How To Buy your Panasonic Phone System
Weather
you’re a first time
buyer or just replacing an older system, now is the time to take
a moment to consider what your business needs from a telephone system. Your
Panasonic telephone and voicemail systems will last a good long time. So
the last thing we would want you to do, is make a less than well
thought out purchase. On this page you’ll find a few things we think
you should consider before you buy. Don’t worry about flipping back
and forth on the site to see which systems have what you need. We’ve
provided links for that at the bottom of the page. In addition,
you’ll find a table showing the capacities of the Panasonic
telephone systems. We recommend that you jot down your answers,
as you go,
to the question you find relevant.
Framing your business
Where
are we now with respect to our telephone communications? Are
we down sizing, or growing? Is that likely to continue? How are most
of our calls initiated? Do we make the calls, or do our customers call
us? When calls come in, do the phones ring or do they go through a
voicemail system first? Is that how we want it, or just how it’s always
been done? If you’re a small business, do you need the “appearance” of
a large company? Will I be answering all the calls myself, or will
the voicemail system be routing them instead?The intention here is
not to frustrate or bore you, but to get you to take a fresh look
at how your sales, customer service,
administrative and other departments can best utilize your new Panasonic
telephone system to be more productive. So go department-by-department,
if need be, and write down what would be optimum. In a year or two
people will applaud your vision! Just remember us when it happens
*wink*
How many telephone lines do I need?
Right now, how
many telephone lines am I buying from the telephone company?
Is that enough? Can I do without one or
two? If your company is growing, you need to buy a system that can
grow with you. It’s important to have a little expansion room here.
If you have 3 lines now, and you’re growing, don’t buy the KX-TD308. It
isn’t expandable beyond 3 lines. On the other hand, if you have two
lines now, then adding a third line would be a 50% increase in your
line capacity! We use this example only as a guide. Start with
the number of lines you are currently using, and factor in the
growth
or down sizing you see coming over the next couple of years.Tip!If
you’re a company that doesn’t send
or receive many faxes over the course of a day, consider putting
that fax line on the phone system. The system can be programmed
to only ring
the extension you’ve hooked to the fax. Because the fax line is now
going through your telephone system, you can use it, in addition to
your regular lines, to make calls on from your desktop telephone. Remember,
you’ll have to add the fax line to the total number of lines you’ll
need the Panasonic telephone system to accommodate (3 voice lines +
fax line = 4 total lines on the system). Now, if you’re fax is busy
all day, then this isn’t a good idea.
How many extensions will I need?
The
number of extensions you’ll need will depend
on a couple of factors. In short, it’ll break down like this. Number
of Panasonic telephones + analog devices (credit card machines, modems,
faxes, Pitney Bowes machines and/or cordless telephones) + number of
Panasonic voicemail ports = the total number of extension you’ll need.
That’s the short answer! Now, here are a couple of things to watch
out for, while you’re counting those things on your fingers. If you’re
buying a Panasonic analog telephone
system (KX-TAW848, KX-TA624
or KX-TA1232), each voicemail port connected to the system
will require an extension. On the other hand, the Panasonic
digital telephone systems (KX-TD308, KX-TD816-6 and
KX-TD1232-6) are more efficient. Because of their digital
nature, they
only require one (1) extension for every two (2) voicemail
ports.
So if, for instance,
you’re buying a TVS50 (2 voicemail ports), you will only need one
(1) extension to make two (2) ports work. As with lines, you want
to make
sure to buy a Panasonic telephone system that will meet your FUTURE
extension requirements.One more thing. Remember I asked you to consider
all those “analog devices”? Well here’s where the Panasonic
digital system earns its keep. With the Panasonic analog telephone
systems, (Those systems beginning with the letters
KX-TA)
you have to make sure you have a separate extension for
every device you intend to connect to it. When you buy a Panasonic digital telephone
system (System beginning with the letters KX-TD)
you get some thing special. An XDP port with every extension.
The XDP ports
allow
you to connect any single line device to it. Yep, that
right.
It means that on the same extension you can have a 7400
series telephone (KXT7436,KXT7453,KXT7425,KXT7431
or KXT7420) and any one of those analog devices
we mentioned earlier. Credit card machines, modems, faxes,
Pitney
Bowes machines,
cordless telephones, or nearly any thing you can plug into
your phone line at home. That’s like getting two-for-one!
What phones should
I buy?
That question is going to be decided largely by
wether you buy a Panasonic
Analog (KX-TA) or Digital (KX-TD) system. If you buy a Panasonic
KX-TA (analog) system, then you CANNOT buy
the Panasonic digital telephones (KXT7436,KXT7453,KXT7425,KXT7431
or KXT7420),
they just will not work with the Panasonic Analog
systems (KX-TA624 or KX-TA1232). Still, there are plenty
of analog
telephones to choose
from. You have the entire 7700 series
telephone line to pick from. If you choose a Panasonic
digital system (KX-TD308, KX-TD816-6 and KX-TD1232-6),
then you have your pick of any of the 7400 (digital
telephones)and 7700 series
telephones. We strongly recommend that
you purchase at least one display telephone. If you ever
need to program the system with a telephone, it will
be nearly impossible
without a
display phone. This is especially true of the KX-TA
625-5 and KX-TA1232 analog telephone systems. The
KX-TA624-5 and KX-TA1232 telephone systems can ONLY be
programmed by using a system telephone. The KX-TD system
can be programmed
by
using a system
phone, but are more commonly, and easily programmed with
a laptop or PC.
