Savings for Seasonal Businesses

Effectively managing call traffic during peak and lull periods is critical for seasonal businesses. Rapid expansion of the seat/trunk capacity to a location can help ensure that an unexpected event can be covered by quickly reactivating the call paths that are in “off-season” mode along with creating forwarding, attendant and ring scenarios that support the business needs, as personnel staffing expands at the start of an “on-season” period.

Businesses that are most commonly associated with highly variable calendar or time-based changes can include: regional amusement parks and associated businesses, vacation destinations, ski centers and even some governmental entities. These businesses need a rich and flexible service set to support the increasingly complex logistical and operational requirements that are placed on their business by changes in volume and traffic demographics.

Seasonal hosted services provide specially tailored packages of tools for seasonal businesses that include near real time seat suspension and turn-up capabilities, attendant tools, unified messaging, automated attendant capabilities, and mobility services. These tools help to control the costs involved with seasonal or calendar-based changes, while keeping the feature sets in place to allow a business or organization to communicate effectively with reduced staff and resources.

GLOBALINX service packages are available without the cost and limitations of trying to modify premises-based equipment to meet the fluctuating needs of a seasonal business. With these packages, retailers can dramatically reduce their total cost of their “off-season” communications, while leveraging a quick ramp-up to full capacity when their “in-season” period begins.

A Cloud Burst: Great Potential in The Cloud

Unless you’ve been living under a rock these past few years you’ve heard about “The Cloud” as a broad term for how applications and services (such as email, ordering systems, banking, Hosted Telephony services, document storage and many others) would be delivered to individuals and companies over the Internet (e.g. the Cloud). There’s been a lot of talk about the greatly increased potential for providing these services through The Cloud. Most of this increased potential has occurred as a result of “thinner” or more efficient program platforms combined with a dramatic increase in Internet Access bandwidth. When combined, these two technology improvements have allowed “Cloud” based applications and services to be efficient and effective for most users.

It is interesting to note that “Cloud Services” have actually been around for users for quite some time. Ever heard of Gmail? It’s in The Cloud. How about Google Docs? On-Line Banking? Netflix? All of these services are in The Cloud.

The increased potential of The Cloud really shows itself in small to medium businesses. The Cloud allows these businesses to “host” their normal office services (such as Email, Telephony services and Web Site hosting) offsite; which can result in huge savings over maintaining these programs and platforms at each location or desktop. If a small business does not have the means to purchase their own servers and other hardware, they can “lease” space and technology in The Cloud and host websites, email, Human Resource programs, even their phone systems. Not surprisingly, these are called Hosted Services because the information is not stored on equipment belonging to the business. These services are hosted at a partner's site in “The Cloud”.

When it comes down to it, Hosted Services level the playing field between the SMBs and the Enterprises. Hosted Services allow SMBs to stop worrying about internal processes like email and phone services and spend more time selling their own products and services.

Here’s a Call Center example. It can often cost up to a million dollars for a Call Center to install all the fiber lines, premise based telephony hardware and software, plus hire a maintenance staff to make a call center run properly and efficiently. Instead that Call Center could purchase Hosted IVR services. Hosted IVR is a Call Center program that is hosted in The Cloud and can be accessed by a laptop anywhere with an Internet connection. It costs much less than if a business did everything themselves. Call Center employees can work from home with a Hosted IVR system and all that is necessary is a laptop and a USB phone headset. A desktop phone is not necessary. Hosted IVR systems also have tremendous call statistics (especially the GLOBALINX Hosted IVR) that are recorded and saved in The Cloud.

A Call Center can save so much money and get so much more with a Hosted IVR system. There are minimal hardware installation costs, no money spent creating call center software and a minimal on-site staff needed to support all of this technology, plus the company has access to complete call statistics and the Hosted IVR system can be accessed anywhere with Internet connection.

That’s the true potential of The Cloud and without a doubt there are so many more possibilities to come.

GLOBALINX SIP Interconnection

Bringing Businesses into the Present without a new Telephony System

Companies do not need to invest in a completely new telephony system if they wish to enter the world of VoIP. It is very possible to use their current Legacy TDM PBX with GLOBALINX SIP Interconnection.

With GLOBALINX SIP Interconnection, we can simply add an Integrated Access Device (IAD) to translate the analog signals from a business’s Legacy TDM PBX into an IP-based signal. The business will be able to make outbound VoIP calls and their inbound calls will also be delivered through VoIP. This can save the business quite a bit of money.

Here’s how they’ll keep extra cash with SIP Interconnection from GLOBALINX:

1. There is no need to invest in a new telephony system. A company will only need an IAD for their SIP Interconnection, which is available to buy or lease from GLOBALINX.
2. VoIP is much cheaper than traditional voice methods, reducing monthly line expenses and administrative expenses.
3. Voice Mail, Call Forwarding, Call Waiting and more features can be included with the GLOBALINX SIP Interconnection service, if needed.
4. GLOBALINX also provides disaster recovery solutions to redirect calls so companies never miss a call back from a hot lead.

GLOBALINX SIP Interconnection is a great way to save a customer money without changing their existing telephony system. Visit the “Marketing Documents” section of the GLOBALINX Agent Website to download informational flyers to hand to prospects about SIP Interconnection and SIP Trunking.

