When we first set up the company, we really didn’t know what our needs were going to be. Would we be wildly successful or would we fail in our first year? Not knowing makes it difficult to plan and we didn’t want to buy a bunch of computer hardware and telephone systems that were way beyond our reach. We didn’t have the money. Luckily, we went with the Cisco Unified IP Phones 797XG/GE. We thought it would be best to start small and then expand if the time ever came to do so. Thank goodness it did.
Last week, we purchased the Cisco Unified IP Phone Expansion Module 7914 which extends the capabilities of the phone system we already had (apparently it also works with the Cisco Unified IP Phones 79GXG/G-GE) by adding fourteen buttons and an LCD display. The best thing about adding the expansion module is that we could choose which phones actually needed it (our part-time bookkeeper didn’t need it at all), so we again, we had control over how much we spent and weren’t put in a position to buy a bunch of fancy stuff we didn’t need.
Long story short, my advice to new business owners is to look at IT hardware purchases realistically. While it’s always nice to dream about where you want to be once you’ve increased sales and started to grow, the reality of now is more important. And mistakes you make now (like wasting money on an architecture that handles way more than your current needs entail) can make or break you in your first year. Be smart. Upgrading later on isn’t as difficult as you’d imagine it is and some companies even offer refurbished equipment at huge discounts making the upgrade down the road easy and affordable—should you get there. And I hope you do.