Let’s clear up the mystery about PBX phone systems. PBX stands for Private Branch Exchange, and it is the hardware, or physical equipment, that controls the phone lines and extensions of a company. It manages inbound and outbound calls, as well as moving calls between internal phone extensions. It is the nuts and bolts of your inter-office phone system. A PBX system will give a company the ability to have one central phone number with extensions for every employee. This saves on a company’s monthly phone bills by letting employees share phone lines.
Features of a PBX
There are a multitude of features that a PBX phone systems offers: Auto attendant, call forwarding, call waiting, music on hold, conference calling, conference bridge, dial by extension/name and voicemail to email. Advanced features like find-me-follow-me are very useful for companies with highly mobile employees or sales forces.
Differing Types
PBX systems have different kinds of variations that can be tailored according to the unique needs of your company. It can be combined with the benefits of VoIP to create an IP PBX phone system. This type of format works over the Internet as opposed to traditional phone lines. It can be more cost-effective for smaller businesses. It allows employees to connect to company phone systems anywhere as long as they have access to the Internet. This has been a great benefit to companies who have employees working from home or satellite offices.
Although PBX systems are usually located on-site, offices with limited space capacity can opt to have their system hosted off-site. A hosted PBX system routes call features to your company’s phone through the Internet and can save quite a bit of money. In addition, hosted PBX systems are very easy to scale up or down. This is terrific for companies who experience employee size fluctuations. You may have a “peak season” or an “off season” in which case flexibility of the hosted PBX would be very cost effective and convenient.
About The Author
