relies on Cisco-Powered partner Geckotech to provide a scalable voice and data infrastructure for its highly mobile workforce of real estate agents, while still providing the highest level of professional service.

How Hosting Saves Time
Helios Realty has no assigned desks. When agents arrive in the office, they sit down at any open desk and type in a 3-digit code. This reprograms that phone as their office line while they're there. When agents leave the office, they can log in again and automatically forward calls over to their cell phone or voice mail.

Without ever investing in a new phone system, Helios can add agents simply by adding phone numbers. The company never has to worry about having enough "lines," because VoIP is based on bandwidth, not phone lines. The real estate firm also has itemized billing through Geckotech, so it can budget based on the number of agents.

How Hosting Saves Money
The Geckotech system saves Helios money in two ways. "Geckotech's mobility saves us money each month on rent and infrastructure," says Andrew Magliochetti, a principal with Helios Realty. "When employees are in the office they are instantly connected. We never have to pay for onsite maintenance to move a phone around, and we only need room for one-third of our workforce."

By using an outsourced IP phone system, Helios has said, its employees are completely mobile and free to communicate at will with their customers. Access to voicemail, intercoms, conference bridges, and 4-digit company-wide dialing is easier as well.

Though phone systems are crucial to most businesses, it is not crucial that they own them, as Helios has discovered.

If the responsibilities of owning, operating, managing and updating a phone system are an unwelcome hassle, then perhaps you should consider a hosted solution for your business.

Simplicity of a Managed Service Solution

By out-tasking business technology responsibilities, you can avoid the need to manage equipment and add operations staff, freeing your in-house talent to focus on strategic projects.

How would that work in practice? Here's a case in point.

A residential Real Estate brokerage, located in Chicago, came to Geckotech as a new business looking to differentiate them in a highly competitive market. The owner was looking for something unique, a communication solution to launch his new business -- without worrying about how a phone system worked. And, he needed a system that would easily scale, as they added agents.

The owner didn't want the distraction of managing hardware, but needed a high-tech solution for his mobile workforce and wanted to use technology as a competitive advantage -- as well as a way to recruit quality agents to the team.

Geckotech proposed and implemented a best-fit out-tasked solution at their new office, which included a private T1 connection, Cisco IP phones and network equipment.

"We coordinated the entire process through a dedicated project manager who made sure that our customer was informed throughout the implementation," says Josh Robbins, managing partner of Geckotech. "The new IP phone system allows his agents to print only one number on their marketing materials and be accessible via their cell phones using the Find-Me/Follow-Me function of the system which intelligently forwards callers based on their caller ID and the time of day."

The business owner was able to open his new firm quickly and without worrying about the technical infrastructure. By outsourcing their phone and data networks, they're able to focus on real estate transactions and growing the business.

Because Geckotech uses industry leading technology and a Cisco Powered network, the brokerage operations staff doesn't worry about outages or equipment failures that normally plague small businesses.

In summary, agents are completely mobile and free to communicate at will with their customers. They can log into the phone system from any computer connected to the Internet and receive their voice-mails or forward their calls. This solution created the ultimate win-win scenario – overall simplicity, plus inherent flexibility, by design.