Advice on small business telephone system?

Edwards Finance > Phones

Q. I am building a new chiropractic office. The building will be 4224 sq. ft., of which I will occupy 2112 sq. ft.. I need a minimum of three phone lines. Three lines that trunk over, the last of which will be used with an analog fax and SBC dsl. I will be looking for a couple of other doctors to be independent contractors, that will need there own phone lines(numbers) to advertize so our businesses can be truely seperate.

A. if everything works out I may take over the other 2112 sq. ft. with another business, so I would like the possibility of having 8 incoming lines and 16 to 24 extensions. Initially, I would like to start with 3 phone lines and 10 extensions to equip all treatment rooms, so I can page the front desk and ask for a chart and such. I would also like to use a regular digital anwering machine. At this point I do not see the need for voice mail. You don't want to call your doctor and hear a bunch of options. You want to call and quickly talk to someone and set up an appointment. My budget is about $2000 for the equipment. I have been looking on ebay and like the thought of used equipment. New, I could afford 3-4 line system that would be expensive to upgrade. Used, I could afford the full system capable of 6-8 lines. On Ebay there are so many option: New, Used, NEC, Nortel, Panasonic, etc. I have looked at Nortel CICS, but I don't think I can have the fax and digital answering machine on the system with out having an expensive analog card. I don't like the idea of a dedicated fax line. We are a small office and currently only have two lines that trunk with DSL and fax on the second line, so I would like to have the possibility of trunking over to that third line on the system. Your help would be much appreciated, I believe if I bought now with my current knowledge, I would be making a mistake that would only be discovered after it is to late. Sounds like you've been doing some good research. I can't blame you for shopping the used market. Since you mention the CICS, I'll mention that it has 1 built-in ATA (analog terminal adapter) that you can connect your AM to. Just forward calls afterhours to that ext, or set up a night button that adds the AM extension to the ring group. You can do automatic schedules, but I've found that they are more trouble than they're worth. You won't want the fax machine on the system. If you want line 3 of your hunt group to double as your fax, look at a product by command communications called a comshare. There are other similar devices as well. With the comshare, you connect the line to the comshare unit, then feed the phone port out to the phone system, and the fax port to the fax machine. When line 3 rings, the comshare answers the call, listens for CNG tone, and routes the call accordingly. This is a problem with people that STILL don't know how to use a fax machine. You know them--they are the ones that, when sending a fax, they dial the fax number, and wait to hear a fax tone before pressing the start button. Anyway, with the comshare, even if that happens and you answer the call, you can transfer to the fax machine by dialing #11. One thing to be aware of is that you won't want line 3 to be in your outbound line pool, because it will be the first line you pick up for an outbound call, and if it's tied up with a fax call, no one will figure out how to get around picking up line 3. To avoid that problem, I would set up your main line as line 2, your second line as line 3, and your 3rd line as line 1.

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