There Can Be Only One

SMBs are finding it more and more complicated to purchase business phone solutions. Set aside the debate between whether it should be hosted or premises-based, there are a lot of other considerations to make as well. In the end, it requires more understanding and analysis than most SMBs can make using internal resources. A study conducted by the Brookside Group that SMBs now make up the largest percentage of clients when measured against enterprises. It is estimated that SMBs make up 54% of their client base up from 45% in 2001.

This is consistent with why Broadvox initially began building a VAR partner channel to sell SIP Trunks. The VARs represented expertise that the SMB did not have internally. As a consultant to the business the VAR is expected to save them money (a motive of SMBs 69% of the time when using consultants) and select the appropriate technology for the business (desired by 52%).

SMBs face a daunting task of selecting from the myriad of vendors and product offerings using both simple, SIP, and complex (fixed mobile convergence) names. The transition from TDM to VoIP, POTs to Unified Communications and stationary to mobility requires greater knowledge than most SMBs can muster on their own. With proper guidance and good consulting they will make make the right choice for their business. In the end there can only be one.

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“In world-class organizations, the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is 9.57:1. In average organizations, the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is 1.83:1….Beyond the significant differences engaged workgroups show in productivity, profitability, safety incidents, and absenteeism versus disengaged workgroups, we have proven that engaged organizations have 3.9 times the earnings per share (EPS) growth rate compared to organizations with lower engagement in their same industry.”

Here are the 12 Questions:

1. Do you know what is expected of you at work?
2. Do you have the materials and equipment to do your work right?
3. At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?
5. Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
7. At work, do your opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
9. Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?
10. Do you have a best friend at work?
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
12. In the last year, have you had opportunities to learn and grow?

Obviously, Gallup offers a service around these questions and the manner for analyzing the results of the questionnaire is proprietary. My purpose today is to remind you of an obligation to continuously measure and improve your workforce and company. Whether you choose to use the questions or services of Gallup is up to you. Just be motivated to do something. Building a top notch organization requires an ongoing effort and an understanding of the positives and negatives, with the goal being to increase the positives and reduce the negatives.

Engaged employees never dial it in.

See you on Monday. I am thinking of baking this weekend.

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Influencing the Reality... - Feb 26, 2010

Oklahoma and Eurocentric: The Demise of the Landline - May 08, 2009

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Bandwidth consumption is experiencing a dramatic increase because of video on demand, video conferencing and streaming applications, all of which are provided by a growing number of content delivery networks. Frost and Sullivan are projecting a nearly 30% increase in 2012. Amazingly, this may be a low forecast given the adoption rate of smartphones and tablets. Consider that nearly 500 million such devices were sold last quarter. Perhaps, it is appropriate to remind you of Google’s intent to deliver a gigabit IP network to Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas. Construction on the project began in earnest just this month. After completion residents will be able to experience Internet speeds 100 times the current average equaling the top speed available throughout Kiev, Ukraine and by the end of year every home in South Korea.

The US has a penchant for ignoring what is happening in other countries. It is a detriment that we continue to do so despite having the greatest international presence of any country. Our lack of awareness and knowledge results in poor planning and misplaced priorities. Our ability to navel gaze is not the result of our political system but is the nature of our culture. We do not embrace true diversity well (multiple languages, international concepts, interracial neighborhoods and social environments).

IP communications has become the foundation for technological innovation, financial markets, education, entertainment and global communications. I support making it universally available in the US after we make it competitive with the rest of the world.

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After a week on the road at ITEXPO in Miami, I needed to take a break from restaurant food and cook. I was pleasantly surprised when asked on Friday to fix crab cakes which I partnered with a mustard cream sauce. Saturday I made liver and caramelized onions for dinner.  I also made a vegetable beef stew for Super Bowl Sunday. I served the stew for breakfast topped with a sunny-side up egg. Just before the game began, I fired up the fryers to make Buffalo wings, chicken livers, French fries and fried cheese curds (remember we had mostly vegetables for breakfast). I’d never made fried cheese curds and they were awesome. Lightly coated with panko breadcrumbs, they were deliciously crunchy and chewy. A quite simple dish that delivers way beyond the effort, Fried Cheese Curds is the recipe of the week. Enjoy!

