Cost is often the biggest barrier keeping companies from upgrading their communications system.

Fortunately, if like many businesses you currently have an older Avaya system, such as Business Communications Manager (BCM), PARTNER ACS, Norstar, Communication Server 1000, Merlin, DEFINITY, or Integral, there’s an easy way to reduce costs when you upgrade from your current system to a new Avaya IP Office solution: keep using some or all of your existing phone sets.

When you look closely at the cost of an upgrade, you’ll see that the phones themselves make up a huge part of the cost, in many cases as high as 60 percent. But you can gain most of the advantages of a new solution without replacing your phones.

• When you upgrade to Avaya IP Office, you can often use your existing phones and replace them on an as-needed basis.

• Or, you can equip select employees with new phones; executives, receptionists, sales and customer service reps, etc., who can really benefit from the added features.

Either way, by being smart and managing the use of your existing phones you can protect up to 60 percent of your initial investment and still gain the benefits of a new solution.

The decision to upgrade your phone system is rarely a simple a “yes” or “no”.

Another way to decide is to look at some of the key capabilities you can get with a new Avaya IP Office solution. These can be so important to a growing business that even if you are missing just one, it’s time to consider getting a new communications system:

Keeping your mobile employees accessible:
Today, many employees have to be able to work with a high level of efficiency and accessibility whether they’re in the office or not. Most likely, your customers demand that level of service. Enabling employees to make and receive calls from their mobile device (be it a tablet or smartphone), instant message with colleagues, see their presence status (on the phone, busy, available), and even see where they are located (using geo-presence capabilities), helps make your mobile employees highly productive wherever they go.

Enabling remote workers to stay productive:
Sometimes employees just can’t make it into the office – due to severe weather, home or auto repairs, or even a sick child home from school. That needn’t result in a lack of productivity. With Avaya IP Office, they can work from home and collaborate with colleagues and customers as if in the office. Calls get routed to their home phone, mobile device, or PC. They’ll stay connected via IM and presence. With Avaya IP Office, it’s easy to enable productive remote working.

Collaborating face-to-face from anywhere:
Just a few years ago, collaborating via video was something only large enterprises (with big budgets) could hope to do. Today, that’s all changed. Avaya IP Office delivers affordable and easy to-use video collaboration that lets people use just about any device – smartphones, tablets, PCs, room-based systems – to meet. Anyone can join – even those outside your firewall. And you can connect to a vendor’s room system with ease. Just click a link in an e-mail and you’re collaborating like you’re in the same room together.

Enhancing Your Customer Relationships:
You may or may not have a formal contact center (where employees sit in cubicles responding to calls or e-mails), but you most likely have people whose job it is to interact with your customers every day. Having contact center capabilities built into your phone system helps to improve the customer experience. For businesses with sophisticated needs, Avaya IP Office also offers multichannel contact center capabilities for up to 250 agents.

“No Cost” Moves/Adds/Changes:
Does it seem like even the smallest change to your current communications system requires a costly visit from a technician? If the answer is yes, it’s definitely time to make a change. An Avaya IP Office solution lets you easily make moves, adds, and changes to your system – without having to call a technician and incur costs. That means if you add an employee or change the way calls are routed in your business, you can make the change yourself. The savings are significant and the flexibility is a real advantage.

What if your current phone system is working fine? Should you follow the old adage: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?” When the risks and the opportunity costs outweigh the savings gained by holding on to your current solution, it’s time to upgrade.

Use the following checklist to see if that might be the case for you:
• Your current communications system is more than three years old
• You haven’t updated your current system for several years and the software and/or hardware used on your current system is no longer supported
• Your business is experiencing growth and/or you’ll be relocating in the near future
• E-mail and mobile communications are important to your business
• A significant portion of sales and service takes place through your phone system
• Your business relies on conference calls
• You need call recording for compliance purposes or to improve employee training
• You operate more than one location

Of course, it’s true that not every business needs to upgrade its phone system. While there’s little doubt your business can benefit from the enhanced functionality available with a new phone system, the gains may not be enough to offset the savings of just holding on to what you have now.

