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Tech Talk: Sports Stadium Saves with IP Phones

Elizabeth Wasserman — 2008-12-19T09:51:29-05:00

Ventura Sports Group, of Kansasville, Wis., owns three minor-league baseball teams and stadiums around the U.S. When the company built a new stadium for the Grand Prairie AirHogs in Texas last year, managing partner Roger W. Christoph tells IncTechnology.com that the decision to use IP phones allowed managers to increase functionality while allowing fans to order food and drink from stadium seats without missing a minute of the game.

Elizabeth Wasserman: What type of technological innovations do sports fans expect from new stadiums these days?

Roger Christoph: Customers going to minor league games now expect more. It used to be that a minor league ballpark was wooden benches, no suites, hot dogs, softdrinks and beer and popcorn. It was almost like going to the county fairgrounds. Today, they expect almost a micro major league park with suites, nice stadium seats and a variety of food and beverage concessions. When it comes to technology, they only expect a fancy score board and video board. But I think today's society expects more technology in everything they do. Whether they're in their car, in their office, or in a ballpark, people today are looking for and expecting more technology. With that in mind, I want to be able to provide those services. I want to be able to use tech as a business owner.

Wasserman: Tell us about the tech components in the Grand Prairie stadium.

Christoph: In the newest stadium that we built, we wanted to use the latest and greatest technologies to make our business more competitive and provide a better fan experience. It is unique in that there are several entertainment zones in the stadium that have nothing to do with baseball. It has a 17,000 square foot kids zone, for kids aged 2 to 14 with basketball hoops, soccer goals, climbing walls, jungle gyms, etc. It's a place where kids want to hang out when they come to the game with mom and dad.. Out in right field, there's a swimming pool and deck where you can watch the game. We also have IP phones from Cisco throughout, backed by software from IPcelerate – in suites and all over the stadium. We went for IP phones versus traditional phones because, why build two networks throughout the stadium for voice and data when you can build just one data network? The advantage of the IP phone system is that it's one network, one maintenance bill. Because it's connected to the network, we can push software to the phone. It was explained to me that some of the software I could put on the phone is similar to what is in my pocket on my cell phone or BlackBerry. I wanted to have the capability of doing something like that, taking a leap forward technologically.

Wasserman: How are you using the IP phones?

Christoph: What we did with the IP phones in the suites is we put four applications with icons on the display screen of the phones. One of them is a picture of a waitress. You touch that phone where the icon is and a waitress is notified and comes to your suite. The fan in the suite now doesn't have to have someone knocking on the door all the time to see if they want to order anything. For me, I was able to reduce the number of waitresses I had serving the suite holders. The waitresses were able to be more effective and more efficient and they like that because the more suites they can work, the bigger the tip. The suite holder also wins because they get better service.

The next application on the phone is a little microphone icon so when you're inside the suite, you can choose not to listen to the game or choose to listen to the game. By pushing this button, the PA announcer comes over the phone and you can listen to the game. But some people don't want to listen to the game. They want to have a meeting, or have it be quiet, or listen to the Yankees' game. There's also a food and beverage icon that lets you order right over the phone, instead of having a waitress come by. The fourth icon is really neat. It's the team roster icon. You hit that button and up pops a photograph of one of the players and a voice recording. "My name is John Doe. I'm from Pensacola, Fla. I'm 6'2" and weigh 210 pounds. My favorite place in the stadium is the sports bar because that is where I can get Guinness on tap."

Wasserman: What kind of results have you seen?

Christoph: What we're doing here is getting the fans acquainted with the players. It's important in that it creates a sense that they know the team, know the players. The second thing it does is it lets the fan know what's available in the stadium. Before I put any applications on the phone system, it just carried someone's voice. But just by making an incremental increase in spending, I've reduced my labor costs, increased my revenues by selling more food and beverages, increase my fan experience and increased my fan loyalty. What we're doing now is considering putting an ad or two on the phone displays -- from Budweiser, Coca-cola, or a local Chevrolet dealer. So we'll actually get paid to have their ads on that phone.

Wasserman: Do you also use the IP phones to run your business?

Christoph: We also have the same phone system, just a different display, in our offices. But we have different applications. If the general manager wants to call a meeting of sales staff, he hits one icon and notifies all the sales people. He doesn't have to send an e-mail. If he wants to record a phone call, he can be half way through the phone call, and hit one button and the entire phone call is recorded. We can send out text messages to alert our season ticket holders and our e-mail database that tonight is "Thirsty Thursday," our dollar beer night. The reason I went with the IP phone is that they're smart devices. I can put software on them, and these phones -- in addition to carrying voice and taking voice mail -- generate more revenue, cut my expenses, make a unique fan experience and help with promotion and marketing. The incremental cost to do that is pennies.

I made the decision to invest in a smarter network with smarter phones. That combination is generating revenue for me, and giving my fans a great experience.

Wi-Fi in the Sky: Are We There Yet?

Marc Saltzman — 2008-12-19T09:45:15-05:00

If you’re one of the millions of business travelers who fly the friendly skies, be prepared to use your laptop for a lot more than just playing Windows Solitaire to pass the time.