For those of you that enjoy food blogs, I do want to make you aware of a new one called the Pig and the Fig. With an array of recipes and cooking styles, the Pig ad the Fig is an intriguing site. Give it a try!

The Digium Way

Last week Digium announced Digium Phone Module for Asterisk (DPMA) which will enable advanced application and provisioning features. DPMA is a proprietary protocol that will allow it to deliver certain features available on other platforms. While it is too soon to know how DPMA will be accepted by the Asterisk ecosystem and IP industry in general, the phones accompanying the announcement seem a bit dated an plain. Although, all of the phones support HD voice, it seems odd that the phones require DESI labels (paper strips to label button functionality). There are no versions of the phone to support wireless or video. Furthermore, I am puzzled by the selection of a proprietary protocol to support these less than advanced looking phones. Given Digium’s success with an open source application like Asterisk, it would seem that they could have continued with that philosophy and developed an open source based endpoint. However, Digium has indicated that it will license DPMA, although no details were given.

This product announcement is very important to Broadvox Partners as Digium/Asterisk based systems are at top of our list for most SIP Trunk activations. It will be good for our partners if DPMA successfully positions Asterisk based IP PBXs to be more competitive with other proprietary offerings and improves the margins for them and the phones. Better features and more revenue are good in a nice whey.

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My response during ITEXPO on the panel where this information was presented was to suggest that presence suffered from a lack of knowledge and use. When people use presence they eventually find it indispensible as a tool supporting their work day. I also suggest that the list of contacts should not be labeled a “buddy list”. While I maintain an open door policy, I am still an executive at Broadvox and not everyone’s “buddy”. Presence must grow beyond this casual label and into the professional feature it is.

As for summarizing ITEXPO, the IP ecosystem is healthy and growing. Cloud computing, managed services and hosted communications is the growing trend with new entrants every quarter. News of ShoreTel’s acquisition of M5 created quite a buzz. After four days of exciting discussions, presentations and events, I am ready to go home. Goodbye Miami. See you next year!

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Last year after complaints by a European carrier that new services offered by Google were making it impossible to accurately predict traffic requirements which drive network expansion, I noted the need for Google and others to coordinate new product releases with service providers. This seems to still be a problem. Japanese service provider, NTT DoCoMo, suffered a signaling storm generated by an Android application. While I haven’t seen the specifics, I do know that having networks fail around the world as we are attempting to generate confidence in using cloud application is not good. Furthermore, Broadvox believes that the integration of mobile devices and applications is the next big thing in the evolution of Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS).

The DoCoMo outage affected 2.5 million subscribers and could have been avoided with proper planning.

As we add other streaming applications such as video conferencing and web-based collaboration, forecasting demand becomes a major issue for service providers. Broadvox and other UCaaS hosting companies can easily manage their own data centers and support growing customer demand. However, when large content providers release new capabilities that either have functionality that immediately change network traffic characteristics or generate dramatic increases in demand, no service provider is immune.

I suggested the use of NDAs and prior to notice to avoid these unnecessary service interruptions. Today, I offer the same suggestion. We must make ensure that key decision makers view cloud applications as reliable. It must be more than perception. It must be reality. With that we will all win.

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Mixing it Up, the Bad

Sunday I read an essay that curiously contradicted the assumed benefits of collaboration. Susan Cain, the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, exposes research that shows solitude improves productivity and creativity. While Susan spends a bit of time discussing this in the context of introverts, I believe, her principle point is that group think does not promote the full participation or creativity of its members. We actually tend to develop fuller ideas in solitude rather than collaborative settings. Why then have we allowed the average space per employee to drop from 500 square feet in the 1970s to 200 square feet in 2010? Moreover, we seldom provide quiet areas for personnel to have real privacy which research shows would improve productivity.

Luckily, the Broadvox offices in Dallas, Cleveland and Atlanta have lots of available space for personnel to find solitude. I now better understand why some people sequester themselves in one of our conference rooms or empty offices.

As a marketing person it was also interesting to discover that brainstorming as a group is the worst way to stimulate creativity and participation. Brainstorming fails because some people (introverts) tend to allow others (extroverts) to make the most suggestions, some individuals move towards agreeable positions without commitment and some members of a group worry about demonstrating social conformity. Apparently, taking a stance different from the group activates the amygdala, a portion of the brain associated with emotion, in this case, the fear of rejection.

