It is common knowledge that bundled services come at a more attractive price than standalone packages. And, while this may be highly beneficial for small businesses or startups, cost savings are equally relevant for large and medium businesses as well. Therefore, business phone & internet bundles are becoming increasingly common in business circles.
The below sections seek to highlight other salient advantages of unifying the business internet access with your phone.
Contemporary businesses cannot survive without the internet. Although internet access is seen as an essential component of today’s corporate environment, its quality of service must be fast, high-quality, reliable, and reasonably priced.
Voice communication is seen in a similar light. Many businesses no longer use physical phones for incoming and outgoing calls but rather soft phones on their computer.
Unified communication services are systems that allow users to communicate via video and text as well. Instant messaging, audio and video conferencing, texting, online faxing, etc. are fast becoming the need of the hour.
However, these additional voice attributes are highly dependent on the availability of internet connectivity. This has given rise to vendors offering voice communication as a business phone service bundled with their internet access packages to small as well as large businesses.
In the past, a business may have one vendor for the internet, another for phone service, and yet another for video conferencing. This multi-vendor system is fast getting replaced by business ISPs or carriers offering all of these services along with internet access under one umbrella.
While bundling business internet & phone services may not be beneficial for all businesses, it is essential to understand the benefits. This can help businesses make a more informed decision as they grow and evolve.
Below are a few advantages that highlight the reward of bundling:
With vendors offering attractive discounts to increase their client base, bundled internet access services certainly lead to long-term as well as short-term cost savings. Nearly every industry lists a much lower cost of services if you opt for more than one of their products. The telecom carrier sector is no different.
In fact, the potential strengthening of your company’s bottom line revenues can be much more if you are shifting from traditional phones to VoIP/SIP-based telecommunication services.
Availing these services from your existing internet access provider or bundling business phone & internet services from another carrier can help reduce the overall costs of migration.
Apart from direct cost savings, bundling phone and internet access services can be translated into indirect cost savings as well. This will reflect in lowering the cost of manpower as the same team can manage and maintain both systems. You can follow some tips for the lowest cost business phone and internet.
It will also result in faster and smoother implementations and improved reliability of services. Some vendors even offer flexible billing to their larger customers allowing you a longer credit period.
On the other hand, if businesses have individual vendors for both these services, they stand to incur higher costs like different service charges, costs of equipment and implementation, lower credit, nearly negligible discounts, etc.
Therefore, more and more businesses are motivated to combine the two services and avail of the numerous cost benefits. Bundling services is a way to reduce telecom costs.
While this may not seem like much of a benefit at first, it can be extremely difficult to navigate through a telephone bill (or hundreds of bills) on a monthly basis.
There are no set guidelines defining how telephone bills must be presented and each service provider has a different format. These can be difficult to decipher and can become a constant source of dispute with the carrier.
It has been estimated that the internal business cost to process one invoice is approximately $5.50 to $7.50. For large enterprises, these costs can quickly add up.
Since both internet access and phone services are seen as telecom services, it is logical to have a single vendor and a consolidated bill. As a business owner, you know exactly what you are being charged for as corporate level vendors offer more transparency to their larger clients.
It is essential to understand the individual line items in your bill to know that for which you are paying. Therefore, selecting the right vendor for internet access and phone services is highly important.
At the outset, you are managing one vendor instead of two. This in itself, considerably reduces the vendor management effort.
Secondly, a single source of support is increasingly important to ensure that the accountability of service downtime is taken care of by that vendor and you have a single point of contact to reach out to in case of a service outage.
Getting business phone & internet bundles from a vendor who provides 24/7 support can ensure that you do not have to wait for endless hours for getting a response to your voice-based repair ticket either. In other words, problems are more likely to be resolved faster thereby, improving your daily operations as well.
Further, the same manpower resources can be utilized at your end to handle both internet access as well as phone services minimizing the operational expenditure.
Also, by bundling phone services with business internet access, you can include professional services like business voicemail to email, voicemail to text. online faxing, call center applications, etc. Having all such services on a single platform makes it much easier for employees to access and use them.
Different vendors include various professional services with their internet and phone bundles and you certainly stand to gain more by taking these services as a package deal.
Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP services depends on the business internet access being intact. In other words, voice services will be down if the internet is not available.
Hence, bundling your voice services with your existing internet access service provider will lead to higher availability assurances. This is because the same vendor stands to incur higher penalties for both services being down at the same time.
Further, a single vendor can provide a higher level of security as well. It can be extremely difficult to identify network vulnerabilities in a multi-vendor setup.
In fact, identifying the vendor responsible can lead to extreme delays in combating a network security threat or attack. This can be avoided by bundling your business internet access with voice services and having a single point of contact for all telecom related requirements.
The service provider can help you identify the security risk on the voice as well as the internet access front comprehensively and assist you in implementing the best possible security solution for your requirements.
Internet and phone bundles offer businesses the much-needed motivation to move out of traditional telephony and adapt to an increasingly changing industry. This transition is easier as well as faster when businesses implement it with their existing internet access service providers.
The business becomes more capable of detecting market movements and upgrading its services as required.
Also, a bundle voice service is provided as an upgrade rather than a new implementation, allowing you to grow and enhance your services at a better rate. And, as and when new upgrades enter the market, the business will be offered these by the services provider.
Such attractive bundles can be extremely beneficial for startups. These discounts and add-on services can help a new business achieve its goals in the shortest possible time.
Lastly, every business has different communication needs and goals. For instance, a large enterprise is more likely to implement a fibre-optic internet and a small business owner may go ahead with basic internet and voice bundles.
Therefore, as the business grows and evolves the supporting systems and telecom infrastructure can also be enhanced accordingly.
There is no one-size-fits-all concept when it comes to voice and internet access services. Depending on the business requirement, voice and internet packages can be customized or modified by the vendor to suit your expectations.
This is where the experts at CarrierBid come in. We’re here to assist you in making the best and most informed decision for your business. We’ll use our intellectual property to help your business succeed.
Having a single vendor for voice as well as internet communication can help you manage the relationship in a more fruitful manner. The vendor can help you gain visibility into your setup and suggest any upgrades or enhancements that can help you improve your communication landscape.
Also, in case your existing setup is complex, it can be a nightmare to manage different vendors and ensure that they work together to offer optimum services. By bundling phone and internet access services, you can minimize vendor interoperability issues and concerns.
As a business owner, it is imperative to ensure that you get value from the services that you are paying for. Considering this, it makes even more sense to bundle your business internet access with voice services. The business stands to gain the above-mentioned benefits and absolutely nothing to lose.
However, it is essential to make sure that the selected vendor is capable of providing both services as per your requirements and expectations.
An effective service provider can help you offer maximum value to your clients as well. Also, make sure that the bundle offered by the vendor includes 24/7 technical support services to prevent any unnecessary downtime.
Let CarrierBid help you choose the best vendor for your business and keep in mind that our service is completely free of charge since you never pay us a fee.
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