Many domestic airlines -- including American, Delta, US Airways, Virgin America, JetBlue Airways, and Air Canada -- have begun to offer Wi-Fi on select flights, allowing laptop- or smartphone-toting passengers to wirelessly access the Internet while in their seat.

Now you can surf the Web, read e-mail, instant message colleagues, stream media, and downloads files -- all that you can do in the office -- at 30,000 feet.

There have been failed attempts to introduce high-speed Internet access on commercial airlines in the past, such as Connexion by Boeing’s satellite-based technology on Scandinavian Airlines, Lufthansa, China Airlines, Korean Ai,r and Singapore Airlines. But it appears this new round of Wi-Fi service is here to stay.

American Airlines, for example, was the first U.S. airline to implement AirCell’s Gogo high-speed broadband connectivity for $12.95 per flight. The service is currently available on American’s Boeing 767-200 aircraft that primarily flies transcontinental routes between New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami. Each Gogo session includes full Internet, virtual private network (VPN), and e-mail access.

“We understand that broadband connectivity is important to our business customers and others who want to use their PDAs and laptops for real-time, in-flight broadband communications,” said Dan Garton, American’s executive vice president of marketing, in a company statement. “This is part of our continuing effort to enhance the travel experience for our customers and meet their evolving needs.”

Pros of in-flight Wi-Fi

“Wi-Fi a mile-high is long overdue,” believes Steve Hilton, vice president of enterprise and small and mid-sized business research at the Yankee Group, a Boston, Mass.-based market research firm. “I can't think of anything more appealing than actually having Internet connectivity while flying rather than sipping a $5 glass of over-oaky domestic Chardonnay.”

Hilton says many traveling businesspersons get their best work done on airplanes because of the lack of distractions, so “having an Internet service handy would be valuable.”

This is also true for those who prefer “cloud computing,” by working on files remotely, say, in an online-only program like Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

Andy Walker, executive producer of Butterscotch.com, a technology-focused video and downloads website, agrees with Hilton on how online access can increase productivity. “Wi-Fi in the sky is great because a flight is often the only real downtime time a busy person gets. Therefore it’s a great opportunity to catch up on e-mail or any other work that requires an Internet connection.”

“I have always wanted Wi-Fi en route, so I am very excited about this trend,” adds Walker.

Cons of surfing while you fly

Similar to what the BlackBerry has done to promote an on-demand 24/7 work culture, the downsides to Internet access on airplanes include that your boss can e-mail you while you’re relaxing between transcontinental meetings, conferences, or trade shows.

“So you can’t quite escape work, or the world,” concedes Walker. “There is also something to be said for creating a few hours of, shall I say, dis-connectivity, for your mental health,” he adds. “I always let myself get mesmerized by the bubbles in my soda water on a flight and ponder the universe -- the lure of Wi-Fi is going to make that option harder to do given the temptation of being connected again,” says Walker.

Security can also be an issue, says Hilton. “That 900 kilometer an hour metal tube in the sky is filled with potential hackers with nothing to do except poke around your files.” “A good firewall and VPN would be a must for me if I'm doing company work on an airplane,” Hilton adds.

After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, there have been concerns that online connectivity in the skies is that it could facilitate communication between terrorists who might be planning or coordinating an attack. But that doesn't seem to have thwarted the roll out of Wi-Fi in the sky.

But some privacy concerns remain. What if the passenger besides you wanted to use a webcam to chat with his/her spouse via Skype? Think about it: Do you want to hear (and see) their conversation?

Tech Talk: Marshmallow Maker Unifies Communications

Elizabeth Wasserman — 2008-10-01T15:45:14-05:00

To Your Heart's Content, of Sherman Oaks, Calif., maker of Plush Puffs Gourmet Marshmallows, has been growing quickly in the four years since launching. Vice President Justin Leavens tells IncTechnology.com that unified communications helped the business better channel customer contacts and unify a company that is primarily staffed by part-timers who may need the flexibility to work from home.

Elizabeth Wasserman: Tell us a little about how you started marketing gourmet marshmallows.

Justin Leavens: We started four years ago making gourmet marshmallows. We did it first on a small scale and sold to local coffee shops and friends and family and then we started to expand, selling to specialty food stores and coffee shops all over the U.S. and some international locations. We have two full-time employees and four part-time office staff to do sales and office support. But we've been growing a lot in the past few years.

Wasserman: How have your technology needs changed as the business has grown?

Leavens: When we started, the volume of orders was low enough that we could almost be paper based and use QuickBooks for the accounting. We knew who our customers were and we were doing a lot of hand delivering so it was very straight forward. As we started to do some marketing and expand, we obviously had a lot more information to deal with -- a lot more customers, a lot more leads to follow up on. We were doing trade shows. Just the volume of work increased. Being a small business with a small office, we had to find ways to make our business as flexible as possible in order to keep growing. One of the things we did was build customer business software that would work either from within our office or our employees' homes. We also needed a phone system that would support that same kind of organization.

