Unified phone systems are always evolving, and many companies don’t realize that they are paying per-seat, or per-feature when they don’t need to. Derric Wlodarz of Betanews.com wrights, You want to keep up-front CAPEX related costs down. Cloud-hosted VoIP (CloudPBX) providers charge an all-inclusive fee, on the average, that is per-seat which covers any endpoint which offer a dial tone. If you are going in a deskphone-less route, you can save considerable sums by ditching the need for any desk phones. Even if you need phones, going cloud-hosted means you don't need any internal phone server or telco appliances, where costs can get upwards of thousands of dollars without blinking an eye.
If you do not need to have a physical phone at the desk, then you shouldn’t need to pay for one. Many don’t realize that they are paying for every physical phone or softphone at each desk, when they don’t need to if those phones are not in use, or can be taken over by a software based phone solution. Paying per-seat or per-feature for unified communications can be done better!
Per-seat pricing was designed at a time when each end-user simply used the single phone at their desk.
What are CAPEX related costs, and how do they affect your business’ expenses? Investopedia identifies CAPEX, or Capital Expenditure, as funds used by a company to acquire or upgrade physical assets such as property, industrial buildings or equipment. In terms of accounting, an expense is considered to be a capital expenditure when the asset is a newly purchased capital asset or an investment that improves the useful life of an existing capital asset.
Your CAPEX related costs when taking into consideration your phone systems, can be considered every physical phone on each desk, or in each office, and any softphone. This means that you are paying for each physical or software-based phone at each desk, even when nobody is at that desk. Every company has some level of turn-over, which may result in phones and other devices going unused for an indeterminate amount of time. You shouldn’t be forced to pay for these devices that go unused. This is where Concurrent Call Pricing comes in.
Concurrent Call pricing is based on the number of people on the phone at the same time across your entire network. Paying for concurrent calls instead of paying for each seat, and each feature separately can help keep costs down for the right company. If your experiencing high turn-over rates, or have devices that go unused for certain periods of time, then concurrent call pricing would be a perfect solution to keeping costs down for unused devices.
