The shirt you wear, the Christmas ornaments hanging on your tree, even the toys your kids are playing with—all of them are made in Asia. Sure they’re from a well known brand, whose main offices are either in the US and Europe, but the fact is that they’re made in anonymous off shore factories. They call it “outsourcing”, which when you think about it, is a miracle of logistics and coordination. You’re working with suppliers half around the world. There’s the designs, and the quality control, and the orders, and the packing, and the shipping—the tiny little details that, if not managed well, can easily compromise quality and overhead costs.

But coordination is never a problem with VoIP. Need to talk to the people in the China office? Just call. No worries over costs of long distance phone calls. No possibilities of miscommunication from emails or faxes. No delays in response time while waiting for them to spot your memo in their in box. Just call, as if you’re dialing the local number of Fred from Accounting four cubicles down from yours.

Take the bearded Santas hanging on your tree. Made in the Philippines, by an entrepreneur who supplies décor to major malls in the US. Months before you even begin thinking about Christmas (probably weeks after you finished Christmas) she’s on the phone with the purchasing departments discussing which of the designs she sent they want, and brainstorming on how to fine-tune them. The call takes almost an hour, about the length of a face-to-face meeting, but without the transcontinental plane trip. A conversation that could only occur through VoIP.

So the next time you decorate your home, choose a shirt, or watch your son play with his Sony Playstation, think of VOIP: the technology that helped put all that together.