500

London Law Show Olympia - 27th and 29th September

500 Limited are exhibiting at the London Law Show being held in Olympia between 27^th and 29^th September.  We will be offering visitors the opportunity to see a demonstration of our hosted ‘cloud-based’ telephony solution which is ideal for solicitors practices between 5 and 100 users.

Why work with 500 Limited?

500 Limited are proven communication specialists; more than able to help you with any issues (challenges!) around telephony, mobile phones, Internet connectivity, controlling your call charges and getting the most out of your investment. At 500 Limited we think it is imperative that you should use your communication systems to win competitive advantage in the market place.

For more details, click here.

Complexity & Jargon

You are not alone in thinking that the complexity of choice and the associated jargon around modern business phone systems is off-putting. It is also possible that because your current system isn’t “broke” you won’t want to do anything about upgrading it.

However have you ever thought that you might be losing out on the competitive edge modern phone systems can provide? Our advice is that there is no time like the present to start investigating how to make best use of modern systems.

Good example

Here’s an example: Two busy medium-sized companies take a call from one of their customers. The first answers as follows: Hello Mr Smith, how are you today? Denise on reception speaking. Are you calling about your claim? Well Mr Brown who is dealing with your case is in a meeting at the moment, can I get him to call you when he is free – his calendar says that will be free in about an hour. I’ve just sent him an instant message so he’s knows to call you urgently. Let’s look at the second: Hello Jones & Son, who’s calling? Oh hello Mr Smith how can I help you. . . . Okay so you want to discuss your claim with Mr Brown; hang on whilst I try to find him . . . No, sorry, let me try one of his colleagues . . . . No I’m sorry I cannot find him . . . Can I put you through to his voicemail . . . No sorry I don’t have a clue when he’ll be back . . . and so on.

Good news

It’s obvious that the customer service in the first call is vastly superior to that in the second and the good news is that the difference is easy to achieve. All you have to do is ask us as experts in integrated desktop and telephony systems how you can achieve it. We specialise in providing telephony solutions designed to help your competitiveness. Designed to ensure you don’t miss customer calls, that you handle them efficiently and you leave the caller happy that you have dealt with their call effectively.

How’s it done?

The key is to link the caller’s incoming phone identity to your internal business-critical databases: Exchange / Outlook as a minimum, certainly your CRM / accounts system and then to achieve real competitive edge your case / support management system. As the call comes in a simple pop up screen identifies the caller and displays as much information as you wish from either your contact lists or from your business databases. The above example links to a case management tool.

The resulting benefits are improved customer care, increased staff productivity and as a bonus you will reduce your telephony charges as a result of using a modern phone system.

About 500 Limited

500 Limited are specialist advisors and providers of business communication solutions. Our expertise is to be able to help you to select the right communication systems for your business so that you can increase your profitability and improve the way you present yourself to your customers.

Our portfolio includes:

Modern premises-based solutions

Cloud-based hosted solutions

Wireless networks

Contact us

For an initial assessment of how you can integrate your customer data with your phone system simply give us a call on 0845 0000 500 or fill up the contact us form.

Our first topic is ‘Should I use Skype for my business? Sub-heading ‘What does it mean now that Microsoft owns Skype?

The answers are simply ‘yes’ and ‘the quality will eventually improve — after considerable user testing!’ (the last answer a little tongue-in-cheek having been born before Bill Gates and consistently reporting blue screen errors over the years!) But let’s look at those answers in more detail.

Skype — you get what you pay for

Although the days are long gone when Skype was the cheapest way to make calls, it’s still ‘yes’ to Skype because it’s mostly free and especially ‘yes’ if you are calling overseas. However Skype’s quality and reliability leave a lot to be desired – garbled phrases and temporary loss of audio could reflect badly on your company’s image.

Skype is best used when its poor grade of service won’t affect your business or your brand, so for example to colleagues who are travelling or when simply confirming receipt of written instructions. You want to avoid that World War 1 scenario when the generals were asked to send: “Three and four pence, we’re going to a dance!”

The challenge Skype presents is that it is only user-to-user (or ‘point to point’) and the quality is a long way off ‘business grade’. Limitations with Skype include echoes, background noise and clipped or missing words.

Skype also uses up your network resource. It’s a little known fact but external users might be using your resources for their calls! The simple answer is to use business-grade services; high quality phones and phone services that use your internet connection effectively and efficiently.

These ‘internet phones’ are designed for your business needs. They aren’t free but are considerably cheaper than traditional phone services. If you aren’t using them in your business you are missing a trick and paying over the odds. Please get in touch to find out how we can help you save both fixed and recurring costs.

Why did Microsoft buy Skype?

It was a lot of money ($8.5bn) for something Microsoft will give away for free, wasn’t it? However nothing’s free. Microsoft will use Skype as an advertising platform or a means to migrate some of their 405 million users to a paid service. You can see the obvious benefits of owning the service.

In the short term Microsoft are unlikely to improve Skype’s quality, particularly if they want users to migrate to their business grade services. It’s no secret that Microsoft are trying to break into and dominate telephony services, particularly as, increasingly, computers and telephony systems can integrate to provide significant business advantage.

Microsoft’s Lync unified voice and data services will be one of the norms in years to come as we increasingly see and use the benefits of integration. If this is new to you and you are unsure how computer telephony integration can benefit your business why not contact us? One of our advisors can talk you through the business advantages.

So should I use Skype?

The short answer is ‘yes’ but buyer beware. It isn’t suitable for – and is unlikely to be in the short term – business decision-making and it definitely won’t improve your business image.

