Recently in unified communications Category

This PowerPoint presentation represents the outline of what my panel was going to discuss at Broadsoft Connections. We were going to make 3 points about Marketing a Profitable UC Bundle: 

1. Does Bundling Work;
2. How do you sell it;
3. What makes a successful bundle

Does Bundling Work? It depends. Are you using a Bundle for Customer Retention or Customer Acquisition? Our panleists included to ILEC's and 1 CLEC competing directly against one panelist.

The big point to make is that if you add one component sold separately between 15-20% of your customer base will uptake that new component (if marketed well). However, if you add it to a bundle, many more folks will take it. Albeit at a less margin, but more overall revenue.

Everyone was in agreement that the only way to sell a UC Bundle was face-to-face. A sales force - direct or indirect - could sell it. The hardware salespeople have a problem transitioning from selling a box to selling the Invisible. But training can fix that.

Upselling an existing bundle customer can work via tele-sales to increase stickiness and ARPU.

What makes a successful bundle? No one is sure yet. The only point that could be made is that it needs to be simple. Small business wants the pain of technology removed from their business life. And Broadsoft's 180+ features, Xtended Apps, and the XML on the phone are an infinite list of possibilities that will confuse the sales team let alone the consumer. Bundles should be created to attack a market segment, niche or vertical.

Master Agency Microcorp is holding its One-on-One Event for its agents in Atlanta next week. I will be moderating a session on Trends for 2010 & Beyond, where we will discuss the next series of services that Agents can create revenue streams from. 

You've heard the noise about Conferencing coming from the likes of Premiere and Inter-Call. With the Green movement and the economic realities of cutting down travel expenditures, video and web conferencing are selling. It's just a software application that can be sold as a service - (notice I mentioned app and SAAS there?). It creates a revenue stream for an Agent by cross-selling to your existing client base.

You can also offer Hosted Microsoft Exchange email and the Office Suite software. Alternatives to that would be Google Apps and now IBM LotusLive iNotes.

Managed Services is the new buzz word around the Industry. Outsourcing IT (computer support, server maintenance, software updating and backup) is a growing market segment as small businesses find it harder to keep IT staff in place (and trained). Also, IT is becoming mission critical -- well, access to data, email, voicemail is becoming business critical.

The panel will be with InContact, Sprint and New Edge Networks. We will be discussing 4G and M2M as a growth sector. Private Networking and QOS on the WAN for today's real-time traffic. And finally how apps like UC and Contact Center software can provide agents a renewed high margin business.

Please note I didn't mention Cloud or Virtualization.

Just some rambling thoughts on UC as I prepare for a session at Broadsoft Connections. Comments?

Alex Doyle at Broadsoft pointed out a blog post from his company: Why is UC like a Gym Membership.  The analogy is really about PBX systems - hosted versus on-premise. A gym is the hosted scenario and a Bowflex would be the on-premise version. It's the best analogy I have seen used to date. I hope you are going to ITEXPO and Broadsoft Connections, because smart folks will be at both places simplifying things for you.

In a short article in INC magazine, one entrepreneur explains how he uses Google Voice for his startup business. He is a straddler - he has a full-time job while launching his own business. 

As noted by Ring Central, many of the features in Google Voice have been available for a while from VoIP Providers. However, it's partially the brand (it's Google) and partially the price (um, free). Once Google allows number portability, it will be tough to beat. Why?

For one thing, Raving Fans. Google has a lot of Raving Fans. And those fans tell stories about the service - even better than a testimonial. Who is your storyteller?

For another, easy explanations about what each feature is on the product page, the help pages, and on fan pages. Could your Grandmother understand what youare offering?

Another would be the brand. Most VoIP Providers don't do much marketing, even less branding. The only exception is Vonage. The other might be 8x8. Do the businesses in your local Chamber of Commerce recognize your company name (or product name)?

What are you doing to counter these factors?

Tech Data's Senior Product Sales Champion for UC was at the event last night. I spent a few minutes chatting with him about his position, but couldn't really get a definition of UC out of him. Polycom and tele-presence are what he pushes - to me that's not really UC. HD Voice? No we leave that up to Polycom and the vendors. Seems even a tech company has a problem wrapping the head around Unified Communications. (UC doesn't mean the latest gadgets).

XO has some components to build a UC bundle - overlay IVR, Broadsoft SIP Trunking, some straight forward Hosted PBX (with a limited feature set), and Hosted Exchange for the email integration piece.

If the UC Champion thinks UC is tele-presence and video conferencing, what does that say about well defined the term is in the Industry?

I have a problem with a dangling phone number - my home phone. It's the number that my parents, in-laws, friends, doctors, bank, etc. has - plus all those tele-marketers. My wife and I each have a cell phone, so what do we do with that home phone number?

RCF (remote call forwarding) from Verizon is about $40. A home phone line with fees is $58 with Bright House cable and $63 (+LD) with Verizon. I want to port it to a Google Voice kind of system. (Only Google doesn't port numbers - yet). 