Wasserman: What type of phone system did you choose?

Leavens: We wanted a phone system that presented our customers with a unified look at our company. Because we had part time people we wanted to make sure that when a customer called up, they would always be able to get in touch with somebody, whether it was the person they originally called or not. The people who answered the phones may not be the ones working in the office that day. We thought about going the route of using cell phones and individual numbers. But it didn't make sense to us in terms of making sure the customer got the assistance they needed.

I did a little research on phone services. I had used a Vonage line in the past. I knew that VoIP was a realistic technology to use. But I wanted something more. I wanted a system that could help us manage our inbound calls to multiple locations. I found RingCentral and gave them a try. They had a 30-day test at the time. I really liked the way that I was able to set up our organization fairly quickly and easily online. I was able to add extensions for various functions, add informational mailboxes that had our company address, fax number, instructions -- things our customers could get even if they called us off hours.

Wasserman: Many small businesses want to appear bigger than they are, is that what you were trying to do?

Leavens: What we wanted to look like was professional because we're a business. We're a small business but we want to work with big businesses. Big businesses are not going to tolerate not being able to get in touch with someone.

Wasserman: How does it work?

Leavens: You can do the recording online or over the phone. Essentially what it let me do was set up individual extensions and voice mail boxes for the people we wanted to have separate voice mails. Most importantly, it less us set up the incoming call behavior so that during the work day, someone who needs to get in touch with somebody as soon as possible was most likely to get their call answered. Someone who hits a voice tree and hits zero can have that call ring simultaneously at multiple locations so that anybody who might be available to answer that call could grab it and make sure that call got answered.

Customer service is important to growth and it's important to us.

Tips for Choosing VoIP and Messaging Systems

Jodi Mardesich — 2008-06-25T10:53:34-05:00

As businesses recognize the benefits of delivering voice services using Internet telephony, they need to understand their options for procuring and deploying voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), including each method’s relative strengths and weaknesses.

“IP Telephony technology is not only changing the way in which voice is transported across a network, but also the means by which is it purchased, delivered to, and accessed by end users,” says Rich Costello, an analyst with Gartner. Companies have three options involving a private branch exchange (PBX), which connect a business' phones internally and also with the public switched telephone network:

Purchased IP PBX, which involves buying all the equipment and software and managing the system on its own.
Managed IP PBX, where the company purchases the equipment but hires an outside firm to manage it for them.
And hosted IP PBX, where the company pays an outside firm to host and manage the system.

More than half of companies will opt for an outside firm to at least manage their VoIP systems, according to Gartner. By 2011, Gartner believes that 40 percent of companies will purchase and manage their own VoIP systems, while 40 percent will purchase their own but hire someone else to manage the system for them. The remaining 20 percent of companies will hire an outside firm to host -- and manage --their IP telephony services.

Purchasing an IP PBX system

Cost is a key driver in any technology decision. Companies can purchase or lease an IP PBX from a PBX vendor, and choose voice and Internet services from a separate vendor. Procuring the equipment -- including the PBX and IP handsets -- and services -- such as telephony and Internet access -- separately allows the company to shop for the best price, but companies should anticipate ongoing costs, such as PBX maintenance fees and software updates, says Guy Fardone, chief operating officer of Evolve IP, which offers hosted and managed telephony services.

On the negative side, dealing with multiple vendors may complicate support and maintenance. Other issues to consider: a customer-owned and operated system may present a single point of failure. Also, an IP PBX is a swiftly depreciating asset, which may add to the total cost of ownership, Fardone says.

Companies also need to determine if anyone within the organization has the skills to manage such a system. “IP telephony requires support personnel with a ‘converged skill set’ that many organizations lack in-house,” Costello says.

If deciding on a purchased IP PBX installation, Fardone advises companies to make sure their network is prepared and ready, and choose vendors who can train them.

Hiring an outside firm to manage your IP PBX

According to Gartner, 60 percent of companies will outsource management of their systems to an outside firm. “Many companies are considering outsourcing that skill set from a service provider in the form of managed or hosted services,” says Gartner’s Costello.

In a managed IP PBX scenario, a company would lease equipment for a monthly fee. “In this scenario, the customer pays a monthly fee for an on-stie PBX and handsets from a service provider rather than the standard lease/buy/maintenance option,” Fardone says. Voice and Internet services may or may not be bundled in.

Managed IP PBXes may make more sense for large, single location businesses with hundreds or thousands of employees. However, they are susceptible to the same problems of a standard premises-based (purchased) IP PBX. “In a power outage, or if the T1 line goes down, not only do you lose your ability to make phone calls, you can’t even get voice mail,” Fardone says.

Opting for hosted IP PBX services

While it’s the least chosen option -- only 20 percent of businesses will elect a hosted IP PBX system by 2011 -- the market is posed for exponential growth. According to Gartner, communications as a service (hosted IP telephony) will grow from a $250 million a year industry to $2.5 billion by 2011. A big part of that number will be small and mid-sized business, which may not want to spend $50,000 on a new phone system, Fardone says. “They recognize the benefits and would be more willing to try this in a service provider format.”

