How to Maximize SIP Trunking Solutions for Your Business

SIP trunking is an expanding market that’s expected to grow to $22.99 billion over the next four years. This market growth matters to service providers, but it also matters to businesses like yours. The rapidly expanding market means more service providers are emerging, more advanced features are developing, and companies are working harder to take as much of the market as possible. 

Whether you were an early adopter of SIP trunking options or your business has recently made the switch, the current state of the market gives you the power to shop around for better offers or secure even more service options from your current provider. 

To maximize your SIP trunking benefits, go beyond simply enjoying the upgrade from old analog systems. Instead, focus on utilizing managed SIP trunking, leveraging consultants’ expertise, and taking advantage of new advanced capabilities to ensure your communications run as smoothly as possible.

Start this process by learning more about the latest benefits SIP trunking should provide for your business and making sure your company is receiving those advantages. Closely examine any gaps between what you have and what top-tier services are providing. Finally, take steps to secure those enhanced benefits.

The Benefits of Switching to SIP Trunking

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking is an incredibly popular option for modern business telephony. As a result, so many enterprises worldwide are switching to SIP trunking and virtual phones that ISDN services are shrinking. 

If your company has made the switch to SIP trunking, you should already be experiencing these foundational advantages: 

• Elimination of old hardware requirements: Analog phone lines require a lot of hardware and extra expenses. From phones and wiring to networks and manual management (especially for large staff directories, building sites, or departments), basic calling and voice messaging requirements are unwieldy and expensive. SIP trunking eliminates them.
• More telephony channels: “Phone calls” today have significantly expanded from what they used to be in the ’90s and early 2000s. Today, phone calls can include typical one-on-one conversations, conference calls, video calls, web conferences, and more. SIP trunking facilitates voice solutions because the communication is transmitted through an internet connection. It can easily accommodate multiple lines, different software options, and participants’ choice between audio and video feeds (both as speakers and listeners).
• Scalability for business fluctuations: Businesses can more efficiently add, reassign, or decrease lines through SIP trunking. A corporate office or third-party provider can handle setting up new licenses, shifting around numbers, or even deleting a number for a terminated employee from an intuitive online portal. This convenience applies to changes in a single business location, new site openings, and remote work options.
• Cloud-based analytics: Because the system is entirely online, you should have easy access to a wealth of data. This includes fundamental usage measurements, but it can also include business intelligence that gives you better insight into employee productivity and customer preferences. However, this benefit will be highly variable based on your service provider.
• Call reliability: There should be fewer dropped calls, better sound quality, and easier navigation throughout the business directory. Any reasonable internet connection and basic SIP trunking service will outperform analog and ISDN options.

Each of these advantages can result in better customer experiences, more productivity, and more efficient business operations. However, this list leaves a lot of potential benefits on the table.

6 Limitations of Basic Implementation

While basic implementation will significantly improve call quality, onboarding speeds, and omnichannel communications, businesses shouldn’t stop with the basics. Today’s SIP trunking services can do more heavy lifting to grow your business. 

If you have an older service plan that hasn’t been updated recently or you chose a SIP trunking service that does the bare minimum, your teams might be losing out on additional conveniences, security options, and business intelligence.

Some of the most significant limitations of basic implementation are:

1. Incompatibility with your current bandwidth: Now that more business tools have shifted to using an internet connection, it’s important to make sure yours has the right bandwidth to carry the heavy load. Making the switch without readjusting your internet plan can cut into all the benefits of SIP trunking, such as reliable calls, video conferences, and access to accumulated data.
2. Lacking access to QoS equipment: Basic SIP trunking allows you and your team to make calls using just a laptop with a stable internet connection and the necessary VoIP software. But why limit yourself to just that? Headsets and physical phones adapted to VoIP can improve operations by ensuring more privacy, allowing team members to make calls without disturbing nearby staff, and filtering out disruptive background noises. Better hardware can also improve voice quality. While many businesses and departments don’t need these options, having them can offer many benefits.
3. Limited backup solutions when the internet goes out: Overused internet isn’t the only problem of basic SIP trunking. If the internet goes out or your standard online networks are disrupted, all of your business operations could be halted, including online processing, phone calls, and cloud-based tasks. Advanced plans offer SIP trunk failover or backup SIP trunking and VoIP options you can lean on when the primary line goes down. These options work automatically in the background so you don’t have to worry about dropped calls. Without failover options (or solid implementation of failover options), you could be left in a precarious position.
4. Inefficient usage of the data your voice communications provide: Calls powered by SIP trunking flow over the internet, which means you can get a lot of data from every call. This could include a transcript of each call, general usage data, metrics for teams or individual employees, and so on. But if you lack the business intelligence platforms to read and analyze your data, you’re missing out on all those decision-enhancing insights. 
5. Policies that treat the change from old phones to SIP trunking as a one-to-one transition: If your policies treat SIP trunking systems as just another phone system, your employees will too. That means they could miss out on business intelligence, accept limitations that no longer exist, and negate the basic and advanced advantages. You can correct this by implementing training on the new system and providing plenty of resources on using advanced features, both for general employees and administrators.