GotVmail (now Grasshopper) used to have something like it. I guess if I don't plug in an ATA, I would still get the web portal and call forwarding features from any ITSP.  

This came in from Peter Shankman's HARO:

So you have a phone number you love. But you can't move it when you move, can't hang onto it if you want to change a cell phone, blah, blah, blah. Thanks to HARO Family Member Number Garage, you can!  NumberGarage.com services were created to solve a unique telephony problem: local number portability. Small businesses pay a ton for a Remote Call Forward (RCF), and NumberGarage has an affordable solution compared to those fees charged by traditional landline operators. Some people are actually foregoing their landline and adopting their cell phone as their primary telephone. NumberGarage
helps those who are "cutting the line" as a way to transition to one phone by having all calls to their old telephone number forwarded to their cell phone. NumberGarage makes it possible to capture ALL callers for a fraction of the cost. Landline operators won't forward your home line to your cell line without costly service charges. NumberGarage gives you an easy and economical
solution. Check them out! http://numbergarage.com - On Twitter at
@numbergarage

I have to wonder why more ITSP's don't see the need for RCF-like options, more Voicemail box options, Virtual-NXX numbers (so I have local numbers everywhere), and other Google Voice kind of features. 

Voxeo acquired IMified this week. What is IMified?  IVR for IM.

XO's IVR service earned an award. (BTW, agents can team up with XO to sell IVR service as an overlay).

Ifbyphone is all about IVR in the Cloud.

ACD and IVR are two reasons that small businesses move to VoIP. It is far cheaper to pay for the hosted service monthly than to buy an on-premise hardware solution that can provide it.  It looks like the race is on to make Mitel, Avaya, and Nortel premise equipment redundant or obsolete as you will get up-to-date platforms with maintenance bought as a monthly service, usable by your employees and customers any where in the world.

In VoIP news, M5 Networks, a Genband based hosted PBX company out of NYC, has partnered up with eXpresso, as its collaboration and file-sharing platform. The eXpresso platform is a value-add to the M5 On-Demand conferencing platform.

"The M5 Network phone system has an extensive portfolio of capabilities, but one in particular is especially harmonized with eXpresso: On-Demand Conferencing. That feature enables users to instantly host or attend conference calls on the fly, anytime, from anywhere. In combination with eXpresso, it enables live collaborative meetings where a real work-product is generated. Conventional "Web meetings" don't allow participants to contribute to documents."

It's the next evolution in VoIP -- SAAS.  But I have to ask, Shouldn't Hosted Email be the first App you host with the Voice App? Unified messaging starts with email, chat, and voice. Google Voice has done that by combining the Gmail Inbox with the Google Voicemail box (and the voicemail-to-text feature).

Jon Arnold writes, "This year's MetaSwitch Forum provided a host of proof points that service providers of all stripes can stay competitive so long as they deploy the right technology and have the right vision for serving their customers."

Time and again, the pitch is about the company and the technology. Look at automobile reviews: It isn't about the engine size, it's about the 0-60. Telecommunications needs to do the same thing.

When Aastra talks about its AastraLink Pro 160, it should be about Asterisk. The story should be similar to the Aastra CT handset story. When anyone talks about the iPhone, do they mention that it only works on GSM or do they spend time talking about all the neat things they can do with it?  Same lesson.  I think that gadgets, handsets, phones and softphones can drive VoIP penetration, if they were easy to use (which they are), easy to add apps to, and did cool, useful things (for the consumer).

Take this example: "a food-service equipment innovator, Henny Penny, has deployed several Cisco Unified Communications solutions to improve customer service, streamline operations and enhance employee collaboration. ... Cisco Unified Contact Center Express and Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Express solutions are helping Henny Penny realize their business goals of getting their customers' issues solved more quickly and more simply than in the past."  The press release is kind of repetitive and vague. It should have said that Henny Penny used Cisco Unified Contact Center Express and Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Express in order to improve first call resolution, which has a direct impact on Henny Penny's bottom line. In addition, both the employee and the customer have seen an increase in satisfaction. Cisco's platform is a tool. The goal is to reduce costs by resolving customer service in one call, while improving customer satisfaction. This is what UC is all about. In fact, if you ever talk to John C. Kelly, Regional Vice President of Sales, North America, at Altitude Software, that's all that he is trying to accomplish for his clients - first call resolution. It's the goal of contact centers.

Another example is this Voxeo press release, which can help Human Resources departments with task resolution (like Self-service benefits enrollment, Job hotlines, Employee surveys and Employee notification messages) and efficiency especially now with job screening. These are concrete examples of what Voxeo IVR can provide. No tech talk. Just end user benefit.

The last example today will be Sprint's UC announcement.  SIP trunking over Global MPLS network. Yawn! The release did mention Sprint's 3 global partners: Cisco for mobile integration; IBM Sametime Unified Telephony; and Microsoft's OCS 2007 R2. The only case study: Sprint's internal deployment of unified communications and its $6 million annual cost savings, visit www.sprint.com/whitepapers.

When trying to market or sell UC, forget all that tech talk and tell a story about the customer. It's all about the customer. Their pain. Your solution.