Hosted systems enable small and mid-sized businesses to augment their staff with the expertise of the service provider, and get the benefits of the technology and the service provider’s expertise without having to buy and physically maintain the infrastructure.

How the options stack up

Fardone lays it out: for a small business with 50 employees to buy its own PBX, the cost would be about $50,000. Internet and local and long distance are an additional $2,000 per month. Add to that the cost of employing staff or hiring a consultant who knows the system whenever they need something changed or improved. “Companies should look at the total network picture,” Fardone says. “There are a lot of people they need to pay, not just once, but ongoing.”

With a hosted system, the service provider includes all those services and the physical systems for one price. Companies would have one provider to deal with, and less equipment on site.

In addition, there are uptime benefits. In purchased and managed IP PBX scenarios, if a line goes down, employees can’t make calls or even get voice mail. However, with hosted IP telephony, they can. “It’s in the network, not on the premise,” Fardone says.

Advantages to hosted IP services also include predictable monthly hardware and service fees, capital avoidance, limited local hardware and points of failure, and fewer demands on already taxed IT staff. Disadvantages may include quality of service. Some providers provide dedicated access and some do not. “Offices with sufficient size can utilize dedicated leased lines to provide voice, data, and PBX services, ensuring end-to-end quality of service,” Fardone says. However, small companies or remote offices must use existing broadband connections, where quality of service can be managed, but not assured.

Each company has unique requirements that they may also need to take into account before deciding how to implement IP telephony, using these points as a guide. Organizations should only consider service providers that can demonstrate a clearly defined product, technology and support road map for IP telephony.

The Skinny on Wi-Fi-Enabled Smartphones

Marc Saltzman — 2008-05-27T15:03:39-05:00

Over the past five years mobile computer users have benefited -- nay, relied upon -- wireless high-speed connectivity in the home, office, and various “hotspots” around the globe be it your local coffee house or an airport lounge in Moscow.

Now a standard feature even among entry-level laptops, wireless Internet or Wi-Fi (802.11) frees the computer user to work where and when they want, no longer restrained by a cord and a wall to access the Internet at broadband speeds.

Get ready for the second major Wi-Fi wave, as the connectivity is beginning to appear in smartphones. This feature is already built into popular handsets including Apple’s iPhone, Nokia’s N95, and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry 8120, 8320, and 8820.

Better for business

Whether they’re used in a private space (such as a home or office) or commercial location (like a coffee shop or airport), Wi-Fi-capable smartphones are capable of downloading data at much higher speeds than what your cell phone provider is offering, be it global system for mobile communications (GSM) or code division multiple access (CDMA) connectivity.

Sure, this is handy from a consumer perspective, such as quick music downloads to your phone or smoother video streaming, but consider the work-related advantages to accessing data faster and more reliably.

“Wi-Fi is faster than most cellular data connections, even 3G, so bandwidth intensive things such as web browsing and downloads are a lot faster,” says Gary Chen, senior analyst for small and medium enterprise IT infrastructure and applications at the Yankee Group, a Boston-based technology research firm.

Not only is Wi-Fi faster but also cheaper, adds Ken Dulaney, vice president of mobile computing at the Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner, a research and consulting group. “If the organization is on a fixed price per minute, avoiding cellular charges can save money with Wi-Fi.”

Chen agrees: “If you don't have an unlimited data plan and are charged by the kilobyte, then using Wi-Fi can help save on your data bill for sure.”

Voice service, too

Some GSM-based carriers -- such as O2 in the U.K., T-Mobile in the U.S. and Rogers Wireless in Canada -- are letting users of Wi-Fi phones use voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) technology when in a wireless network.

Often referred to as Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA), these supported handsets can seamlessly switch from a GSM call to Wi-Fi, or vice-versa, without dropping the call. Though this service usually costs a few dollars a month, they offer unlimited Wi-Fi access, therefore a UMA call doesn’t eat away at a customer’s monthly airtime minutes. Call quality is also better over Wi-Fi. It can be used in spots without good cell reception (such as a high-rise office tower or basement office). And Wi-Fi takes less of a toll on the phone’s battery compared to GSM.

Not necessarily trouble for cell providers

When asked if UMA could be the beginning of the end for cell phone providers, Delaney and Chen agree it’s not likely.

“No one can cover the large swaths of territory covered by cellular other than cellular,” says Delaney. “There are too many Wi-Fi operators and Wi-Fi is unlicensed meaning that you cannot deliver quality of service guarantees because no one party owns the spectrum.”

“Wi-Fi won't end the need for cell providers,” predicts Chen. “Wi-Fi is a local area technology and was not designed for the wide geographical coverage of cellular.” Chen says that devices will be smart and choose the best connection it can. That means Wi-Fi when you are at fixed locations like home or office or happen to be near a hotspot, and cell for the rest, he says.

To Offer Wi-Fi or Not to Offer Wi-Fi?

Minda Zetlin — 2008-04-28T10:48:32-05:00

Steve Lundin has given up on wireless.

