onsip.team's blog

Google has a knack for releasing hits and with the release of Google Voice, the company does not seem to show any signs of letting up.

It has been known for months now that Google Voice would be released sometime this year, and though the long-term effects of this development have yet to be seen (watch out Skype), business VoIP service provider OnSIP is seizing this opportunity to display its own innovations.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Google Voice will give users one phone number that can be linked with all the phones in their life. Users can set all their phones to ring at once when the Google number is dialed or have different phones ring according to the time and the caller.

These features may sound new to the consumer market, but the truth is that the main part of Google Voice has been available to customers for years now. With OnSIP’s virtual pbx, it’s already easy to set up which phones ring according to time to ensure that all incoming calls from clients are answered.

Since Google Voice is currently aimed at consumers, you need a person at the end of the line to accept calls. OnSIP, which provides business phone system services, replaces this person with an auto-attendant, giving any small business a large enterprise feel. OnSIP will soon also offer presence, an indicator of availability that Google Voice currently does not support, as part of their upcoming dashboard communication interface. The dashboard incorporates control of calls, presence, coworker status, and IM all in one browser window. Lets say that Rob gets a call from a customer but he cannot take it because he is already on the line. With OnSIP, he will soon be able to seamlessly transfer that call to John, who is available, with the drag and click of his mouse.

And the best part of this phone system solution? The price. Proprietary software vendors currently charge hundreds of dollars per user for a bundle package that does these same functions. Junction Networks currently charges no per user fees for their OnSIP hosted pbx, with business packages starting at as low as $ 39.95 a month for an entire company. What’s more, Junction Networks is currently planning on allowing customers to use the dashboard for free.

The Junction Networks team is planning a private beta of the dashboard with presence later this summer.

SIP based communication services are changing the world. If you haven't experienced the revolution yet you will, here's why.

1)It allows you to elegantly juggle how you want to respond to incoming calls. On the phone with an important customer but see a vital call from an employee about to go to sleep in Germany? With a SIP based solution you can re-direct the incoming call to an enterprise IM response and save it from ever going to voice mail. Now your closing the deal and ensuring the product will be available seamlessly.

2)It's anywhere you are. Many people are still tied to a physical phone location. Are you still changing your voice-mail while you are traveling to direct customers to your cell phone? With SIP you will never send your important customer looking for pen and paper again--your number will find you wherever you are, on whatever phone you input.

3)It does everything a million dollar PBX solution used to do. Want to dial shorter interoffice extensions? Want a fancy attendant menu when people call your business? SIP can do it, digitally at a fraction of the costs. Do you have more than one employee filling a similar role? Use the hunt group function to ring each of their lines in succession instead of sending a valuable customer to voicemail.

4)Data, data, data. How long does it take for incoming calls to be picked up by the sales department? Who answers the most incoming sales calls? Which customers are calling the service department the most. Because SIP solutions are all digital data is readily available. Great managers have great metrics; which new ones can you create with SIP at the core of our communications?

If better, faster, cheaper, more transparent, slicker; and downright cooler sound sexy to you check out SIP.

Being your own boss is great, but every business, even one run out of your home, has to turn a profit. The shorter the time between writing your business plan to being in the black, the better. Most of that will depend on how successful you are at landing clients or making sales. But you can help things along by keeping your expenses down.

The best place to start is with the things you don't need. Yes, the trappings of business can be cool and make you feel like you're a real business, but if you're just starting out it might be best to save the fleet of company trucks until a bit further down the road. If you can run your business out of the spare bedroom, for instance, that might make more sense than renting downtown office space. Even if you do need to get out of the house, look for cheap alternatives to high rents. When short story writer Ray Bradbury discovered he couldn't get any work done at home, he started working in his local public library.

Staying flexible in your business is a lot like staying flexible on the road. You need options that won't tie you down, and can grow with your business. If you're going to be doing business over the phone, you'll want a PBX eventually. The last thing you're going to want is telephone company technicians crawling through your home installing the thing, coming back to repair it, and then making periodic visits to install upgrades. Getting an online PBX gives you all the benefits of the real thing, without the equipment taking over a corner of your in-home office. It also means you can adjust how your calls are routed and check your call stats from the library, coffee shop, or wherever you are best able to work, even if it's not where your PBX is.

A flexible PBX also allows you to take advantage of competitive pricing that might otherwise be beyond your reach. With virtual PBX, just because you live in Chicago doesn't mean your employees need to. This means you're not limited to the local labor pool, and can seek out people who have key skills all across the country. Even if your team is spread across the continent, your phone system will route calls to everyone as if you were all in the same building, even if none of you are actually inside a building.

