Killer Apps

Businesses large and small are moving to phone systems that use voice over Internet protocol (VOIP). Although the desire to save on phone expenses is a key factor, companies also are finding numerous business benefits that can result when the VOIP phone system is interconnected with the company’s information technology (IT) network.

“Ten years ago, you had a phone at your desk and that’s where everything happened,” notes Randy Lindstedt, enterprise account manager for Marco, a St. Paul–based company that consults with corporate customers on their information technology needs. “But those ties to the phone at the desk have gone away.”

In the past, coworkers, clients, and suppliers could only reach you if you were at your desk and not already on a call. VOIP is changing that by interfacing with desktop applications such as Microsoft Outlook and SharePoint. Before placing a call, coworkers can see, for example, if you’re at your desk but already on the phone. If so, they can use a different method to reach you, such as a messaging program that offers functionality similar to that of AOL Messenger, but tailored for the corporate market with a higher level of security.

“A big driving factor with VOIP is a lot of our customers have remote locations and teleworking,” Lindstedt says. By using VOIP, employees who work at home can get all the functionality of their office phone system over a broadband cable modem or digital subscriber line (DSL).

A less recognized but often equally useful capability is extending voice system functionality to a cell phone. “One of the biggest applications that people don’t realize they can do that can add a lot of capability, is the ability to make a cell phone a mobile extension,” Lindstedt says. Some VOIP phone systems can be set up to simultaneously ring an employee’s desk phone and cell phone.

“Now I can tie in with my cell phone, so if I wasn’t at my desk, I could be in my car and see the customer calling me and take the call in my car,” he says. If appropriate, he explains, the call also can be transferred back to the corporate location from the cell phone.

That capability is great for any organization that has a lot of mobile employees. “Now they can just give out one central phone number,” Lindstedt says, instead of multiple direct-dial, cell phone, and pager numbers.

In this article, we look at some of the most useful software-based applications for enhancing productivity or performance with a VOIP phone system—and what’s needed to implement those applications.