Lundin is the founder of the public relations firm BIGfrontier Communications Group (his actual title is "Chief Hunter and Gatherer"). BIGfrontier has many high-tech clients and other visitors who routinely arrive, pop open their laptops, and expect to access the wireless Internet. And, at one time, they could. "We had an open wireless network," Lundin says.

Then one day he read a newspaper article about another local firm offering an open wireless network. In the article, a hacker easily found the signal from outside the building and broke into the company's network. Ironically, the company was Lundin's former employer.

Concerned that BIGfrontier might be similarly vulnerable, he sought advice from the company's tech consultant, who suggested a WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) pass code as a security measure. But entering the pass code presented problems for some visitors. "Half the guests could log in using the pass code," Lundin says. "The other half weren't able to override the settings on their computers."

Lundin asked the IT consultant for a different solution, so he provided USB flash drives with the pass code preloaded. This worked better, but the consultant worried that they didn't provide enough security since, for one thing, visitors would leave with the pass code stored on their hard drives.

The next solution was a somewhat costly set of custom-made USB wireless antennas, with the pass code already stored in them. The idea was that visitors could simply plug them in, and go directly online. When representatives from a high-tech security firm arrived for their kickoff meeting, Lundin proudly handed out his new antennas. The visitors plugged them in -- but none of them could go online. As they fiddled, Lundin shot an e-mail to the IT consultant, who instructed him to hand out installation disks.

"So now, in the middle of the kickoff meeting, they're messing around with these disks," Lundin recalls. "The CEO of the client company said, 'This is the worst security I've ever seen! Don't you have a cable?' And so we ran five cables to their five laptops and got everyone online."

Since that day, he says, "We're basically using cables for guests."

Providing wireless Internet for guests is a necessity

This solution may work for BIGfrontier since the company only hosts small groups and everyone's using laptops (as opposed to cameras, PDAs, or other devices which might not have an Ethernet port). But for most businesses, providing wireless Internet to visitors is a necessity, not an option. And, as Lundin's story illustrates, doing so can come with complications and security concerns.

What's a small company to do? Here are some possible alternatives:

Have two wireless networks, a closed one for employees and an open one for guests. This is a common practice for businesses like coffee shops and hotels that offer wireless access to customers. "A VLAN (virtual local area network) can partition a network for different users and different applications," says Kelly Davis-Felner, senior manager at the Wi-Fi Alliance, a global trade association which operates a testing and certification for Wi-Fi devices and services. Users will see two networks, one open, one locked, when scanning for connections. With a VLAN partition, the open network can be completely isolated from your company's network, meaning visitors won't be able to see secret information, and any viruses or other malware that might be undetected on their devices won't affect your network.
Require certification and/or authentication. The WPA key that frustrated Lundin is one way to accomplish this. If you go this route, Davis-Felner advises using WPA2, the most recent set of protocols for Wi-Fi certification. But there are other options as well. "We have a solution that allows guests themselves to create their own usernames," says Sean Convery, CTO of Identity Engines. To ensure authentication, the user must enter a mobile phone number to which the password is sent. "If something happens that you don't like, you have a permanent record of exactly who was on the network," Convery notes.
Make users agree to terms of service (TOS). "Most popular firewalls have a captive portal option, or there are several open source products that provide that," Convery says. A captive portal (again, common in hotels and coffee shops) forcibly redirects users' browsers to a splash page with a welcome message and a button to click if they agree to abide by rules as to how the network will be used, for instance, not to distribute spam. If you have visitors you don't know well using the network, a TOS may be worthwhile precaution.
Consider Wi-Fi protected setup. Usernames, passwords, and encryption keys can work well for visitors logging on to the network via a laptop or PDA. But what about a visitor using a wireless-enabled device such as a camera, that doesn't have a keyboard? To address this situation, the Wi-Fi Alliance's new protocol, Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS), allows users to be authenticated by pressing a button on the device at the same time as an employee presses a similar button on the access point. The program is new so not all devices have the button built into them yet, although Davis-Felner says more and more do.

Whatever you do, Convery advises, do make sure visitors have some way to get online. "People will want to connect to the Internet, and they're going to find a way to do it," he says. "They may start plugging into open jacks in the wall," he says. "So don't try to prevent it. You'll be fighting an uphill battle."

Money for Nothing: Audit Your Telco Bills

Renee Oricchio — 2008-04-28T10:19:04-05:00

Customers often complain about the complexity of their phone plans. Apparently, many of them are so complex that the carriers themselves can’t even keep them straight; especially when it comes to billing. Estimates vary, but the Federal Communications Commission and most independent research groups that monitor the telecom industry agree that conservatively around 30 percent of all bills have errors.

Here’s just one way that happens.

April 2008 was a bad month for Sprint, as it consolidated two billing systems into one system. It was even worse for the thousands of customers nationwide that got bills wildly off their normal balances, some topping more than $10,000. Sprint spokeswoman, Kathleen Dunleavy, explained to reporters at the time, “The problem stemmed from decimal places misaligned by two places during the consolidation process.”

