Eight Key Points You Should Know About Moving Your Telephone System to a New Office
by Ed Mass

Moving your office affords a perfect and unique opportunity to re-evaluate how you run your business. It provides a chance to see if your current, or new, telecommunications systems — including your base telephone system, enhancements to the base system, and special voice and data lines — can be utilized in ways that you haven’t considered to move your business strategies forward. Should you move your current telecommunications systems or buy the latest technologies that offer more capabilities?

If you are planning to move into new offices within the next twelve months, it is not too early to consider your telecommunications systems. Do you want to move your existing systems or obtain the latest technologies? If your system is at least four years “young” it may be worth considering the additional benefits gained from the latest technologies. That last statement shows how quickly the technologies for telephone systems have been changing over the last few years.

Some technologies to consider are voice mail, unified messaging (receiving e-mail, voice mail, and fax mail to a single “mailbox” on each individual’s computer), video conferencing, computer-telephony integration (linking together your computer and telephone systems), IVR (interactive voice response) systems, and ACD (automatic call distributors). Technologies that were costly and therefore only affordable by very large corporations just a few years ago are now affordable with even more capabilities to small and medium businesses. (See the article “Revolutionary Times for Business Telephone Systems” for a greater understanding of available technologies and their benefits.)

Whatever you decide — to move your existing systems or to buy new systems — take this opportunity to evaluate your internal communications processes and those with the outside world — your customers, prospects, and suppliers. Although the following checklist focuses on moving your existing telephone systems, most of the points apply equally well to buying a new system and having it installed.

Make sure you have work, beeper, emergency, home, mobile, and any other telephone numbers for your vendor’s key sales and technical personnel throughout the move process. At the very least, insist on a 24 hour number availability to at least one person at the vendor’s company who has the authority to track down anyone who is necessary to fix any problems.
If changing phone numbers, you may want to set up forwarding for your old number rather than just have the telephone company put a recording on the old number that says the new number is xxx-xxx-xxxx. Your calls can be forwarded without having to physically keep your old lines in place. Ask your local telephone company about this service, sometimes called Telebranch. If your calls are forwarded, have the calls sent to a special number where you can track the volume of traffic. When it dies down, stop the forwarding and switch to the recorded message from the phone company. Test out the call forwarding to make sure it works. Test it every day first thing in the morning for the first week after it is initially set up and again for the first week after your move.
Work with your telephone equipment vendor to inventory your current system and peripheral components and verify how they are currently set up and used. Take this opportunity to re-evaluate your use of the features of your phone system. There may be many that you’re not using and from which you could benefit. Ask your employees what they would like to do with the system that they cannot do now. Ask your vendor what else you could be taking advantage of with the system you already have. (Beware of them wanting to sell you a new system. If this is the case, then you should do a complete new evaluation of current technologies.) Or ask a consultant to evaluate your needs and suggest how you can improve the use of your current system. You may want to compare additional benefits that can be obtained from using the latest technologies in telephone equipment.
After moving, verify that any changes that were decided upon were actually made and that, for example, the technicians didn't just duplicate the old arrangement because they were not notified of the changes. When setting up the old telephone system at your new location, test every aspect and feature of the system with the technician still on site.
Telephone Numbers and Lines at Your New Location
Consider the types of lines you want. You may want to consider newer services, such as ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) PRI and IP Trunks, specialized circuits, and “older”, but very useful, services such as DID (Direct Inward Dial), if you aren’t already using them. With DID each person receives an individual telephone number for voice calls. You can also assign individual fax telephone numbers. There are advantages to this, such as, for immediacy of obtaining faxes, faxes not getting lost at the fax machine, and privacy. You may even want to use DID just for individual fax numbers and not for voice numbers at all. Combining newer trunking and DID may be even more advantageous. Unfortunately, further details on all these and other newer and specialized services are beyond the scope of this article.
Consider line capacity. Do you know if callers are getting busy signals during peak times of the day, week, or your busy season? Find out for sure. The telephone company will perform a busy line study, typically for two weeks, at no charge. This is a starting point. The best method is to install your own call accounting software for your telephone system. Prices and reporting capabilities vary considerably so don’t necessarily just accept one suggestion from your telephone equipment vendor if your system can accommodate more than just the manufacturer’s software.
Make sure the telephone lines at the new location are working properly before you move your phone system. Test them out. Verify the termination locations of your telephone numbers with the phone company and your telephone equipment vendor. Verify, check, and recheck individual telephone numbers and their locations, especially for each fax, modem, and any other special devices you have on your system. Verify that the telephone numbers the phone company told you are the telephone numbers that actually ring in to the lines at your new location.
Make sure the wiring you have installed at your new location is of the proper type and uses the proper connectors for phone (and for data if you are having this installed at the same time). Have your phone vendor who will be moving your system or installing a new system, verify that the telephone jacks are of the proper type. Test all connections before moving your entire office to the new location. If you’re using IP Telephony, you’ll achieve significant cost savings by only needing to have one network installed — the data network — instead of separate networks for voice and data. (See the definitions of “IP Telephony” and “VOIP” in the “Glossary of Telecommunications Terms.”)
Some moves go smoothly. Many, even the best planned, run into glitches. Some companies give planning a high priority. As silly as it seems, some companies plan poorly. Obviously the better the planning, the lower the likelihood of glitches or at least the quicker to fix them.
Giving Planning a High Priority Makes Moves Go Smoothly.
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