You have enough to do with your daily activities for your small business. Yet, you know you need to research communications technologies to help your business connect with customers and give employees access to their phones from anywhere. Or maybe the number of Voice over IP (VoIP) and voice mail call forwarding solutions feels too overwhelming making it hard to figure out where to begin your research.

BCM 50 and HandsetsMore all-in-one telephony solutions are available to simplify things so you don't manage multiple solutions, providers and bills. For example, you want to route calls, set up a small call center and allow employees to stay connected when they're away from the office. VoIP solutions exist to combine all of these features so you don't have to look for a call center solution from one provider and voice mail call forwarding from another.

Most of the popular VoIP services don't offer anything beyond providing your employees with a way to make calls and stay connected. Several emerging VoIP solutions offer converged voice and data services for use over one network. One of those is the Business Communication Manager (BCM), which combines unified messaging, interactive voice response, multimedia call center, IP routing, firewall and wireless. BCM can also provide the following benefits for small businesses:

Stay connected from anywhere: Employees set up their phones to forward voice, text and fax messages to their cell phones. They can change their greetings and access their messages from any phone, handheld device or over the internet. Employees can make and receive calls as they were at the office without incurring charges.

Manage messages through one application: Solutions that integrate voice, fax and email messages on computers and handheld devices allow employees to manage them through one application like Microsoft Exchange or Outlook.

Route calls to the right department and people: An automated feature contains personalized greetings and menu options for directing calls. This saves time for customers and ensures customers reach the right people. Even callers can leave a message for an entire department or a group of users.

Secure your connection: Some solutions come with features that can secure your connection with authentication, firewall and virtual private networks (VPNs).

Create a call center: Route incoming calls to 10 employees to handle orders, reservations or support. Some can open two queues based on agent skills so callers go to the right agent and receive the best service.

These features were once only available to large businesses because of the cost and they were too much for the small business. BCM has flexibility so you can scale it and activate new features plus it can work with businesses with just three employees. These BCM50 case studies show how the product works for small businesses. Also, several models are available, so here's a comparison of BCM products to get an idea of the different types of solutions available.

Small businesses have options that cover all of their telephony needs without feature and product overkill.