Your on-site PBX can kill your small business

What if your growth exceeds all expectations? What if it doesn't, and you end up paying for twice the PBX capacity that you reckoned you'd need? What if, like many small businesses with diverse interests, the various bits attain a life of their own and split up? Or - if you're sharing premises and infrastructure with partners - what if you go your separate ways after two years? Which partner gets the PBX and which must fork out all over again?

But don't bet on it. For the first year, my PBX did a fine job. The next year, we signed a bank as a customer and all calls had to be recorded. Getting the feature proved impossible without extra cabinets and cards, and the upshot was another bill of over R45,000 for the automated message feature, and over R50,000 for the recording equipment, which never really worked properly. On top of this my PBX was generally obsolete by year three, and it ended up in a storage closet.

To further soften the blow, providers often build in a 10% to 15% annual escalation. So you might start off paying R3500pm and end up with a monthly shock of R6000 in the final year. But so what, you say. We pay off cars at a much higher total cost than the purchase price.

If your PBX was a car, that would be a fair comparison. But despite any similarities in price, it isn't. It's nowhere near as pretty or useful after five years, and there's no resale value. With rapid obsolescence I paid more over the last two years of not using it than the first three. (I eventually sold it for R10 000 - 5% of its upfront value. That is pain. If you don't believe me then ask your PBX supplier what they'll give you for your R10, 000 PBX after a year).

You might also argue that, while hosted PBXs attract lower monthly fees than a PBX on HP, the on-site model at least becomes yours. But have you considered the ongoing costs of ownership?
Whenever you need to move an extension or fix a problem, a technician will have to come out. Moving is extremely disruptive, and you will need excellent support (again at high cost) to set you up all over again. You can further expect considerable pressure to upgrade at this point.

Hosted model

With all these difficulties, I decided to go for a hosted PBX instead, which was operationally one of the best decisions of my life. Had I chosen it from the outset, I would have had untold flexibility. A move, for example, would simply mean unplugging handsets from the old LAN and plugging back into the new one.

Then there is provisioning of extensions. As the cloud-based PBX is virtualised, you can have exactly as many as you need from the start, and scale up and down as you need.

This flexibility carries over into other areas as well - with 30 days' notice, the service can be cancelled when companies split up, move premises, or downsize.

My wish for an auto-attendant would have been a simple matter of flicking a virtual switch, not a R45,000 headache.

When owning a PBX makes sense

Owning a PBX is a huge risk. Until such time as it becomes yours, you're locked into a lengthy contract that ties you to a piece of equipment that really isn't worth it, but if you can tick the following boxes, by all means marry your PBX:

The future is hosted

The reality of South African business is that nothing stays the same for long. In the space of five years, a business can change owners and strategic direction and have a dramatically different staff make up.

In this sort of context, a hosted PBX provides the flexibility of a great managed service accessible from anywhere with good quality connectivity.

With the maturity, flexibility and quality of cloud communications, it is, quite simply, the future of business communications, and it has already begun.