Until the democratization of computers and internet technology in the past decade, large businesses had significant advantages over small businesses by virtue of their head count:  a larger workforce not only makes it possible to do more work sooner, but also offers significant economies of scale as vendors compete for larger contracts. But technology has allowed smaller businesses to compete thanks to the huge increases in productivity that are made possible by technology. Unfortunately, however, economies of scale for small businesses are only beginning to balance the huge weight that larger businesses are able to throw around when it comes to getting the best IT services and products for the lowest prices.

Case in point is the disparity between telecom solutions for large businesses and what is offered to smaller ones in the form of a small business voip system. While voip technology is nothing new, it was conceived and developed mostly as a way for large business to derive significant economies of scale from bandwidth that costs much less than PSTN connections. When translating it into a solution for smaller businesses, however, many voip solution providers skimp on features or overcharge because, until recently, few providers focused on the smaller account small business space.

Small businesses considering adopting VOIP should therefore choose their provider wisely if they want to be treated as customers rather than as nuisances. Choosing a provider that caters specifically to the needs of small businesses is one way to ensure that businesses are getting big company service, products, and support with pricing that has a small business’s budget in mind.

In addition to being able to compile the best small business voip system for a given business’s bandwidth and needs, a small business provider should also be willing to provide enterprise grade features that are usually reserved by other providers for their big corporate accounts, without charging an extra “small business tax.”

Small businesses considering adopting a voip system should also ensure that their solution provider offers user-friendly tools to administer it. Many providers provide crude tools or require a call to customer service to make changes to the system because they take it for granted that their large customers will have the resources and knowledge in-house to make the most of the technology. A small business-oriented solution provider will not make these assumptions and will provide subscribers with tools that make the system’s administration practically fool proof.