The easy way to
plan a SIP trunking
network
Take the mystery out of planning a SIP network for your customers by
helping them understand both the technology and the processes that
run their business.
Looking forward
Your customer has decided to make the switch to SIP services. They look forward to the day when a user’s extension can follow them from office to mobile to home. They anxiously await being secure in the knowledge that their phone network will survive a disaster without an outage. Their accounting department is anticipating lower communications costs than ever before. They just aren’t quite sure how to make it all happen. Sound familiar?
Fail to plan, plan to fail!
Planning a new SIP network may seem like a gargantuan project but it doesn’t have to be. A few key steps, when taken during the planning phase of your project, will ensure a smooth
implementation and a happy user base when your customer is done. A typical SIP network can be planned out using the following steps:
The easy way to
plan a SIP trunking
network
Take the mystery out of planning a SIP network for your customers by
helping them understand both the technology and the processes that
run their business.
If your customer follows these steps when planning their SIP network it will make implementation a trouble-free process.
In with the new
The majority of the SIP network planning process revolves around helping your customer understand what features SIP provides and how they can put those features to work for their company. SIP trunking will bring features to a
communications infrastructure that have never been available to your customer before. Ensuring that they understand these features will enable them to fit each feature into their network plan correctly. New features that may be available include:
Unified communications integration: Customers can now have a single piece of software
to manage instant messaging, presence and voicemail. Their staff can set their presence to ‘away’ and have all calls routed to their mobile, all emails responded to with an ‘out of office’ response and all instant messaging peers notified of their availability, automatically.
Flexible numbering: Your customer may now purchase a local number from any region,
no matter where their office is. Flexible numbering enables offices to be closed or consolidated without losing the local numbers that your customers have always used. In situations where the appearance of local presence is required, your customer can have a number in each locality that they serve, all handled by a single office or call centre.
Multi-office call distribution: If your customer has staff from one office working at
maximum capacity while staff from another location sit idle, they may be able to distribute workload between those offices.
• Learn about available SIP features • Document existing integration points • Understand existing call flows
• Map out desired disaster mitigation strategies • Put it all together in a common plan
Business continuity options: Whether it’s due to natural disaster, an epidemic or some
other force beyond your control, SIP technologies enable your customers to keep their business running. If designated staff cannot answer calls, your customer’s new SIP services will ensure that someone can.
Scalability options: Your customer’s clients need not receive a busy tone during periods
of high volume. Many businesses have sales that jump sharply in seasonal or holiday periods. SIP enables available phone services to ramp up in kind, ensuring that your customers always have enough capacity to answer every call.
Speak with your SIP trunk provider to determine which of these features are available to you and how they can be integrated into your customer’s business. Certain features may require specific technology to already be in place at your customer’s offices. For example, a provider that supports unified communications may require that a customer has Microsoft Lync in place to support it. Be
careful to choose a provider that supports infrastructure that your customer already has or is planning to implement.
Lay of the land
Now that your customer understands all of the features available to them, figure out how those features can fit in with their existing technology. Take a high level snapshot of the existing technology, then match it up with newly available SIP features. Integration points to look for include:
Unified communications software, such as Microsoft Lync or Openfire. Customer messaging systems, if your customer runs an outbound calling service to notify clients
of a change in order status or for marketing
CRM systems, to have client information appear on-screen when
staff answer a call.
Outsourced support systems, if your customer outsources
first-tier service or support and receives escalated calls via their
Have your customer find out which of their existing products can integrate with their new SIP services and add the implementation of those features to their plan.
Better treatment
SIP trunks provide improvements to the way that incoming calls can be handled (often referred to as “call treatment”). The best thing to do at this point is for your customer to take a look at every type of call their company receives and document how it is handled in their plan. If there is a better way to handle a particular call type with their new SIP infrastructure, they should change their plan to match. Call handling improvements include:
Distribution of calls
Many companies have multiple offices that all handle their own unique set of calls - the Glasgow office handles calls from the Glasgow area, the London office answers calls from London etc. Your customer does not need to have communication silos with SIP. Any office can now handle any call that the customer receives.
Conferencing software, to enable customer-hosted conference calls,
video calls or webinars.
Automation systems, to enable control of lights, alarms, door locks and
office temperature by phone.
Call control or switchboard software, to
enable a receptionist to quickly and accurately
route incoming calls.
Billing software, if your customer has on-premise clients who need to be billed on a per-call basis or if their
staff are charged back for non-business calls.
Automated attendant systems
Many businesses use automated attendants (sometimes called IVRs or voice menus) to answer and direct calls. SIP can take these attendants one step further by:
• Adding the ability to obtain customer data in real time. By enabling clients to obtain the status of their orders on their own, waiting times for those who really need to speak with your customer’s staff can be reduced.
• Having the same attendant answer the call for all offices. Instead of having to maintain a separate configuration for each location, customers can create a single auto attendant in one location that receives all calls and then directs callers to the appropriate office based on their selection.
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Call forwarding
When an employee is away, many companies will send all calls for that person to voicemail. SIP can do better. Most SIP providers will provide a web portal that enables a ‘point and click’ call diversion process. Most IPPBX devices will allow staff to forward their own extension either from a web portal or directly from their phone to ensure that client calls are always handled.
Call queues
Older phone systems allowed for some basic departmental calling by placing all phones from a particular department into a group and then ringing all of them when a call came in. Most IPPBX devices will enable your customer to configure call queues with various call distribution options. Your customer can now add all department agents to a queue, then choose to send a call to the agent who least recently received a call, has spent the least amount of time on the phone or route the call based on other criteria of their choosing.
Remote workers
SIP technologies add simplified remote connection options:
• Mobile or landline links. Many IPPBX systems will allow mobile or landline numbers to be added to call queues or other call handling applications. An employee can answer the call as if they had a phone at the office. The additional capacity required for this feature is considerably cheaper than previous generations of phone technology.
• Remote IP phones. If your customer’s security policy allows for it, a remote worker can be outfitted with a IP phone. No additional telephone call is placed when the remote phone is called; it communicates with the customer’s IPPBX over the internet using SIP. Additional channels are not required to handle the call (though more bandwidth may be required if your customer implements many remote devices). • Remote SIP apps. Your customer’s mobile workforce now has the option of installing a SIP softphone app on their smartphones. Calls are then made and received over the mobile’s data plan without having to pay expensive mobile calling rates.
Help your customer to find any possible improvements to how their existing calls are handled and add those improvements to their network plan. If any call treatment processes are changing, ensure that your customer notifies affected staff members.
Beautiful disaster
SIP provides significant improvements to how calls are handled when your customer’s business has suffered a disaster. Ask your customer to think about their core call treatment processes and how each of them would be affected in the event of a disaster. Make them figure out what happens when key personnel are away, an entire department is shut down or one of their office locations is rendered inaccessible. Have them document the best way to handle these events using call diversions, remote workers, automated attendants and voicemail systems.
Takeaways:
To help your customer plan a SIP trunking network quickly and easily, ensure that your customer: • Understands all of the SIP features available to them
• Documents the SIP integration points with their current infrastructure and maps out their desired call flows
• Plans how their phone network should handle an outage • Takes all of their documentation and puts it together
• Refers to their plan often during implementation to make sure that all features are configured correctly
