Guide
What replacing an analogue PABX involves
Replacing an analogue PABX means moving your calls onto a system that runs as software. Your numbers reach it over a SIP trunk, or the old lines through a gateway; staff answer on apps or IP phones; and analogue phones can often stay where they are. Done well, the old system keeps working until the new one has proved itself.
Signs it is time
Nobody can change it
It was set up years ago by someone who has moved on, and changing a menu means finding them.
Staff on their own mobiles
Clients have a salesperson's private number, and it leaves the business when they do.
Calls nobody can count
You suspect calls are being missed, and nothing can tell you how many, or when.
Only answerable at a desk
Anyone away from the office is away from the phone system too.
What changes, and what can stay
What changes
- The menu callers hear, the ring order and the office hours become settings on a screen that your own staff can change. Calls and routing.
- Everyone can answer on the app on their computer and mobile, on the business number, wherever they are. The apps.
- Missed calls, waiting times and busy hours become reports. Reporting.
What can stay
- Analogue phones and fax machines, connected through gateways on the wiring you already have. We check them one by one on the survey.
- Your old lines, through a gateway, if you want to keep them.
- Your numbers, one way or another. Whether a number can move depends on the operator that holds it; where it cannot, it can be forwarded, or its line kept on a gateway.
How the move runs
- Survey. Your lines, numbers, phones and wiring, and who answers what today, including the things nobody wrote down.
- Design. The menu, the queues and the hours, agreed with the people who run each team.
- Build and test, alongside the old system, with your staff trying it before the day.
- Switch, with the numbers switched over last, at a quiet time you choose.
- Settle in, with training, and the first days watched closely before the old system goes.
Mistakes worth avoiding
- Switching over on your busiest day of the week
- A menu that nobody rang before it went live
- Staff who first see the new phones on the morning they need them
- Forgetting what else is plugged into the old system: a fax machine, a door phone, an alarm line
- Forgetting where your numbers are printed: the website, the vans, the letterhead
Working out the budget? What a 3CX system costs.
See it on a real system
A 30-minute session on a live system, walked through in your own terms. No obligation.
We confirm your slot within 24 hours. Prefer to write? Email or message us.