Technological advances are paving the way for you to increase your customers’ network reliability, system security and overall quality of communications. As a reseller, you’d be wise, therefore, to tap into modern Internet Protocol (IP) telephony and unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) products that are leading the way toward more flexible and economical communications solutions for today’s businesses.

In fact, the sales of these telephony systems will spur growth in the North American hosted IP telephony and UC&C services market from 2013 revenues of $1.59 billion to 2020 revenues of $9.53 billion, according to research from Frost & Sullivan.

Such industry growth typically drives increased competition, which, in turn, yields innovation. This means that you must continually keep abreast of new industry offerings to remain competitive. When you partner with a service provider that distributes best-in-class hosted telephony and UC solutions, you will be able to develop your niche within the market, allowing you to attract more customers.

How, specifically, does choosing the right provider help you to differentiate your business from the many telecom providers out there?  The answer is by enabling you to offer superior phone system technology, which should encompass the following benefits:

Reliability

When superior reliability is part of your sales kit, you’re already ahead of the game, as this feature is the basis for any long-term business relationship. Look for products that offer both on-site and cloud-based communications system components.  Also, ensure that the provider has a proven track record of nearly 100 percent uptime so you can offer customers a guarantee that downtime is a thing of the past. Automatic quality monitoring and support should be offered 24/7/365. Furthermore, ask your prospective provider whether it offers failover with redundant Internet connections to ensure your customers never suffer from connection outages. In addition, ask whether the products you sell will include a system that can automatically take over customer phone lines and reroute them to designated alternative numbers if the customer’s site experiences a power loss.

Security

A cloud-based VoIP system will provide your customers with a more robust, flexible telephony solution than either a POTS or PBX system can provide. How’s that, you wonder, when VoIP has had security issues in the past? Well, VoIP security has come a long way since its origins. That is, once you’ve educated your customers on ways to protect their businesses against security threats, a cutting-edge provider will supply the technology that can seal the deal, that is, offset threats with encryption, multifactor authentication, next-generation firewalls and application-aware security appliances. As with any IP technology, VoIP systems must be monitored for breaches; look for a provider that offers continual system scrutiny for unusual or suspicious data traffic.

Ease of use

Your customers will appreciate a complete and feature-rich communications system implemented without a setup hassle or any ongoing usage complexity. Make it possible by choosing a provider that offers the best possible call quality and easy-to-access cloud features such as voice mail, auto-attendants, presence, call routing, conference calling and more. Also look for a provider that offers a simple-to-operate end-user interface with remote phones and softphones that can be utilized the same way as local extensions. Check out the distributor’s customer retention rate, as well, to verify that customers are satisfied overall with product performance.

For a provider that can meet all these requirements and more, click here.