As bad as that sounds, the good news is that the mistakes were so grandiose and widespread that Sprint’s errors made immediate headlines and were, therefore, immediately corrected.

It usually doesn’t happen that way and that’s why many small and mid-sized businesses, are finding it worthwhile to hire an outside telecom expense management consultant to audit their invoices and often overhaul the way the accounts were set up in the first place. “A lot of companies are overpaying by at least five to ten percent based on billing errors alone -- like paying for lines that were cancelled and never removed from the account,” says James Browning, a vice president of research at Gartner.

$93,000 in savings and counting

Mygrant Glass, a wholesale auto glass distributor based in Hayward, Calif., is a third-generation mid-sized business operating nationwide with some 60 locations. The next time a rock flies up off the highway and gives you a starburst crack in your front window, there’s a fair chance Mygrant Glass will be the one to supply you with a new windshield so that you’ll have a clear view of the road again.

While their stock and trade auto glass may be as clear as crystal, internally the company has struggled with not-so-clear telecommunication bills. “With 60 locations, Mygrant had over 150 telecom invoices going to accounts payable each month and no one was looking at them,” says Tom Buckle, founder of Mygrotel, a voice and Internet expense management group based in Danbury, Conn. that was hired by Mygrant Glass to take over the bills.

Buckle points to his client, Mygrant Glass, as a shining example of what his group can do to save businesses big bucks off those Byzantine bills. “Right off the top, we saved them $60,000 by migrating them from a frame network to a web-based network. Add to that, we immediately recovered $33,000 in mistakes in over billing,” says Buckle.

That adds up to $93,000 in immediate savings and that doesn’t include the ongoing savings by hiring someone like Buckle to baby sit those invoices on a regular basis.

Some work on commission

Buckle’s group, Mygrotel, is atypical in the way they bill their clients. They charge by a more traditional service contract. “Most of these companies work on commission alone. They typically keep 20 percent of the savings they recover,” says Browning.

Whether a business owner wants to task out billing oversight to an inside staffer or an outside consultant, both Browning and Buckle suggest taking the following steps to thwart inflated invoicing:

Look at the bill. It’s so simple, but it’s the most basic and biggest mistake organizations make. Mygrant Glass is a classic example of how this happens with its 150 invoices going into one accounting department that isn’t equipped to pour over what adds up to hundreds of pages -- including thousands of itemized charges -- each month. “It’s why more businesses are handing it off to an outside company. They just don’t have the time or expertise to go over them with a fine tooth comb. There are a lot of boutique firms out there doing this. They know what to look for and where to find the mistakes,” says Browning.
Switch to Internet protocol (IP). “You’re going to save a lot by just switching from a WAN to IP. It’s one of the first things we did with Mygrant. Simplify the lines,” says Buckle. And when it’s done, businesses should make sure they cancel those old accounts in writing. Be ready to fight back if it takes a few months to get the charges dropped off the bill.
Consolidate plans. This usually isn’t a problem with the company phone lines. But more employees are increasingly using their wireless company phones as their main point of contact. “Most small to midsize businesses can save a minimum of 15 percent on its wireless bills if they standardize their plans with one provider and buy in volume,” says Browning.
Centralize billing. Whether it’s the accounts receivable department or an outside consultant, no mistakes will be uncovered if they’re buried in an expense report. Set up accounts to bill directly to the company.

Telecom expense management

When companies hear stories about error rates in billing, it’s not a hard sell to get them to look more closely at their invoices. A harder sell is that perhaps someone on the outside should do it instead. “A lot of small to mid-sizde companies make the mistake of using outside help one time. It needs to be ongoing,” says Browning.

Buckle points out just paying the bills are costly, without taking on the responsibility of auditing the fine print. “Some companies pay $20 just to pay an invoice. Someone’s got to open it, approve it and pay it. A lot of companies don’t even know we’re out there. It’s very hard to evangelize what we do,” says Buckle.

With immediate savings perhaps as high as in the tens of thousands, once converted very few are likely to lose their faith however.

Wireless War: All-You-Can-Talk Pricing

Michelle V. Rafter — 2008-04-25T15:55:17-05:00

How low will they go?

Wireless phone companies are in the middle of a price war that’s seen one after another announce a flat rate of $99 a month for unlimited calls inside the United States. Verizon kicked things off in February and AT&T and T-Mobile immediately followed. Soon after, Spring/Nextel rolled out two plans, including an even-cheaper $89 a monthly flat rate for bare bones domestic service.

Lower prices are good news for some small companies that couldn’t do business without their mobile phones. But it won’t make a big difference to others whose existing contracts include a shared pool of minutes that averages out to less than $99 a month per employee, according to one telephone industry consultant.

Either way, cut-rate unlimited calling plans are a sign of things to come, consultants and small business owners say. Once considered a business luxury, all-you-can-talk wireless voice service is quickly becoming a commodity. As prices drop, wireless carriers are coming up with new services to keep users from jumping ship - and revenues rolling in, sources say.