Finally, one of these experts should probably be an accountant, and you'll probably want them to be at least familiar with the laws of your state. A good accountant can help you keep track of exactly where your money is going, and help you keep track of data you'll need to maximize your tax savings. Money is the lifeblood of your business, and if you don't know what it's doing, you can't speak intelligently about how healthy your business actually is. It might seem a large expense at first, but as soon as you can't keep it all straight in your head, you'll need someone on top of the money before it gets away from you.

Photo credits: borman818, Lachlan Hardy.

Being on the road is no longer an excuse for being out of the office. Keeping on top of things on the road or in the air requires tools that keep you informed, organized, and in touch. Last time, we mentioned online CRM and noted that among its many strengths is your ability to pull up customer information anywhere you have internet access. With the 'net, you can take the rest of your office with you, no matter where you go. Here are two more tools to help you do that:

Voice Over IP (VOIP): Voice Over IP is basically just using your internet connection to transmit audio in real time, just like using a telephone. It has a number of key benefits over standard telephone and cellular services. The bulk of these stem from using a virtual PBX to manage your calls. This allows you to, among other things, change hunt groups and call routing at the drop of a hat through a web page, have a single number ring at multiple locations simultaneously, and track all your phone traffic through automated reports. It also allows you to treat locations that are geographically scattered across the contiguous 48 states as if they were all at the same location. A client who calls the main office in San Francisco can talk to an agent in Chicago or Seattle just as easily as they would someone across the hall. Having VOIP means you're always in touch, and your clients can always reach you.

Google Docs: Google Docs do for your online documents what online CRM does for your client resources. With your standard array of documentation software, such as spreadsheets and word processing, Google Docs allows you to save and share your work online. This means everyone in a scattered organization can access it, and it also means that you can pull it up on your laptop. So when the client calls over your VOIP service about your last billing report while you're in an airport halfway across the country, the numbers you need are a mouse click away.

Photo Credits: JoF, jimmyharris.

Having the right tools is vital to making the most of your business. It seems today that everyone has a new gadget or toy that can save you time and make you money. The real trick is figuring out which ones are right for your business. Here is a short list of recent innovations that really do make sense for many small and medium sized businesses.

Twitter - We'll start with what has probably become the most hyped new tool out there today. On paper, Twitter makes no sense. Mini-blogs of 140 characters seem silly. In practice, however, Twitter has become a potent builder of communities. Dell has announced that they've moved $1 million in merchandise through their Twitter groups. Domino's Pizza turned to Twitter when they needed to reassure customers after a disastrous YouTube video showed employees engaging in very unhygienic hijinks in the kitchen.

Twitter is easy to use, though it's suggested you get a helper application like TweetDeck to keep track of communications sent and received. The most obvious use of Twitter is alerting your fans and customers of new promotions and initiatives. Twitter communication can, however, work both ways. If you find a trendsetter your customers respect, following this person's tweets can keep you in the know about what your customers are interested in and what they think of you. It’s even better if you can become that trendsetter.

LinkedIn - This one hasn't gotten quite the buzz that Twitter has, but it may be even more useful from a business perspective. Keeping track of those old friends from college, contacts from previous ventures and jobs, and clients is a lot easier with this utility. Sometimes the difference between a big contract and the one that got away is who you know. With LinkedIn, it's a lot easier to find those old contacts who might be in a good position to help you today.

Google - According to a global Nielson Consumer Report published this past November, over 85% of the world's web surfers are shopping online. This was a precipitous increase from 40% in 2006. There's every reason to expect these numbers to grow. This means your customers are almost certainly using Google to find products and services just like the ones you sell. Actively engaging Google, either through the purchase of ads or the techniques of search engine optimization (SEO), only makes sense.

Hosted PBX - Your phones are the lifeline of your business. Your customers and clients need to reach you no matter where you are. A hosted PBX with a web interface to manage hunt groups makes it very easy for you to adjust who those calls reach inside your organization and adjust it as needed, without having to wait for a specialist to make time for it. In addition, a hosted PBX can help you track your calls, so you know just who is calling and why. Finally, a hosted PBX gives your small or medium-sized business the look of a big company, increasing customer confidence and willingness to buy.

Online CRM – Customer Relationship Management software helps you stay on top of everything you're doing with your clients, from prospecting to customer service. By organizing and standardizing your interactions with your clients, no matter who they speak with or what they want, they interface with every part of your organization as if it were a seamless whole. The most popular currently is salesforce.com. Because it's online, it travels with you everywhere you go. Even when you're in Boston, your office is in Chicago, and your client is in San Francisco, you have everything you need at your fingertips to complete whatever transaction comes up.

All of these technologies and tools are available for you today via the Internet. At the pace of change today, it can be difficult to keep up with all the new options available, but the health of your business requires you to make the most of every edge you can get. That means taking the time to learn the full range of your options, and which best fit your business model, is well spent.

Image credits: Appfrica, dannysullivan