MANILA, Philippines – When people think about digital transformation, they rarely think about office telephones.
Over the past decade, businesses have steadily migrated email, accounting software, customer records, payroll, and collaboration tools to the cloud. Consumers, meanwhile, have largely abandoned landlines in favor of smartphones and messaging apps.
Yet one of the most customer-facing pieces of business infrastructure has remained surprisingly resistant to change: landline telephones.
Unlike email or productivity software, business telephone systems have long been tied to physical office infrastructure. Many companies invested heavily in private branch exchange (PBX) systems designed to last for years, leaving little incentive to replace hardware that still functioned, even as other workplace technologies rapidly moved online.
A PBX is a business telephone system that connects employees’ office phones while managing incoming and outgoing calls.
