Growing to a second, third or fourth location is a good problem to have. But it usually brings a less welcome one: every new office gets its own phone setup, its own bill and its own list of charges. After a few years, nobody is quite sure what the business is paying for, or why the offices can’t simply transfer calls to each other.
That’s where one Alaska business found itself. Here is how it went from four separate setups to one hosted phone system.
Where they started
The business had four offices: two in Anchorage, one in Wasilla and one in Fairbanks. Each office had its own service and its own monthly bill from the big carriers.
Added together, the phone charges on those four bills came to $1,496.84 a month. (With Internet service on top, the four bills totaled about $2,500 a month, roughly $30,000 a year.)
The cost was only part of the problem. Each office was sized on its own for its own busiest hour, so the business was paying for spare capacity four times over. Calls between offices were treated like outside calls. And any change meant working through separate accounts in separate towns.
The idea: one system, not four
With a hosted system, the phone system itself runs as software in a secure data center, not in a closet at each office. The phones connect to it over the Internet. That means location doesn’t really matter. An extension in Fairbanks can be part of the same system as an extension in Anchorage, just like two desks in the same room.
So instead of four small systems, the business moved to one integrated IBeXc hosted system. All four offices share it. The Wasilla office sits outside the usual service area, so we designed a custom setup for it, and it’s still part of the same single system. That’s what we bring to the table: we’re not a phone company, we host the system, and we think outside the box to make it work.
Moving to one system brought a few practical changes:
- One bill. One monthly hosting bill for every office, instead of a separate bill per location.
- Combined capacity. The offices share one pool of capacity, so a busy morning in Wasilla can use room that Fairbanks isn’t using.
- Extensions that dial each other. Any office can reach any other with a short extension number, and transfer a caller across town as easily as across the hall.
- One support team. Local support in Anchorage for every location, with 24/7 support available.
If you want the bigger picture on multi-site setups, see one phone system for Anchorage, Eagle River and the Lower 48.
What they bought, one time
Hosting means there’s no phone system to buy, but the offices still needed phones on the desks. Here’s what the one-time equipment looked like:
- 43 Snom D735 desk phones, color-screen phones for everyday staff.
- 5 Snom D7C expansion modules, the “sidecars” that add rows of buttons for the people who handle the most calls.
- 4 PoE network switches, one per office. PoE means the phones get their power through the network cable, so there’s no power adapter at every desk.
The equipment came to $11,753.80, plus $50 per device for installation and training. You can see the phones on our desk phones page.
What they pay now
Today the same business pays $805.43 a month for its IBeXc hosted phone system, covering every office.
| Before: four separate bills | Now: one IBeXc system | |
|---|---|---|
| Phone charges per month | $1,496.84 | $805.43 |
| Bills to manage | 4 | 1 |
That’s $691 less every month, 46% lower, or about $8,300 a year back in the business.
How fast the new phones paid for themselves
The phones and expansion modules cost $5,962, and installation and training came to $2,150, so about $8,100 in total. At $691 a month in savings, that paid for itself in about 12 months. Even counting the four new network switches as well, the whole project paid for itself in about 20 months. After that, the savings simply stay in the business.
Bought once, not leased
This part matters more than it looks. Many businesses are offered leased desk phones instead. The monthly payment seems small, but over a year it adds up to about the price of the phones. Every 12 to 14 months, you’ve paid for the phones again, and the payments keep going for as long as the lease does.
This business bought its phones once. After that, they’re simply the office’s phones. They’re also standard SIP phones that work with most VoIP providers, so the business isn’t locked in: if IBeXc ever stopped being the right fit, the phones would go with them. Staff can even move a phone to another desk or another office on their own, with no site visit.
Adding a fifth office was the easy part
The real test of a combined system comes when you grow again. When the business opened an office in Eagle River, it didn’t need a new phone system, a new account or a new bill. The new office simply joined the existing system. The phones were set up, the extensions were programmed, and Eagle River became part of the same system as everyone else.
That’s the pattern we see often. The first move is the big one. After that, each new location is a matter of adding phones and extensions. We walk through that step in opening a second location without a second phone system.
What made it work
A few things helped this move go smoothly:
- We did the design and programming. The business told us how calls should flow between offices, and we built it. Nobody had to learn a web portal.
- Existing numbers stayed with the business. Customers kept calling the numbers they already knew.
- No long-term contracts. The business can add or remove people and offices as it changes.
- Local help. Questions went to our team in Anchorage, and escalation can go right up to the owner.
If one of your offices already has a phone system you want to keep for now, SIP Trunking and IP Interconnection can connect it to the same cloud system while the rest of your offices move over.
Could your offices share one system?
If you run more than one location and pay a separate bill for each, it’s worth a look. A good starting point is the same one this business used: its actual bills.
Send us your bill for the same line-by-line comparison. Our quote form lets you upload a recent phone bill for each office, and we’ll show you what one hosted phone system would look like for all of them. Get a quote for your office →
