BUSINESS PHONE NEWS

Business Operations Technology Start-up Tools for New Business Owners

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

So you've taken the leap and decided to start your own business?

Fortunately business technology has become much more affordable over the past decade which means that even a start-up business can look like a Fortune 500 business if you select the right technology tools to operate your business.

Below you can see a video that covers some of the basics. Also presented are some good business technology ideas from the national Small Business Administration website.

 

Call Us for Customized Technology Plan Created for Your Unique Needs

We're business technology experts that work with very large, multi-location businesses as well as very small businesses that are just getting started with a couple part-time employees. We can give you quick advice over the phone or schedule a complimentary consulting meeting to analyze your unique business technology requirements.

On our consulting call we'll seem a lot smarter if you have some general ideas about where you want to start with technology, how many employees you'll want to support over the next couple years as well as what your technology budget can afford.  Please review the rest of the information on this page and watch the vide.  Then give us a call and we'll explore your thoughts and share with you some of the solutions our other business clients are successfully using.

Using Technology to Stay Competitive from SBA.org
As a business owner, it is vital that you understand and use advanced technologies. Technology can help increase business efficiency and even expand operations.

Accounting software. This is important, even if you have your own accountant or bookkeeper. Accounting software allows you to see your profits and losses at a glance. It can also help you design and maintain a budget for your business.

Planning software or tools. A calendar system is a must. There are many online planning systems that can be utilized to help you keep your calendar organized. Find a system that meets your business' needs and be sure to stick with it.

Time tracking software.  A time tracking device will help you determine what tasks result in a profit and what tasks do not. This will help you determine what tasks can be eliminated, outsourced, or improved.  If you’re looking at software that requires a fee, ask for a free trial first to make sure it’s the right software for you.

Email management. As a business owner, you probably use several email accounts to manage the various aspects of your company. If you streamline these emails to one account, you'll be able to stay organized and abreast of your emails.

Mobile internet access. Access to the internet on your mobile device will not only make your life easier, it will also help you maintain a positive reputation for your business. For example, if you are able to follow up with a client by email immediately after a meeting, you will be showing that you are accessible, timely and professional.

Once you decide which types of technology are right for you and your business, you'll be on your way to being more organized and efficient than ever.

 

Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com # 11930996

l

US Soldier Gets $16,000 Wireless Phone Bill for Data Roaming -- Is Your Phone Bill Properly Protected?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email  

 This story from California about a US service man getting a $16,098 phone bill from his wireless cell phone company got me thinking on three different levels.

First, I thought that could easily happen to my phone bill since I have two sons about the same age as the US soldier in the story who both use their cell phones for just about everything you can think of except talking.

Second, what was the guy really doing with his phone that jacked the bill up so high and do I or any of my employees do the same thing?

Third, are there any safety measures set up on my own business wireless cell phone accounts (I use Verizon for seven business cell phones) to prevent the same sort of "bill shock" from showing up in my mailbox next month.

 

How Much Data Does the Average Employee Use or Need Every Month?

Surprisingly little I think. I honestly had no idea (nor did I seem to think I needed to care) since I still had Verizon's "unlimited" data plan on most of my businesses smart phones.

After printing out the summary pages of my business cell phone bill for the last four months I discovered that for seven business cell phones the total was under five gigs of data per month total. The range was quite large though as my own personal data use was under 200 megs a month (just 20% of one gig) while my oldest employee (over 70 years old) used seven times what I used at 1.4 gigs.

(It took me a while to discover what "business use" a desk bound 70-year old employee would have for 1.4 gigs of data usage per month. We narrowed it down to either streaming Pandora radio for several hours per day and/or the Scrabble dictionary app.)

I was somewhat relieved to discover though that even the most data hungry power users I knew (all three of my teenage kids and even my brother-in-law who's always video-Skyping his kids from the road) used under 2 gigs a month each - a lot of data but certainly manageable - I think (right?)

 

How Do You Create a $16,098 Cell Phone Bill?

So now that I've got a handle on my own business cell phone and data usage I go back to thinking, "How'd this poor US serviceman jack up his cell phone bill to over $16,000?"  Well if you read the story, it turns out the guy used 1.6 gigs of data in just six days while on leave visiting his parents.

Gadget Review: Plantronics' CT14 Headset Phone Connects Your Home Based Call Center Employees For Less

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email 

One of the big cost-saving benefits for businesses when switching their phone system to a VoIP based solution is they can instantly allow their "desk based" call center employees to work from a home office.

This saves the company the overhead of maintaining an expensive office cubicle and opens up the potential labor pool to a whole lot of qualified U.S. based call center employees who are glad to "do a quality job for less" so long as they can work from a home office.  

This single benefit is one of the biggest reasons many businesses are bringing off-shore call center jobs back to the U.S. that had, in past years, been outsourced to India, the Philippines or some other far away land where they "kind of speak English" but not completely -- and not to the satisfaction of your upset customers calling into your call center.

