Phone choices 2

[Mountainbear]

What does everyone like to sell for phones? Both analog and IP.
We like quality, simplicity and durability with no hidden or complicated costs (license, seats software ect.)
Looking for recomendations. Should we sell what everyone else does? NEC, IP office, and pick up the droped customers? or go with something completely different and go for new clients of our own.

 

[belevedere]

That depends on the customer's needs/wants. We sell NEC + a hosted solution. NEC has been around for over 100 years, so their phone systems are very good and reliable. SL2100 is the newest small to medium sized product. Try

http://www.necsl1100distributors.com

for more info.

 

[Mountainbear]

NEC seems to be popular here. At least I could work on "abandoned" systems. Others we considered were IPitomy, Avaya, and Alworx. I think a hosted offering makes sense as well.

 

[Vodia]

I think it makes sense to sell a system that can work with any SIP phone, in other words, go for something completely different. This way you are not locked in to only one phone or one series of phones. Your customers can decide which phone to use, or you can get in with a phone vendor who gives you good prices and good support. There are a multitude of good SIP phones out there - Polycom, Yealink, Snom, Grandstream.. And it's nice to be able to offer top of the line Cisco phones for those executives that want the highest quality phone. You can even mix and match phones on the same install. A little research will find you companies that support any SIP phone - hosted and CPE. And it's probably worth mentioning that in a lot of cases, a good built-in or 3rd party softphone or WebRTC phone can replace some or all of the desktop phones.

 

[intrigrant]

Being on the market for over 100 years is not really a recommendation for their products today.
In my experience any system will do if it fits the customer needs.
Now it is up to you to find out which system fits best for you kind of customers and go for it, look at it if all products are newcomers on the market.

AND every member here on TEK TIPS will have its own preference of the system they sell/install/maintain as that is what they know best.
Mine is the Avaya IP Office but that is because I hardly do anything else so that is a bad reference for you.

 

[curlycord]

AND every member here on TEK TIPS will have its own preference of the system they sell/install/maintain as that is what they know best."
Pretty much what I always say when the same questions is posted on forums.
Have another star Int


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Toronto, Canada

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[gbaughma]

I'm certified on several NEC phone systems.

Recently, however, I've been put in charge of an Asterisk system with Yealink IP phones.

I have to say... pretty spiffy. I can do things with the Asterisk that I wouldn't be able to do with an NEC system (for example, play "This call may be monitored or recorded" before it even rings back)

The Yealink phones are very nice, very configurable, and have a TON of features.

Not saying that I don't like NEC, I've done some amazing stuff with them as well. I'm just saying the more I learn about Asterisk (technically, we're running a Xorcom system over FreePBX), the more potential I see in it.

A few examples:
o In a school, I could replace the "Bell" system with Asterisk, signalling class changes and stuff.
o I have 8 virtual modems for sending and receiving faxes (I could have 100 virtual modems if I wanted)
o Ring groups, "Follow Me", voicemail, text to speech, SIP trunks, T1/PRI, all there...
o A touch-screen enabled receptionist call routing system (we have two of them at the front desk)

... I'm just really liking it. Could be fantastic for "home office" stuff; put a desk phone at people's home offices.
(And yes, I know you can do some of that stuff like remote offices and voicemail and ring groups on NEC... I'm just saying I've found I can do everything that I can do on an NEC system, plus a thousand times more on Asterisk)


Just my $.02

"What the captain doesn't realize is that we've secretly replaced his Dilithium Crystals with new Folger's Crystals."

--Greg

 

[LoPath]

I agree with the others. I've worked on Avaya and Siemens/Unify over the years. I'm partial to Unify now, because I work on it every day. It's all a matter of what the end user wants. Each vendor does things a bit differently, but they all have pretty much the same features. A customer is going to have more of an impression on what they touch everyday. Whether that's a fancy telephone set or an ACD system with fancy reports, that's what they're going to care about. Dial tone is last on the customer's mind.

LoPath
Maintain HiPath 4000 V5 & V6, OpenScape Xpert V4, OpenScape Xpressions, OpenScape Contact Center V8, OpenScape Voice V9