Why Hosted PBX is Perfect for Small to Medium Businesses

We’ve been getting a few questions about Hosted PBX service and how it can fit businesses. In short, Hosted PBX service is perfect for small businesses that have 50 employees or less.

There are many reasons why a small business would want to use Hosted PBX service. The first, and most important, is that there is no need for expensive on-site phone system equipment. Hosted PBX service uses a IP based soft-switch so all calls go through the Cloud, eliminating the need for PRI-ISDN Trunks or POTS Lines. Since there is no need for expensive onsite PBX control equipment, there is also a reduced need for staffing to help support this equipment. The monthly payments are also much less than ISDN Trunks (PBX) or POTS (KSU) premise based solutions for small companies if the company remains below 50 seats.

Once the company goes over 50 seats on a Hosted PBX service the cost of individual MRCs comes into play more and it is necessary to start looking at SIP Trunking solutions to their current onsite premise telephony equipment to help keep overall costs down.

We encourage you to review and use the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) analysis tool that is available on the Agent site in the Marketing Documents section, behind the login, to assist you and your customers in making the correct choice between Hosted PBX or SIP Trunking.

Double Polycom SPIFF Now

Starting today, GLOBALINX Agents will be rewarded with double the SPIFF when they sell Polycom phones with GLOBALINX Hosted PBX service.

Now, instead of receiving $25 dollars for every Ploycom Phone sold, an Agent will receive $50 for every Polycom phone sold with Hosted PBX service.

If the Agent completes the VoIP Sales Training Course from Polycom, or has one member from their team complete the course, they will be rewarded with $100 for every Polycom phone sold with a Hosted PBX service. (Click here for directions to register for the VoIP Sales Training).

Refer to the blog posted on June 3rd, “Get Cash for Every Polycom Phone You Sell.” In this piece GLOBALINX Agent, Jane, made $1,000 just from the 20 Polycom phones she sold. Doing that during this last week of June would earn her $2,000. Pretty impressive.

Read about this Promotion at Channel Partner's Online

One Trunk, Five Seats

Finding the best option for customers while also saving them money is important in customer relations and keeping customers happy. A smaller/midsize business with about 30 employees may have a SIP Trunking service to their IP or TDM-based PBX. A great way to save a customer money is to remember that it is not necessary to have one trunk for every seat. In most cases, businesses can have about five seats for every trunk. When you combine SIP Trunking on a T-1 with the customer’s Internet access on a single Converged connection, you can often eliminate a voice T-1 into a business and save the customer even more monthly cost.

So if we apply this rule, a company that has 40 employees would only need eight trunks, which could occupy as little as 400K of a 1.5Mb T-1, leaving plenty of bandwidth for Internet access on the same Converged loop. If this company were to buy a trunk for every seat it would cost about $600.00 monthly. Eight trunks would only cost about $160.00 monthly, plus $300-500 MRC saved when the Voice T-1 is eliminated. This can save the customer a significant amount of money on a monthly basis.

You can see the difference.

Unfortunately, we cannot apply this rule to call centers or call center departments because phone usage is too high for one trunk to accommodate five seats.

Get Cash for Every Polycom Phone You Sell.

The title says it all. All applicable Agents receive at least $25 for every Polycom phone sold with GLOBALINX Hosted PBX service during the month of June. If an Agent, or a member of an Agent’s team, has taken and passed the Polycom VoIP Sales Training course we will increase the spiff to $50 for every Polycom Phone sold with Hosted PBX service in June.

(Registering for the Polycom VoIP Sales Training course is explained in a video on the May 11th blog post.)

Let’s put this in perspective with a little story…

GLOBALINX Agent, Jane, took two hours Monday morning to take and pass the Polycom VoIP Sales Training course. Jane had scheduled her whole morning to take the course but it had only taken her a couple of hours so she was able to catch up on her email and read the latest telecom headlines before meeting a prospective customer at 1:30.

Jane’s prospective customer was a small business, employing about 25 people. The business provides a service by fixing speakers, mixers, and other audio equipment used in live entertainment performance settings. Jane recommends a Hosted PBX service to the business because of their smaller size. Jane also recommends Polycom phones for the business aware of the added-value and knowing that Polycom phones are HD-capable without having to buy extra bandwidth to support the HD. The business is very excited to hear about the HD features of the Polycom phones and can appreciate the value of great sound being in the business of audio equipment.

The business takes Jane’s recommendations and signs up for GLOBALINX Hosted PBX service and buys 20 Polycom phones. Eighteen of the phones are Polycom SoundPoint IP 335 phones and the other two are Polycom SoundPoint IP 650 phones, one for the receptionist and one for the CEO.

Jane receives her regular commission payment for the new Hosted PBX account AND receives $50 for every Polycom phone she sold that day because she had completed the VoIP Sales Training course. So just for selling Polycom phones with GLOBALINX, she earned an extra $1,000!

Not a bad day’s work.

Get your order in quickly. This promotion only runs until 6/30/11.

Visit the "Promotions" page at www.GLOBALINXagent.com to learn more