How can financial advisors enhance their telephone communication systems to be more responsive, more flexible and, at the same time, less expensive?

The answer lies in the single biggest development in phone technology in the past 20 years: the introduction of the Internet protocol for voice communications. So, instead of conducting phone calls over traditional phone networks, “voice over Internet protocol” (VoIP) companies have worked out how to treat phone calls like Internet traffic, cutting them up into packets and sending them via the Internet, just like your emails. Only, unlike emails, phone calls cannot arrive a few seconds or minutes after they’re sent; rather, the packets carrying your voice must arrive in real time at the other end, so that the person you’re talking to can hear you properly.

Several companies have perfected VoIP and now offer services to small businesses. Holmdel, N.J.-based Vonage Holdings Corp. is one of them. Installing a small box next to your phone converts your dulcet tones into data packets and sends them whizzing off along the Internet.

But what are the benefits of using such a service, you ask?

First, you have flat-rate calling. Vonage’s services are cheap because the use the public Internet, which is free, for most of its traffic. Enhanced features are another reason to consider switching to VoIP. For instance, you can set up enhanced call-forwarding to send phone calls to any number and you can also set up a service known as SimulRing, so that when your most important client calls, all of your phones ring — everywhere.

There are alternatives. Luxembourg-based Skype Ltd. ’s namesake service has become the de facto long-distance VoIP calling option for thousands of small-business people — including the author of this article, who has cut his long-distance phone bill to $20 a month from $300 by using this service. Skype also gives you video conferencing, although it can be patchy.

Skype also features the ability to claim “SkypeIn” numbers, which essentially assigns a phone number to your Skype account and lets people call you from conventional phones. However, Canadian SkypeIn numbers are not yet available.

You can get around this by using a version of Skype for small businesses, which allows you to connect a Skype service to your existing office phone system. Skype Connect lets you make calls from your phone on your desk, PC or Mac via your conventional phone network. The service lets you pay for multiple Skype “channels” so that more than one person can call out via the Skype network at any one time.

Skype also supports integration with “session initiation protocol-enabled” phone switchboards, known as PBXs. SIP is poised to gain popularity as a communications mechanism. It is an industry-standard, vendor-independent technology designed to let people place Internet-based voice and video calls between any two SIP-enabled devices, whether they are phones or not. SIP-enabled devices could include the PBX that manages your phone system, smartphone, tablet computer or a laptop.

As SIP starts to gain traction, the technology opens up a wealth of opportunities in unified communications. The idea behind unified communications is that the computer network running your phone system gets smarter about where you are and what you’re doing, using a type of data known as “presence.”

Presence data is the kind of information that you send whenever you log into Instant Messenger on your computer. PD lets others know whether you’re there, and whether you’re busy or on the phone. Having that information accessible to your phone system helps others know how — or whether — you can be tracked down.

Other unified communications features include the ability to have voice mails forwarded to your email (sometimes even in text format) and to have faxes automatically delivered to your smartphone. Right now, these systems are still largely delivered piecemeal by different vendors, and are still relatively complex to put together.

Although sophisticated unified communications systems might still represent overkill for the majority of small financial advisory firms, there are still plenty of opportunities to hone the efficiency of your communications system. One simple but effective example is to have a Skype application on your smartphone and a “click to call” button on your website so that anyone who wants to talk about financial advice can be put straight through to your smartphone, regardless of where you are, without incurring any phone charges. Beware: you’ll want a decent wireless data plan to avoid being charged heavily for excess data usage.

We’re on the verge of a brave new world in phone communications — and the fun is only just starting. San Francisco-based Cisco Systems Inc. sells two million IP desktop phones each quarter — and the firm wants to video-enable all of them within two years. This means that you’ll be able to make a video call just by picking up the phone handset on your desk. IE