Cain goes on to point out that collaboration when members are geographically dispersed appears to be the most effective way to develop new ideas and foster creativity. Given that a tenet of Unified Communications is collaboration, the idea that individuals work best in solitude is anathema to our value proposition. However, Cain is not promoting the elimination of collaboration. Instead, my take away from her writing is the need to provide some privacy and solitude in the work place to maximize performance. Like much in life, there needs to be a balance of open and closed spaces, interaction and separation, and collaboration and solitude.

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Other factors such as search fees, impact on the organization, and expenses to relocate key employees can add thousands of dollars to the replacement cost.

It is important to prevent employees from leaving the company for reasons that can be easily addressed. For example, understanding what salaries are for any given position is important. Salaries should be based upon experience, company size, geography and, of course, responsibilities and function. Bargain employees will at some point need to receive increases or you should expect them to move on when other opportunities present themselves. Less obvious ways of retaining good employees are to provide a pleasant and exciting workplace. Learn to create a diverse environment that shows its appreciation for hard work and success. Engage the members of your company or team as individuals and as members of the group. Remember to communicate goals and objectives so everyone understands their role and how to contribute to the success of the company. Finally, know when to let go and do so in a professional manner. Let key employees leave with dignity and an understanding that they will be missed. Let the remaining employees see how the departure is handled so they understand your appreciation of their efforts.

Creating a company culture is not done by accident. It is deliberate, planned and modified just as any other business process. The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, University of California, Berkeley found that turnover costs for a manager average 150% of salary, including both tangible and intangible costs such as fees, training, the new worker's inefficiency and lost productivity while the job is vacant.

Review your efforts to create a positive work environment where employees are rewarded for their efforts, recognized for superior achievement and shown that they are appreciated regularly. As our labor pool gets smaller due to an aging population and opportunities to pursue other positions increase with an improving economy, those efforts will be rewarded.

The Best of the Blog 2011 is now available. In it you will find some of the most read blogs, important blogs and our favorite recipes of the year. Enjoy!

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However, it is the matter of definition and enforcement that give me pause. When other businesses such as payment processers or ad networks are allowed to cut off funding without the potentially offending site being charged with anything, too much power has been extended to too broad an array of people. It is neither responsible nor appropriate to engage private enterprise to charge, judge and apply penalties. It is appropriate to give the U.S. Department of Justice and copyright holders the right to seek justice in foreign courts and an ability to escalate actions if the foreign courts unjustly protect a site whose sole purpose is to support the evasion of copyright law.

Over the last few days I have learned of a multitude of file sharing sites including Megaupload, built to share entertainment media, which was shut down this week. However, keep in mind a site we use at Broadvox, Dropbox, could be used for a similar purpose by a few users. Would it then be appropriate for a foreign country to block access to all users due to the actions of a minority? Is it the responsibility of Dropbox to monitor the proprietary business content shared on their site? Consider that we do not expect the makers of PCs to monitor how we use them. We do not expect automobile manufacturers to restrict how we drive our cars. We are asked to be law abiding and when an individual breaks the law, he/she should be prosecuted and, if found guilty, punished appropriately.

Protecting our freedoms is not easy but it is a must. Protecting intellectual property is important. Promoting innovation and entrepreneurship utilizing IP Communications is also important. Legislation addressing content piracy must not be driven by the large media companies to the detriment of us utilizing services that improve the way we work and share information. That, of course, is a hard concept for Congress to understand, after all money talks most loudly in Washington.

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The Big Show

Last week I conducted an audit of the Big Show or the 2012 National Retail Federation Conference. It is a big event with over 400 exhibitors. I was curious to see if it might be time for Broadvox to exhibit. The show is so large I think we would be swallowed up by its sheer size and diverse subject areas. However, one major message delivered by most of the application and solution providers was “Get into the Cloud”. Cloud computing is clearly the delivery mechanism of applications for some time to come. This includes hosted communications as MegaPath, Sprint and EarthLink were touting their hosted offerings. Given an attendance of 22,000 attendees, there should be enough business there for additional service providers with hosted communications solutions.  

Next week is ITEXPO in Miami. I will be there and look forward to sharing more of what’s going on in Unified Communications and SIP Trunking.  If you want to me up while there, send me an email (dbyrd@broadvox.com) and I’ll do my best to find time on my schedule.

