Online fax service provider RingCentral (News - Alert) announced this week the results of a U.S. customer survey looking at spending trends for communications services and related technology. The company also asked small business owners and entrepreneurs to rate the RingCentral Online suite of communications services.
Based on survey results, RingCentral predicted that small businesses will increase their technology spending during 2008, with a focus on communications services and PCs. Sixty percent of respondents indicated plans for increased technology spending for 2008. Topping the list for planned investments is personal computers, followed by telephony tools.
In fact, more than a third of small businesses said they’re including phone systems, VoIP
technologies and smartphones in their 2007 budgets.
E-mail and phone are the most important technologies for small businesses, RingCentral said. Web sites were also cited as key business assets.
Some people may view fax as an old-fashioned technology, but RingCentral’s survey found it is still very much alive and in use by many small businesses. Fifty-seven percent of respondents identified fax as being important or very important to doing business.
RingCentral, which offers an online suite of communications solutions—a virtual phone system with fax capabilities—also gained some positive feedback in the survey from customers who are more than happy with service the company provides.
Forty-three percent of small businesses said RingCentral Online is the best new technology they adopted during 2007. This is in contrast to a significant percentage of respondents (14 percent) who tried a VoIP service (not from RingCentral) and rated it the most disappointing technology they invested in.
“We realize that some small businesses that tried VoIP were disappointed--a number of early industry players overpromised and under-delivered on this technology,” noted RingCentral CEO Vlad Shmunis. “Our approach is to let customers try-before-they buy and determine if their PC and broadband connection are VoIP ready.”
Shmunis added that RingCentral doesn’t require customers to jump into VoIP with both feet; instead the company offers a service that works well with both mobile phones and landlines.
“What is clear from this survey is that as small businesses adopt new technologies, the basic desire to connect with customers and project a professional image will continue to drive their priorities,” Shmunis concluded.
To learn more about the services discussed in this article, please visit the Fax channel on TMCnet.com, brought to you by RingCentral.
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Mae Kowalke is an associate editor for TMCnet, covering VoIP, CRM, call center and wireless technologies. To read more of Mae’s articles, please visit her columnist page. She also blogs for TMCnet here.
Voice over IP (VoIP) | X |
| A real-time communications system that converts voice into digital packets containing media and signaling data that travel over networks using Internet Protocol....more |
Internet Protocol (IP) | X |
| IP stands for Internet Protocol, a data-networking protocol developed throughout the 1980s. It is the established standard protocol for transmitting and receiving data
in packets over the Internet. I...more |
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