This may be the case if:
• You acquired your current solution less than three years ago
• Communications is not important to your business (i.e., you don’t do any sales or customer service over the phone or via e-mail)
• You don’t do any advertising in which you promote a phone number or website
• You don’t use a mobile phone
• You never do conference calls
• You only have one office

You may not think of your office phone system as something that can help your business grow. But communications systems have changed, and now is the time to reap the benefits.

Many of the capabilities in a solution like Avaya IP Office were once only available to much larger companies and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. For example, today, Avaya IP Office can provide video collaboration, sophisticated mobility capabilities, contact center solutions and more. With Avaya IP Office, these capabilities are available to much smaller companies.

Instead of just helping to communicate, today’s small business communications systems are designed to help enhance your business by helping to increase the productivity of your employees, lower your business costs, and delight your customers.

They can make such a dramatic impact on sales or customer service, they literally pay for themselves.

As the owner or manager of a small business, you have your hands full. Why add upgrading your communications system to your to do list?

The simple answer is, because it’s worth it to you and your business.

Small business communications have changed. They aren’t just for making calls and taking messages. A solution such as Avaya IP Office—one of the top-selling solutions in the world today—is designed to seamlessly integrate into your business, delivering real quantifiable benefits:

• Avaya IP Office can help small businesses grow and become more successful: streamlining operations, cutting costs, simplifying hiring and real estate decisions, enhancing customer service and much more.

• Avaya IP Office saves money: in an independent evaluation, commissioned by Avaya, the Tolly Group1 found Avaya IP Office nearly 25 percent less expensive to own and manage than its competition.

• Avaya IP Office delivers bottom line benefits: when Avaya IP Office helps lower overhead and increase sales, the benefits show up on your bottom line.

• Right now, you can upgrade and still protect your original investment: businesses with Avaya systems can take advantage of upgrade options that can provide up to 60 percent investment protection.

In some cases, companies upgrading to Avaya IP Office have found that these savings pay for the system in just a few months.

Your telephone system may be working, but could new technology increase efficiencies & sales, or lower your communication costs ?

Every technology has a useful life. The time when it performs as it was intended to and adds value to your business.

But what happens when a technology continues to operate after its useful life is over? That may be the case if you are using an older phone system. Many of these systems were purchased years ago in the pre-Internet era, before mobile phones were in every worker’s pocket. No doubt, those systems are reliable performers … but they simply were not designed to deliver the time-saving, customer-delighting, and cost-savings benefits today’s communications systems readily provide to small businesses.

Hanging on to these older systems may make it appear that you’re enjoying short-term cost savings. But the fact is you’re paying a significant opportunity cost: you are missing out on proven efficiencies, productivity and cost savings benefits that can far outweigh the value of keeping your older system.

You need to consider an AVAYA IP Office system that will enable your business to harness the power of unified communications.

The Avaya IP Office is a highly modular unified communications platform designed to meet the requirements of small and medium businesses. The award-winning IP Office provides companies a complete solution for telephony, messaging, networking, conferencing, customer management, and unified communications. In a single, compact solution, Avaya IP Office provides an unprecedented set of leading-edge communications capabilities to help your employees work smarter and serve your customers more effectively.

ECS & Leviton Network Solutions support small, medium, & enterprise commercial networks all over Washington and Oregon with an unparalleled selection of high-performance network infrastructure products and systems.

From the server room to the break room, our proven end-to-end performance keeps people connected.

But it’s not just products that make ECS & Leviton stand out. It’s also peace of mind. We stand behind every installation. We offer industry-leading performance with unbeatable service and support throughout the life of your structured cabling system. Add in the reassurance that comes from working with a stable, licensed, insured, & bonded supplier and you get far and away the highest return on your investment.

About Leviton:
Leviton is the smart choice, providing the most comprehensive range of solutions to meet the needs of today’s commercial and industrial buildings. Leveraging more than a century of experience, Leviton helps customers create sustainable, intelligent environments utilizing its network and data center connectivity solutions. Leviton provides industry leading networking systems that help customers achieve savings in energy, time and cost, all while enhancing safety.

www.leviton.com

ECS partners with many Leading Technology Companies

Through these relationships, we provide complete end-to-end services and solutions.