 

Do Home-Based Call Center Employees Need an Expensive VoIP Phone? No!

The big purchase decision question for businesses trying to properly outfit home office employees so they can tap into the new VoIP enabled office phone system is "How expensive of a phone do home workers need?"

Well if the home-office employee is the CEO of the company, then the most expensive phone that Polycom sells. But what about your call center employees that don't have stock options?

Many VoIP and SIP phone vendors will tell you that you don't need to buy your home-office workers a phone at all, saying "the beauty of our VoIP phone solution is all your home office people need is our 'soft phone' that appears right on the screen of their computer".

Well, in theory, soft phones work just fine -- until the soft phone user has opened up 27 browser windows on their computer or you get confused about using the keyboard and mouse for both their phone call and order fulfillment on their computer at the same time. 

Combining your computer and phone keyboards or trying to get your computer to be a phone is really a recipe for inefficiancy and "angry at the IT guy" home office employees.

 

Split the Different for WAY UNDER $200!

The most important phone feature for your at-home worker is the ability to work hands free. Whether your home-based employee is a call center worker keying an order into their computer or your highest paid sales person just needing to wave his or her hands while giving an empassioned sales pitch, you'll likely not find a "work at home phone" that better splits the cost difference than the Plantronics CT14.

Is Your Customer Service "Out to Lunch"? Unified Communications' "Presence" Feature Solves This Problem

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

 As the economy finally starts to pick back up for many American businesses, owners and managers are happy to see that their incoming phone lines are starting to ring again but sad to know that they still have not staffed their business back up to answer and properly address the increase in prospective customer phone calls.

How can a business owner get greater efficiency out the the reduced number of employees they have reporting to work each day?

Take a look at the "presence" feature offered by many newer "unified communications" (AKA "UC") business phone systems and services.

Below is a video that simply shows how the unified communications "presence" feature works on the NEC Univerge SV8100 phone system.

While the NEC phone system solution featured is produced by a "premise based" phone system (one where you make a major capital purchase and the phone system sits in your phone closet or a "private cloud") there are many similar enterprise grade "hosted VoIP" phone service solutions offered by companies like Smoothstone, Alteva, Telesphere, MegaPath, Broadview, Vocal IP and others.  

Subscribing to an enterprise grade unified communications solution from a hosted VoIP or "cloud" business phone service provider means a business owner can access "presence"-type features without having to commit their entire capital improvements budget for the year.

 

What's "Presence"?

When I first started selling business office phone systems 30 years ago, the phone on your desk helped you make and receive phone calls and not much more.

Should You Buy Your Next Business Phone System From "Scramblin' Fran" Tarkenton?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

 If it makes sense for retired boxer George Foreman to sell you a grill you can use indoors then I guess it makes sense for retired Minnesota Vikings football great "Scramblin' Fran" Tarkenton to sell you your next hosted VoIP business phone system. Right?

That's what Ari Rabban of Phone.com must be thinking as he's recently signed up with the former quarterback to secure Tarkenton's celebrity endorsement of Phone.com's hosted VoIP business phone system solution.

 

Does it Make Sense to Take Phone Buying Advice from a Retired Quarterback?

I admit it's kind of a silly question. Sure Fran's a great guy and some of my earliest memories of watching football on TV were of watching Fran make defensive ends and linebackers look silly trying to sack him in the backfield. 

But choosing a VoIP business phone system? I'm not sure.  If you watch the short video below that features Ari and Fran discussing the benefits of the Phone.com solution, at no time during the video does Fran say, "I switched to Phone.com's solution for my business a year ago and it's better than any other phone service our business has used in 30 years!".

Now if I found myself playing quarterback at a Deacon Jones family reunion I would certainly seek Scramblin' Fran's advice about how best to survive the event.

 

Ask Fran About QoS and the Differences Between Broadsoft, MetaSwitch & Asterisk Before Buying

When choosing someone to explain to my wife the difference between a "nickel" and "dime" defensive football scheme or how to throw a touchdown pass into a zone or man-to-man coverage, Fran Tarkenton is definitely my choice, especially since my wife hails from Minnesota.

But when trying to explain the benefit differences between Broadsoft, MetaSwitch and Asterisk hosted VoIP platforms and how to ensure appropriate levels of QoS ("quality of service") exist to prevent static and delay on my business customer's phone calls I'm going to suggest that my clients call me over watching football game reruns on ESPN Classic.

 

Fran's Phones Might Be The Best for Some Businesses But They Need to be Compared to Quality Alternatives

Don't get me wrong, just because I'm poking a little fun at Ari's celebrity pitchman does not mean that Phone.com's business VoIP phone system should not be taken seriously. I spent a bit of time talking to Joel Maloff of Phone.com about the pros and cons of Phone.com's offering and I believe that the solution is probably fine for a certain set of small business customers that need the most phone service they can buy for their business for next to nothing and with no guarantees of voice quality.