“They won’t keep customers if they focus on the cell phone as just a voice service,” says Anders Mikkelsen, managing director at Berlin Pacific, a New York City consultant that helps small and mid-sized companies pick the right phone plans. “They all have to have a new spin on what mobile is all about. It’s about communications, not just voice.”

Same price, different services

Though prices are the same, wireless carriers’ $99 a month unlimited calling plans differ slightly in what’s offered:

Verizon -- Includes unlimited voice, Internet access and Web-based e-mail
AT&T -- Includes unlimited voice calls
T-Mobile -- Includes unlimited voice, text messaging and IM
Sprint/Nextel -- Includes unlimited voice, data, text, email, Internet access, TV and music services and GPS. A stripped down $89 a month plan covers only unlimited voice and text messaging.

Tim Bates, with Bates Strategy Group, a Boulder, Colo., technology marketing consultant, recently switched two wireless phones to AT&T’s new $99 a monthly unlimited calling plan. “We live on our phones,” Bates says. “With a predictable bill, long calls and conference calls are not something we need to bill added charges for.” International calls are still an issue, but Bates says he uses Skype, the voice over Internet service, for those.

Flat-rate plans increasingly appealing

Cheaper rates for unlimited monthly wireless phone calls also sound good to Raza Imam, managing partner of Adaptive Solutions Inc., a five-year-old contract software developer in Chicago. Imam is on his cell phone an hour or two a day talking to a business partner and 15-person development team in Pakistan and to customers around the world. One month a few years back his mobile phone bill hit $900. “That was ugly,” Imam says. “It was a contract negotiation with a client, there was a lot of back and forth. We never want to do that again.”

When Imam’s current contract expires this month, he’ll consider moving to one of the new flat rate plans. Which one will depend on what his colleagues want, but whatever it is, it’ll have to include more than basic voice service. “That’s not the end all, be all,” he says. “The value-added services will tip the scale for me.” One new feature that’s caught his eye: T-Mobile’s Hotspot@Home, which for an extra $10 a month lets customers send and receive unlimited calls nationwide over a home Wi-Fi Internet connection. “You can make calls and it doesn’t subtract them from your pool of minutes. That’s an attractive feature for me,” he says.

Tech Talk: Wireless Office Better Serves Clients

Elizabeth Wasserman — 2008-03-31T10:17:15-05:00

Moore Consulting Group was founded in 1994 as a one-person marketing business located in a one-room office. During the past 14 years, the company has expanded to a 20-person staff that now occupies an 8,000 square foot office building in Tallahassee, Fla. Richard Moore, chief operating officer of the business, tells IncTechnology.com how setting up a wireless office has helped the firm service customers.

Elizabeth Wasserman: Why did you decide to go wireless in your office?

Richard Moore: We’re not totally wireless yet. We are a combination of hardwire and wireless. As we continue to move from towers to laptops, we’ve become more wireless as we go along. Part of the need to go wireless is that clients come in and want to use their laptops. We give them a source to tap into the Internet and then into their servers by way of a 3Com switch. We use it primarily to have something for our clients to be able to use when they came in. What we’re finding is that because of the strength of the wireless switch it allows us to have more freedom over where we can work – not only within the office but even outside of the office. Adjacent to the building, we built a covered back deck for when it’s nice out and people need a break. They can take their laptop out there. It’s a nice little wooded area and the wireless reaches all the way out there. We also have some of our children who come in. For instance, my son will come in after high school and will want to work out of the backroom. He has a notebook that can wirelessly tap into our server. And for our clients who come into our conference room and need that service, too. It started out meeting that need and now it’s kind of warped into meeting many needs.

Wasserman: How did you go about setting it up?

Moore: Two years ago, the way we really started is we tried to initially set up our own wireless network with retail type devices. We went to Circuit City, CompUSA, and tried three or four brands. It was not very satisfactory at all. They were not very strong. They’re not designed for commercial use and certainly not designed for an 8,000 square foot building. We needed something that was more robust than we could get from retail side. At that time, our outside tech support came in and recommended we use a 3Com switch. We used them to install it. It was pretty quick. I don’t think we realized any noticeable downtime at all. It installed very quickly, very easily. They set up the wireless side with security passwords and all late one afternoon when basically everyone was ready to go home and we were up and running the next day.

Wasserman: What are you able to do now that you couldn’t do before?

Moore: We’ve had several results. One of the things that really limited us was the graphic design we had being produced in the office. These are very big files. They used to totally jam up when ever someone wanted to e-mail those files around. The 1GB switch has allowed us to send those files very fast. We are finding we are using the wireless portion of it more and more. We’re looking to be more mobile. In the equipment we now purchase, we’re looking at laptops because we do a lot of traveling. The clients love it. Our conference room is in high demand from several of our clients. They can come in here with their boards and everyone has a laptop and everyone can connect. One of the things we have is the ability to have guests sign on from one password and staff signs on with another password. So we still maintain that security for our staff and our guests using it also through our server. It will also enable us to do voice over internet protocol. We’re not doing this now but it may be something we want to grow into.