Are you missing out on some of these features and advantages? Instead of continuing to go without or finding time-intensive workarounds on your own, you can work through your SIP trunking provider or start shopping around for options that resolve these limitations as a standard offering.

How to Optimize SIP Trunking for More Business Success

Work together with your SIP trunking service provider to take these steps and make sure your cloud telephony systems are operating at full capacity:

Step 1: Conduct a Needs Assessment

Evaluate if your current services meet your current needs and can easily be adjusted to meet your future needs. Some of the factors to weigh include:

• Call volume
• The number of required lines
• Anticipated demand for international calls (both to and from international destinations)
• Whether your business has a PBX system and what you need for highly compatible SIP trunking—overall network performance and whether additional options like managed connectivity services might be beneficial

Ideally, your service provider should help you conduct this audit by offering comprehensive managed services.

Step 2: Integrate SIP Trunking With Your Existing Tech Stack

Make sure your SIP trunk integrates with your PBX system. If your services are new, this involves transferring (or porting) over existing phone numbers with minimal downtime. You can also integrate it with SIP-enabled phones, a SIP-ISDN gateway to best utilize ISDN lines in specific locations, and business intelligence software that converts, analyzes, and summarizes data.

Step 3: Prepare Redundancy and Failover Measures

Some companies offer clear redundancy and failover measures, so you always have backup servers and networks. You may receive these as part of their standard services with no action needed on your part, or you may have to take active steps to get them set up. Make sure they’re fully in place well before you need them. 

Step 4: Know Which Advanced Features Are Available (And How to Use Them)

For many SMBs, and certainly for your in-office users, SIP trunk-based phones may seem the same as the previous system. But that shouldn’t be the case. Develop (or request from your service provider) the following guides:

• General users: Information about accessing call histories, messages, connected telephony channels, and call metrics. You should also provide clear guides on changing out-of-office messages, active hours, and other relevant information for your employees.
• Administrators: Make it easy for internal teams to reassign and manage numbers, check in on the usage and call metrics, and integrate data streams with business intelligence information.
• IT teams: Explore cybersecurity risks and options for phone calls, general security protocols, reporting options for usage and bandwidth, and so on.

SIP trunking and VoIP options are valuable because they naturally create in-depth data streams and facilitate custom options. Taking these steps helps ensure everyone on your business’s teams can access these benefits. 

How Do You Take These Steps?

While these four steps are incredibly valuable, they’re not always easily actionable. If you want an easier ramp-up to maximizing the value of SIP trunking for your business, start with these to-dos:

Compare Different Service Providers

If you’re in the market for SIP trunk service providers or not attached to your current provider, the first step should be to compare the options available in today’s market. Use this breakdown of basic and advanced features to make sure potential providers offer everything you need. Create a list of must-have and nice-to-have options so you can start ranking them before you even reach out.

Discuss Your Business Needs During Demos

Schedule a demo from your finalists, and ask a lot of questions. Stick to practical business use cases and operational needs. It’s the sales consultant’s responsibility to break down the technical side and translate it to what you need. Focus on positives, negatives, and long-term operational considerations. 

Take Advantage of Managed Support

If your service provider offers reasonably priced (and reasonably robust) managed support options, take advantage of them by making managed SIP trunking part of your standard operations. This advantage can facilitate management in direct calling and supporting business intelligence options.

Know Which Resources Are Available

Ask your service provider what is included in your services. Sometimes, the details of your service provider’s offerings can get lost over time, especially if there have been changes in your business structure or personnel. Your vendor may have recently expanded their service packages without advertising it to existing customers. See which included and supplemental resources you can add to your day-to-day operations.

Don’t Hesitate to Switch Providers If You’re Getting Substandard Service

Finally, one of the best tactics you can use is to avoid getting entrenched with a substandard service provider. It can seem easier to stick with a service that’s already in place, but that can lose you money and opportunities over the long term. If you’ve already implemented SIP trunking, then switching over to a new provider is much easier and will cause less turbulence.

Maximize the Benefits of SIP Trunking With the Right Managed Service Partner

SIP trunking offers several advantages, both for individual employees and your organization as a whole. Many benefits are accessible on day one and naturally develop from using internet-based phone systems. However, some of the biggest advantages might be hidden below the surface. 

As you consider maximizing your SIP trunking benefits, it’s important to look at the bigger picture of your communication infrastructure. While SIP trunking focuses on voice communications over the internet, complementary services like fully managed connectivity ensure the overall health and performance of your network infrastructure. Both services play crucial roles in optimizing your business operations. By considering these services together, you can create a more robust and efficient communication ecosystem.

At BCM One, we want all of our business clients to have access to the standard and advanced advantages of SIP trunking from the very start so you can maximize your business potential. Contact us today to see how managed SIP trunking can help you utilize the full potential of your communication system.