If you still use analogue lines (probably rented from BT) you could save a significant annual or monthly sum on both fixed and recurring costs. We can provide an expert independent review of your telecommunications – if you’re interested please get in touch.

Join us in our jargon-free crusade!

If you’ve enjoyed this jargon-free article and would like to receive future emails please contact us and we will add you to our distribution list.

This was the headline presented by the BBC’s Newsbeat reporter Maddii Lown last week and it was also carried on the main evening television news. I trust it didn’t come as a surprise to you? Making sure you aren’t caught in this scam is something we have been advising our clients for months. Maddii reported that when you buy a bundled monthly service inevitably you waste as much as £ 200 a year for fear of incurring the penalty charges for excess use. The bundle provider is obviously making money hand over fist!

At 500 Limited we work with our customers to ensure little or no waste within their telecommunication spend, carefully investigating their business needs rather than selling the biggest bundle using the fear factor. It’s important to select the right call package and regularly review it to avoid waste.

And what is better is that we don’t charge for our initial consultative meeting — to get in touch, please call us on 0845 0000 500, or go to our web site, www.500.uk.com.

Why use 500 Limited?

At 500 Limited we are independent advisors, providing simple expert advice on how you should configure your business telecommunication systems to help your business grow. If that’s a “yes” then simply register here and one of our consultants will contact you, or alternately simply call us at 0845 0000 500.

Readers will be familiar with public telephone exchanges and private branch exchanges (PBXs), the latter sitting within a business’ premises, as they have been in everyday use almost since their invention by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. In fact we tend to take them for granted, don’t we?

This does however mean that a lot of businesses are missing a trick, because modern Internet Protocol PBXs (IP PBXs) provide a wealth of features and functions that can provide huge business benefits. So here are 7 great reasons why you should discuss your premises-based telephony requirements with 500 Limited:

1. Your first ‘cost of ownership’ consultation is free, simply register here
2. Even small modern IP PBXs are full of features, replicating those only previously available in huge corporate systems
3. These solutions can be tailored to suit your business profile, so for example if you provide a service desk you can configure the software so that customer calls are efficiently handled and are directed to the service department immediately
4. You can integrate your phone system with your desktop applications, a simple example is with your Outlook Directory to provide single click to dial from your PC; however increasingly you can connect to your customer management systems, for example solicitors might link to their case management tools
5. You can include mobile workers, home workers, and remote workers seamlessly and cost-effectively into your office systems
6. You can provide resilient systems and networks to protect mission critical telephony into your business
7. Last but not least, for this section because there is a lot more to be told, you can save significant cost by using the Internet to carry your call traffic.

Who are 500 Limited?

At 500 Limited we are independent advisors, providing simple expert advice on how you should configure your business telephony systems to help you grow. If that’s a “yes” then simply register here and one of our consultants will contact you.

Are you still paying for expensive ISDN circuits?

Before you confine this to trash, please consider how your business might be wasting valuable resources, especially money, on paying for services that your competitors aren’t! If you aren’t responsible for what your business spends on communications then you might wish to share this little secret with the person who is:

Using Internet broadband circuits to make your business phone calls is no longer restricted to entrepreneurs with nerves of steel: it’s for everyone!

How can you trust what we say?

There are three key elements to using the Internet for voice:

• Firstly, get good advice on the choices you have, ensuring proven quality, proven reliability and of course proven cost reductions.
• The second step is to profile your existing calls, checking how many concurrent inbound and outbound calls you have in busy periods and therefore to determine which type of broadband service you need
• The final step is to get free impartial advice from an expert on how to integrate voice over internet into your business

If you say “yes” to more than 3 of these, call 500 Limited:

• Are you still using analogue lines?
• Are you tied into your phone provider?
• Is your phone system more than 4 years old?
• Are your call costs out of control?
• Do you want to save at least 40% on your call charges

For a complimentary copy of our white paper on “7 key business benefits Voice over IP will provide to your business”, simply register via our website www.500.uk.com.

If that’s a ‘yes’, talk to an expert

Simply call us on 0845 0000 500 or go to our web site www.500.uk.com and contact us.

Who are 500 Limited?

500 Limited are specialist providers of telecommunications systems, focused on helping businesses use their systems to increase their profitability. Our portfolio includes: telephony systems, particularly hosted and premises-based voice over IP systems; network communications, particularly broadband, ethernet in the final mile and leased lines; mobility, particularly least cost routing and mobile working and computer telephony integration.

Contact us on 0845 0000 500 for full details or fill up our contact form.

…simply by changing your phone system.

Have a look at your phone! Do you see it as just a means of talking or is it an essential business tool which is helping your business grow? A survey of successful businesses identified that they used their phones as powerful tools to help grow their businesses, both inbound as they ensured they never missed the ‘important’ calls, and outbound as they integrated their phone systems into their sales, marketing and support activities.

We have taken the results of the survey and we have created a half day seminar entitled: “7 powerful ways you can use your phone system to generate more business.” Importantly it’s not about the technology, it’s about their use. The seminar will unlock the business secrets and will give you a competitive edge.

Who are 500 Limited?

500 Limited are specialist providers of telecommunications systems, focused on helping businesses use their systems to increase their profitability. Our portfolio includes: telephony systems, particularly hosted and premises-based voice over IP systems; network communications, particularly broadband, ethernet in the final mile and leased lines; mobility, particularly least cost routing and mobile working and computer telephony integration.

Contact us on 0845 0000 500 for full details.