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The Five Biggest VoIP 'Gotchas': Page 4 of 5

Mixed messages: Because it is neither fish nor fowl -- and both data and voice at the same time -- it can be difficult to decide whether the IT department or the old telecommunications department should oversee the VoIP migration. Fleming says that the failure to tap expertise on both sides of the divide is one of the most common sources of deployment problems.

"It's a question of who's leading the charge," he says. "If it's the data guys, they might not get how it will be used. If it's lead by the voice team, they understand what the user community needs, but probably don't have the IP expertise. The reality is that you need a team representing both communities."

Deal with process: Because telephony is so critical to business processes, organizations have to be completely on top of their processes before committing to VoIP. That many aren't, is one of the biggest gotchas of VoIP. "Companies get burned because they don't do their homework," Pierce says. "They say that 'We don't have the budget to do a network assessment,' or 'We don't have the resources to really studying this before committing.' If that's the case, then they shouldn't be doing VoIP at all."

Moreover, understanding how your company works, and how the phones fit into the process, is key to understand how, and how quickly you should migrate the system. Do you need a whole range of computer-telephony integration (CTI) features, or do you just need phones? Can you use CTI in some areas but not in others? These are questions that Pierce says companies should ask but, more often than not, don't.

"The big question is how rapidly can a company migrate to VoIP," Piece says. "The answer is not that quickly. It takes time to plan."