David Byrd : Raven Call
David Byrd
David Byrd is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer for Raven Guru Marketing. Previously, he was the CMO and EVP of Sales for CloudRoute. Prior to CloudRoute, He was CMO at ANPI, CMO & EVP of Sales at Broadvox, VP of channels and Alliances for Telcordia and Director of eBusiness development with i2 Technologies.He has also held executive positions with Planet Hollywood Online, Hewlett-Packard, Tandem Computers, Sprint and Ericsson.
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February 2014

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Business Continuity Saves Businesses

February 21, 2014

It seems obvious that if a company can survive an unforeseen circumstance, that it will thrive as a commercial entity. However, as logical as that thought is, only 52% of small businesses claim to have a business continuity plan, and only 28% say they have reviewed it recently to ensure it is up to date and still effective. Moreover, according to the Insurance Institute of Business & Home Safety, 25% of businesses forced to close following a major event such as 9/11 or Hurricane Sandy do not reopen.

When it comes to understanding the risks associated with not having a continuity plan, small businesses lag their larger counterparts.

The Changing Landscape of Collaboration

February 18, 2014

Several years ago, it was quite common to argue that collaboration tools were of greater importance to mid-size and large businesses versus small businesses. After all, if a small business wanted to collaborate, then they could just walk across the office, stand up and speak across the cubicle wall or meet in the conference room. While collaboration seemed unnecessary for small businesses then, it is clear that is no longer the case. The average small business with 99 or fewer employees has three office locations, and the number of remote workers is growing.

The Case for Mobile UC

February 14, 2014

Usually, service providers charge more for mobility features as part of Unified Communications. And it is worth the additional cost. It’s very difficult to not double count some of the monetary benefits of implementing a hosted Unified Communications (UC) solution. However, it is important to keep this as objective and pure analysis as possible.

Quantifying Productivity Improvements with UC

February 11, 2014

In order to determine the value of a Hosted Unified Communications implementation, we need a few assumptions. I will be using these for the other identified benefits of UC as well:

  • Company size is 22 and 100 employees
  • Median income is $51,000

Using the above assumptions, if a business implemented full UC including Presence, a mobile client and collaboration tools, employee productivity would result in the following gains per market study data:

  1. 49% of businesses saved up to 20 minutes per employee per day by reaching co-workers on the first try.

22

Employees

 $  280,280

per year savings

100

Employees

 $  1,274,000

per year savings

  1. 54% of businesses saved up to 20 minutes per employee per day by escalating IM chats into phone calls.

22

Employees

 $     280,280

per year savings

100

Employees

 $  1,274,000

per year savings

  1. 33% saved 11 to 20 minutes per employee daily using digital corporate directory access, click-to-dial and Presence.

22

Employees

 $      217,217

per year savings

100

Employees

 $      987,350

per year savings

 

While not every business saved using the various tools or improved communications processes, those businesses that did receive a tremendous improvement on their bottom live. By quantifying the potential savings versus simply saying “UC can improve productivity”, a business owner can measure the effectiveness of the solution.

ANPI at RTIME

February 10, 2014

Typically, I go to industry events with relatively low expectatioaans hoping to achieve one or two specific objectives. This particular week during RTIME was unequivocally the most successful number of meaningful interactions I have even had during an industry event. And I have been told that others at ANPI experience the same level of enthusiasm and high numbers of attendee interest. Moreover, we accomplished this without giving away Ferrari or sponsoring an extravaganza.

Increase Employee Productivity Using Hosted UC

February 5, 2014

It is a fact that deploying and using Hosted Unified Communications improves employee and business productivity. According to Chadwick Martin Bailey, 49% of businesses saved up to 20 minutes per employee per day by reaching co-workers on the first try. UC gives employees the ability to know the status of each other through Presence. Presence is an indicator made available to members of a community or business providing each other’s availability and best contact method.

Unified Communications takes Center Stage with M2M and WebRTC Supporting

February 4, 2014

While the weather did not cooperate by being both sunny and warm in Miami, IT EXPO delivered. I attended several sessions, presented for an hour and participated in a panel that mostly discussed issues and the future of WebRTC. The attendance at the mini-conferences on M2M, Unified Communications and WebRTC was above expectations. There were few empty seats.

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