Johannesburg, 16 Nov 2005
New telecommunications technology is reshaping the way that companies do business by making voice and data calls cheaper and more efficient. Businesses - large and small - with a telecommunications infrastructure older than five years should consider what`s available now.
"Many companies have switchboards and telecommunications networks that are years, even decades old and they are not able to accommodate the technological advances that are a reality today," says John van den Munckhof, CEO of Hymax SA.
Deregulation of South Africa`s telecommunications industry is good news for business because it allows companies to use the latest telecommunications tools.
"These days companies should be using digital technology which results in better-quality voice calls. Integrated voice mail is also a given as well as sophisticated hunt group allocations - unanswered calls can be automatically re-routed to the next relevant person in a company or to a remote site or mobile phone," says Van den Munckhof.
"The convergence of voice and date networks has also resulted in significant changes in telecommunications technology. Modern telecoms platforms typically involve running just a single cable through an office rather than the numerous cables that were the norm not long ago," he says.
Many local organisations are making use of voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP), technology made legal in February to significantly reduce the cost of calls. IP is the "language" of the Internet where data is transported in packets over the network.
Companies with modern converged networks connected to branches around the country or the world can use this technology to make really cheap internal calls or smaller business that don`t have their own networks can use Internet service providers to supply the VOIP infrastructure.
Says Van den Munckhof: "An up-to-date telecommunications infrastructure reduces costs in other ways too. For example, a software solution from Hymax called Managed Voice Services (MVS) ensures that companies make the cheapest possible calls across any networks at any time of day or night.
The product monitors the client`s spend with its telecoms providers and then identifies areas where costs can be reduced or optimised by making changes in call routing, call packages or even service providers.
"Least-cost routing (LCR) is intelligence built-in to the latest PABX systems that automatically determines how to route a call to make it the least expensive to an organisation. New technology typically pays for itself quickly by providing improved efficiency and drastically reduced call costs," he says.
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