Is your company upgrading to a Hosted VoIP Phone System? With the clear financial and functionality benefits it probably was not difficult to reach that decision. But narrowing your options and making a final choice is more difficult. Use this simple 3 step test from Ziff Davis to compare your three favorite vendors.

1. Assign three users to test three separate phone systems.
    
2. Choose an IP telephone that is compatible with all three candidates and configure one for each user.  Give the same telephone to each user so that the only variable is the phone system, not the hardware.
    
3. Have each user test one system for an entire month, making note of what they like and dislike. While call quality and basic operations will not vary greatly between hosted systems, there are a few important things for the user to pay attention to:
   
   - Support from the provider
   - Reports
   - Voice mail
   - Billing
   - Competence of the provider's back end systems
   
   Make sure the test lasts a month so that the test users have time to become comfortable with the system and fully appreciate the differences from the current phone system.

To read more, visit Ziff Davis' Simple Ways to Test a Hosted VoIP System