Many small business owners in particular are always on the lookout for ways to improve their financial flexibility without sacrificing the quality of the work they do. As a consequence, many are now turning to VoIP services as a means of finding the best-possible business phone solution for their companies. This is a trend that began several years ago, but is expected to pick up some significant speed in short order as the quality of these services continues to improve.

Indeed, it's expected that by 2024, spending in the global VoIP services market will hit nearly $195 billion annually, according to the latest industry data from Persistence Market Research PVT LTD. That's up from just under $86 billion for the entirety of 2015. In all, VoIP's compound annual growth rate over the next eight years should come in at about 9.5 percent.

North America driving the uptick

It should come as no shock to business owners in the U.S. that they and their nearest neighbors are behind a healthy portion of these gains, the report said. In all, the North American market is expected to carry an 8.5 percent compound annual growth rate during this period, having already made up about 27 percent of the total global market share last year.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the trend toward employees bringing their own devices to the office is a big driver of adoption for businesses of all sizes in North America, the report said. However, even with these increases, North America still lags behind the Asia Pacific and European regions in terms of adoption, and Latin America is making up ground as well.

Making the right choice

When it comes to how owners or executives make the best possible decisions related to phone service for small business in particular, the answer isn't always as clear as they might hope, according to a report from Network World. Carefully considering a number of different options when it comes to VoIP for business is the best way to make an informed choice, but what is clear is that these services generally provide far more functionality than traditional phone lines.

The reason why VoIP might be a wise investment for smaller businesses in particular is that it can be seen as something of a one-time investment, the report said. While there really aren't too many different ways to use a standard phone, VoIP users can adopt new technologies as they become available without as much of a capital outlay, and potentially bring more types of communication into the fold as well (such as video conferencing across the same services). This also goes without mentioning the benefit to a bottom line of building VoIP into existing internet use rather than having a separate phone bill.

Moreover, using VoIP gives small businesses greater diagnostic power, the report said. Decision makers can examine how much data voice activity uses on a typical day in the office, or over the course of an entire month or year. That, in turn, helps them make more informed choices as trends emerge; if VoIP use has slowly but steadily been on the rise, companies can make plans to accommodate that trend before it becomes a bandwidth problem. Likewise, if they're not using VoIP as much as they once did, the decision to scale down connectivity can be a simple one as well.

The more smaller companies in particular can do to continually assess their business phone service needs and make well-informed decisions based on those findings, the better off their bottom line - and their communications capabilities - will be in the long run.