Message Pending: Unified Communications

Minda Zetlin — 2008-03-27T12:17:35-05:00

For Sunny Trinh and his colleagues at 9 Fish Surfboards, in Santa Monica, Calif., a day at the beach qualifies as product research. The problem is, with four co-owners and two minority partners, sometimes everyone’s out riding the waves. “We sort of have office hours,” Trinh says. “But being surfers, sometimes none of us are in the office.” And when customers called with orders or questions, there was no one to pick up the phone.

Trinh went searching for solutions online, and wound up selecting RingCentral, a virtual phone system with several key features to help 9 Fish run its business more efficiently. “Now, when someone calls our 877 number, it gets forwarded to several cell phones,” he says. “Whoever’s available can answer.”

In addition, Trinh says, “We can get voicemails e-mailed to us. Another nice feature is Internet fax: we can get faxes anywhere without worrying about being near a fax machine, and send Word or Acrobat documents as faxes direct from our computers.” Even better, he says, incoming faxes arrive as PDF documents, which the surfers can read directly on their cell phones, and easily forward to anyone else who needs them.

Bringing it all together

For small companies like 9 Fish, outsourced unified communications systems such as RingCentral can help make a frequently empty office run like a big one where there’s always staff on hand and the fax machine is always humming.

And that’s just the beginning. “Unified communications is an attempt to take all these different communications we use -- voice, e-mail, instant message, video mail, conferencing and videoconferencing, and make them easier to understand and easier to work with,” says Greg Brashier, vice president of marketing at VirtualPBX, a unified communications provider. So far, he says, unified communications technology has tended to center around phone service, as RingCentral and VirtualPBX do, or around e-mail, as Microsoft’s Unified Communications efforts do. In time, he believes the channels will completely converge.

In the meanwhile, the best strategy is to evaluate which of unified communications’ capabilities can contribute the most to your business and select accordingly. Here are some of the most powerful features:

1. Find you wherever you are. Unified communications systems can try several numbers, simultaneously, or one after another. That means whether you’re in your office, your living room, or out somewhere with a cell phone, the call will reach you.

2. Find whoever is available. A phone call can go out to a group of people simultaneously, as it does for 9 Fish. Or it can work in a queue. “Suppose you have a sales department with five people: a vice president, two trainees and two really good sellers,” Brashier says. “You can set up the system to try whichever of them is available, not on the phone, not out of the office and not away from their desks, in the order that you select, for instance the two top sellers, then the interns, then the VP.”

3. Make sure you get the message. If you don’t answer any of your various phones or cell phone, a good unified communications system will route the call to one central voicemail where you can easily retrieve it. And it will give you a variety of options for doing so: by e-mail or a text message, via a website, or by the traditional method of phoning in and listening. “You do it the way you want,” Brashier says.

4. Manage faxes from your computer, cell phone or handheld. If you send and receive a lot of faxes, unified communications can simplify your work by routing the faxes to and from your computer, cell phone or handheld device, without ever needing to bother with a fax machine. You can also post the fax on the Web as a PDF document, for others to access as they need.

5. Integrate with other applications. Right now, Brashier says, VirtualPBX integrates with an iGoogle gadget that will display the number of the person calling when your phone rings. And the company plans other integrations as well. “We’re working on an interface that will automatically open a CRM package when the phone rings, identify the caller and open his or her account history,” Brashier says. Whoever answers the call will do so with the relevant information already displayed.

All for one and one for all

Do all companies need unified communications systems? No, and if all you really want is a phone system, there are more affordable ways to get one, Brashier notes. “If you have, say, 100 people in one location, it’s more cost-effective in the long run to buy a hardware PBX, and keep faxes and e-mails separate,” he says. “Although, that will change as hosted VoIP systems develop.”

In the meantime, Trinh advises carefully evaluating communications needs before you buy. “Cash flow is critical for most small companies, so don’t waste money on features you don’t need,” he says. In his case, he adds, the system 9 Fish chose precisely fits their needs. “We use most of the features we have available, and the cost is quite reasonable,” he says.

And, it lets 9 Fish’s owners run their business exactly the way they want to. “Now we can get an order and take care of it while we’re at the beach. We can run our business from the beach.” That makes all the difference, he says. After all, wanting to stay surfers was what inspired them to start 9 Fish in the first place.

SIDEBAR: Unified Communications Providers:

Here are some of the unified communications providers available today:

RingCentral -- This affordable solution offers a wide range of features, including fax-back, real-time call control, click-to-call, and many others.

Virtual PBX -- Offers many business-directed features, such as queuing and routing based on skills, dynamic operator assignment (the “operator” can be rotated within a group of people) and conferencing.

Microsoft Unified Communications -- Microsoft combines Office Communications Server, Office Live Communicator, Exchange Server and Office Live Meeting to create a unified communications system that includes VoIP but centers around Exchange.

GrandCentral -- Google acquired this popular unified communications service in July 2007. Officially, the new Google version of the service is still in beta and its initial offering of limited invitations was used up at this writing. You can, however, “reserve” a number when they become available again.