Focus on costs misses true value of IP telephony

There are two problems with the IP telephony hype, says Kevin Clarke, Country Manager of HansaWorld SA.

First, IP telephony probably won't save you as much as you'll end up spending on extra hardware to maintain call quality - the promise of cost savings is a red herring.

But there's a bigger problem, which is that most people punting IP telephony completely miss the point about its real value. They're stuck in a 130-year-old mindset in which telephony begins and ends with the ability for two people to talk when they're apart.

We've added some embellishments - voice mail, caller ID, call forwarding - but it's still all about talking. If all that has changed is the way the voice signal is carried, then nothing has changed.

The bigger point most people are missing is this: if voice becomes just another data stream, then we can mix it up and enrich it with other data streams. Once we do that - once we connect our phone systems to our financial and customer records - a world of opportunities opens up. We start being able to extract business from a system that was previously just part of the furniture.

Link caller ID with other information, for example, and suddenly when customers call, their profiles pop up on your screen even before you've answered. You can see everything from outstanding invoices through to what happened the last time the customer called the company, and how profitable this account is.

Well-integrated information, available to the right people as soon as or even before they need it, makes for better, faster customer service and happier customers.

Even better, when your system is integrated, it's easy to keep information up-to-date. Suddenly your CRM system simply is your address book, and it automatically tracks every phone call, SMS or e-mail exchanged with every customer. This way, a customer database is always up-to-date and shared throughout the organisation - and can become a rich source of information for new business creation.

That's the true value of IP telephony: forget about saving pennies on phone calls and look instead to the new business it can create.