Efficient Communication Solutions, Inc. (ECS) has relationships with these technology companies because we have met their rigorous requirements for technical expertise and customer satisfaction.

These partnerships are a direct result of the talent, dedication, and commitment of the ECS team including pre-sales engineering, project management, post-sales support, account management, and training.

Some of our Technology Company Partners are:
• AVAYA
• DELL – SONICWALL
• SMC Networks
• Polycom
• APC
• Comcast Business
• Intermedia
• Xima Software
• Bogen Communications
• Plantronics
• HP
• Integra Telecom
• Grandstream
• EnGenius
• TASKE Technology
• ZEACOM
• CenturyLink
• LS Networks
• Leviton
• Allen Tel Products
• Superior Essex
• General Cable
• Chatsworth Products
• Dottie
• ERICO
• CADDY
• Tii Technologies
• Porta Systems

ECS is a Washington/Oregon based Avaya Business Partner that sells, installs, services and maintains Avaya business phone systems EXCLUSIVELY.

Because we ONLY work with one brand we are truly experts at what we do. We are considered an Avaya Small & Medium Business Expert partner.

We don’t leave until your system is operating at peak performance and programmed to your specific needs and requirements. We fully train all users and system administrators so you are happy with the product we sold to you.

Unlike ALL of Avaya competitors Avaya is in one business and one business only the manufacturing, distribution and sales of telephony equipment. Other brands like Toshiba, Panasonic, and Cisco all sell multiple products. In most cases the they make thousands of different products ranging from stereo equipment to electric toothbrushes and televisions. That is why we sell only Avaya equipment. Anytime a company focuses one product they are going to be better than a competitor who sells multiple products. Phones are the lifeline of your business. Do you want a phone system made by the same company who manufactures your DVD player?

We have years of experience in the business to business service and installation of telecommunications equipment. We started ECS in 2005 and have always sold Avaya (formerly AT&T/Lucent Technologies) exclusively.

Due to today’s business environment we perform installations anywhere in the United States. 80% of our installations are in the greater Seattle, WA & Portland, OR metro areas but because many of our clients have offices outside of our service area we team with other Avaya Partners across the country. We only use certified Avaya installers and business partners that have the same standard we have in customer service and customer satisfaction.

ECS can also assist you in ordering your phone lines, T-1’s and data services from the various carriers/service providers. We represent more than multiple providers so we can navigate through the product offerings that the carriers offer and align you with the carrier that best meets your needs and requirements. One size does not fit all when it comes to carriers/service providers. Every carrier offers an array of products and services. We take an unbiased look at the carriers that offer service in your area and recommend one or more choices. Your contract is directly with the carrier and ECS only offers this as a value added service for our customers. We know what to order and how to deal with the providers which saves you a lot of time and energy trying to figure out what services you need and who to get the service from!

Efficient Communication Solutions, Inc. (ECS) is a sales, service, parts, installation, support and maintenance organization for small and medium businesses in Washington & Oregon.

ECS services companies that are looking for telecommunication services; including: standard business telephone lines, legacy AT&T or Lucent Technologies phone system equipment, internet access, voice PRI, Direct inward dials, MPLS, telephone sets, wiring, voicemail, etc

ECS also provides services for IP telephony including; unified communication, unified messaging, contact centers, call center telephony, ACD, queue, VoIP telephones, business VoIP services, SIP services, SIP deskphones, VoIP telephone systems, SIP telephone systems.

ECS assists businesses in supporting and/or upgrading their existing AT&T, Lucent Technologies, or Avaya Communication telephone systems while keeping their original investment protected as much as possible.

Some of the legacy systems that we service are:
• Partner
• Partner II
• Partner Plus
• Partner ACS
• Partner SOE
• Partner Messaging System
• Partner Mail VS
• Partner Voice Messaging PC Cards
• Merlin
• Merlin II
• Merlin Plus
• Merlin Legend
• Merlin Legend Voice Mail
• Merlin Magix
• Merlin Messaging Voice Mail
• System 25
• System 75
• Definity
• Audix Voicemail
• Definity Audix Voicemail
• Intuity Audix Voicemail