Does anyone have any experience of using Skype for Business as their
primary phone system within their start-up?

My business is really taking off and I’m now bringing on board my first
members of staff. As part of this we’re kindly being housed by a
friend’s company, but no phones are being provided and I’m looking for
an effective and cheap system to use for our internal and mobile phone
network that we can take with us and scale in the future.

My plan is to provide staff with mobiles but use Skype for Business as
the primary switchboard service: i.e. SkypeIn will be the main business
telephone number, then use something like Pretty May Call Centre for
Skype (http://www.prettymay.net/callcenter/index.htm) or On State to
handle and divert calls internally. If I can provide staff with
skypephones then this will cut out a further portion of call costs and
allow skype to be the main calling system throughout, avoiding higher
rates.

Has anyone used Skype in this way and how have they found it? As a
reasonably frugal start-up I’d rather not have to invest in quite
expensive phone systems or contract packages (especially BT!) so
thought this might be a good way to keep costs low. Any thoughts – or
am I creating more work than it’s worth?

Thanks,