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See you on Monday…

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In listening to the new IBM ad for SmartCloud which asks should you trust an online bookstore or search engine with your critical business information (clearly digs at Amazon and Google), I am reminded of the role of trusted and knowledgeable partners. IBM is advising us that only it has the world class expertise to build, deliver and support businesses as they transition to the cloud. SmartCloud becomes another product/solution in their large product portfolio of hardware, software and services.  

Broadvox believes in Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and we believe in the continued success of our various equipment OEMs, distributors, VARs and agents. It is important for each member of our ecosystem to customize their value proposition and product offering to leverage the changing IT and communications landscape. It may not become “one size fits all” but the wrong size never fits.

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Friday, I discussed the Pareto principle (named after Vilfredo Pareto and always Italian) or 80:20 rule and how you might apply it to your business. I thought it would be useful to suggest various actions one could take after ranking your customers into top 20%, middle 60% and bottom 20%.

First, do not spend any time or money on your bottom 20%. Some even recommend hoping they will move to your competitors as this group can be costly to your bottom line.

Next, do focus your marketing efforts on the middle 60%. This group is profitable and worth an investment of time and energy. This is where you want to add new customers and work towards moving them into the top 20%. Marketing efforts are effective with this group and should include incentives, reward programs and, the dreaded, discount. Your marketing strategy should be developed around growing the middle 60%.

 Finally, the top 20% are probably spending all they can with you. There is little to no more up selling or expansion possible. Consequently, the key word here is “Support”. You do not want to lose customers in your top 20%. Personalized/targeted support is what they expect given their level of investment/trust in your business. Retaining these customers is critical. Most companies assign specially trained support personnel to address the top 20% to quickly cure any problems or issues.

Using the Pareto principle to identify customer segments, trends and behaviors is an excellent use of time and can lead to continuous business process and sales improvement.

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Okay, back to the 80:20 rule. If you have a data mining system that can analyze your customer’s purchasing patterns, then perhaps you can target your marketing efforts to push those particular products or services that attract the 20% of users who generate the 80% of revenue. Furthermore, you are able to avoid spending your time with the 20% of your customers that generate 80% of complaints, or the 80% of products that comprise only 20% of sales. While I cannot be specific about the actual algorithm employed by the Broadvox NOC to monitor for fraud, it can be noted that it too has a relationship with the 80:20 rule.

The Pareto principle can be applied to many situations and can lead to structural changes in how a business operates, hires or creates new products. However, analytics, whether addressing the physical or virtual world, should be used as a data source not as a decision tool. I do not use the 80:20 rule when I receive a customer complaint. If a complaint reaches me, it is handled. I do not base my involvement upon the size of the account. Yet, I fully realize that any business has to manage its customer service by addressing the needs of the 20% that generate the most profits with more personalize attention.

Data mining and analytical tools should be used to assist in determining what actions are best for the business. This can result in establishing new processes and the elimination of others, marketing programs that generate a dynamic sales increase while requiring minimal investment, or improving the loyalty of key customers as you maintaining the business of the rest. We perform customer analytics to identify our top 20%, middle 60% and bottom 20% customers. Consequently, we can establish priorities for every action of our business based upon where our customers place.

More on this next week.

Enjoy the weekend and I promise another new recipe on Monday!

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And now for the Refreshing News

After a 2011 that seemed to rebound from the slow equipment sales of 2009 and 2010, it looks like 2012 will be the year of Unified Communications, video conferencing and cloud computing. While Broadvox is investigating video solution to add to our product portfolio, we selected the Cisco HCS platform to succeed our awarding winning Unified Communications as a Solution (UCaaS) C4 IP solution. GO!UC joins our GO! product offering just as analysts are predicting Unified Communications to lead IT spending/investments for IT budgets. I say investing because 76% of companies implementing UC met or exceeded their ROI forecasts. Furthermore, implementing UC in conjunction with a transition to SIP Trunking only improved the ROI and delivered additional convergence features.

2012 will certainly be exciting for the IP community as innovation and growth are experience by our many partners and members of the IP ecosystem. Personally, I will continue to work towards advancing our industry and the success of our many partners. Join me here three days a week to learn about industry trends, the best marketing practices and more. I will do my best to educate, entertain and elucidate IP communications and food.

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