There are plenty of other similar competitors that offer a similar Asterisk based hosted VoIP solution. Before choosing Phone.com, a business owner needs to speak with their trusted telecom agent or channel partner about what other Asterisk based VoIP providers they like and why.

And before moving forward with a "no guarantees" Asterisk-based "BYOB" ("bring your own broadband") phone system solution for your business, ask your telecom agent about the benefits of looking at a Broadsoft or Metaswitch based VoIP solution and whether or not it's cost effective to guarantee the voice quality of the business phone calls by not using the businesses existing Internet connection and office network which often creates data problems for all the small businesses computer users.

 

Talk to a Telecom Agent About the Best Phone System for Your Business

If you don't have a telecom agent or channel sales partner you can trust to get quality office technology advice, click here or the link at the top of this page to find one.

Telecom agents are in the business of knowing how technology solution providers compare to one another and which ones do the best job of delivering on their promises.

A Cheap Cloud Phone Solution for Small Professional Office Locations? Panasonic says "Yes" but we say "Maybe"

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email 

For over 10-years, hosted VoIP providers (initially Vonage & 8x8) have been telling small businesses that "the cloud" (their broadband DSL or cable Internet connection) can host their phone service so they can abandon their expensive local phone company lines and save money.

The idea was fine when it was first proclaimed, but the actual phone equipment that small offices needed to work "with the cloud" did not have all the features required like intercom, music on hold, cordless handsets, etc.

 

Panasonic's "Office Cloud Phones" to the Rescue?

For years Panasonic has been a phone equipment champion for small businesses. The phones are pretty inexpensive, fairly easy to install and easy to

Looking for a service provider to integrate voice and data into a single customized solution? Well, look no further!

By Max Caponegro, TouchTone Communications
1-800-900-3668 or mcaponegro@touchtone.net

Today's increasingly demanding customers require service providers to devote unprecedented attention to providing exceptional quality and service into a single customized solution (and why shouldn't they). This allows customers to save both time and money. Sometimes even the smallest businesses require an involved and personalized telecom solution that integrates network services from different voice and data carriers.

Sometimes using multiple carriers is the only way to achieve true redundancy that will ensure the solution is working even if the primary carrier goes down. Managing competing carriers in a single solution can be a nightmare for a customer, and that is why oftentimes they work with several different network service "resellers"/service providers.

Well, I have good news for you! There are “resellers” (like TouchTone Communications) and account  managers out there (like myself) that will take the time to sit down with customers and their agents to discuss their needs and requirements in detail to create a custom telecom solution. We hope that this ‘non-cookie cutter approach’  will help the customer feel comfortable from the start that they have chosen the right telecom provider to furnish them with their voice and data service needs.

With help from the customer's

Michael Burns Announces the Upgrade of Start-video, Desktop Video Conferencing Service

By Michael Burns, President
A+ Conferencing                                   

As President of A+ Conferencing, I'm proud to announce the upgrade of our desktop video conferencing service, Start-Video, software release version four. 

Start-Video features HD quality video, VOIP audio and all of the web conferencing tools, all rolled up into one recordable service in the cloud.  Anyone from anywhere in the world can access this service via the Internet.  All you need is a webcam and a good Internet connection.

Start-video is a multi-party video conferencing service, which will allow up to sixteen simultaneous, full motion videos operating at any time.  Now you can see the facial expressions of your conferees on your conference calls.

The full range of web conferencing services include PowerPoint presentations, desktop sharing, annotation tools and web touring. The service also comes in

Verizon's "Premium Technical Support" Service Solves Computer Problems for Your "Work at Home" Employees

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

As more and more businesses allow their employees to "work at home" out of necessity or convenience, more and more businesses are discovering the pain and expense of providing their remote workers with decent computer "help-desk" support.

In order to keep their FiOS residential customers from switching to their cable Internet competitors, Verizon is offering their "Premium Technical Support" service to any FiOS residential customer that needs "help desk" computer PC support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

 

Unlimited PC & Mac "Help Desk" Support 24/7 for Under $15 per Month

This is an absolute screaming deal for any business with a "work at home" employee that they need to provide PC help desk support for. I actually signed up for

Looking to Eliminate Phone Lines by Plugging Your Cable Internet Into Your Old PBX Phone System? Call Us!

Posted By Dan Baldwin
Editor, 951-251-5155 email

In today's economy, many business owners and decision makers find themselves either trying to expand without a lot of cash or trying to downsize to save more cash. Whether due to expansion of contraction though, every monthly overhead item gets a thorough "scrubbing" especially nettlesome invoices like business phone line bills, broadband cable Internet bills and the like.

When looking at separate phone line & Internet bills, many business owners ask, "What happened to making phone calls over the Internet? Why am I paying separately for business phone lines and business Internet service? Can't I get rid of my phone lines?"

 

You Can Cancel Your Business Phone Lines to Save Money ...

If you look at your normal business phone service bill from the telephone company you'll see that you're paying for three separate services:

1. Phone calls,   2. Phone numbers, and 3. Phone lines.

Those of you who have already tried