One of the things that I like doing more than just about anything else is to test-drive gear and applications. Finding some gem to pass along to a customer or prospect is always a good thing. The folks at My1Voice fall under the company blanket of Protus that provides SaaS communications services and solutions to businesses. Protus has three distinctive offerings to virtualize companies while saving them money. First is myFax, an Internet fax service that we've used and passed along to our customers for several years without any problems. Our faxes arrive on our mobile devices and office email. Campaigner is a marketing contact management tool that provides bulk mailing with opt-in lists for permission-based marketing with automatic CAN-SPAM compliance. The third element is My1Voice that is a feature rich virtual phone service geared towards SMBs and startups.Startups have a long history working with my company and the key points to understand are really basic business rules. First, you must preserve cash and keep cash flowing in more than it goes out while saving some for rainy days. The majority of folks still think using OPM (Other Peoples Money) is still the only viable business solution. Remember, Cash is King. Startups are good for business but what knocks the wind out of their sails is that they buy into having "stuff" and wares that they spend too much money on. The first couple of years are the most vulnerable for startups and we've installed new and used systems for them. Some of the new are back on the block within a year, meaning the company closed because their cash outlay was too great initially. The customers with used come back later when they've established themselves and right-buy what they can afford and are suited to take on. These are the best kind of customers.
Another hampering effect is that startups sometimes lack business acuity and experience. They buy hardware solutions that they can't afford to maintain over the life of the gear. Going back to my earlier premise--when the money is someone else's money (investment) do the startups really treat the money with the right degree of respect?
Businesses in the SMB space are often cited for "lacking" the technical ability to evaluate, implement and then manage technical solutions. Thus a huge selling point of "convergence" from a dealer/VAR perspective is by putting all the gizmos in one box for one vendor to manage for the customer. But it's also fair to say that it's also a key selling point of hosted solutions. Customers can grow into these converged premised based solutions instead of trying to climb out of them. In management this "re-work" and re-working means loss of resources and the monies misapplied can turn the business upside down pretty quickly.
My1Voice provides features such as auto-attendant, multiple extensions and voicemail services that give a professional face to callers while also allowing small to medium-sized business employees to stay in touch with the office via phone, email or the web. So with that I do think that managed services offer a high degree of suitability especially for startup companies and in lieu of starting with a premise hardware solution, look instead to a solid hosted solution. For startups that are successful you then may grow into a premises-based solution or it may be "hybrid" or you may find staying with the hosted continues to serve your needs.
The virtual telephone system puts a business front on the business and crosses those old Bell company borders that drive everyone nuts when obtaining telephone services. Whenever the business front door is taken for granted, another mis-opportunity contributes to ultimate business failure. I've said before that the telephone is the business front door and it is a look into the real heart and soul of companies. Joseph Nour, CEO of Protus said, "Quality communication is the cornerstone of customer service and in the current economy, it's customer service that will win the day. My1voice provides start-ups, entrepreneurs, business people with multiple offices and others the type of customizable communications options that haven't been available in the past to small businesses, helping them show a more professional face to their customers and business partners."
The ability to not become too tech dependent is made easy with these three services from Protus. The services of My1Voice I think are good for other companies besides startups and whether or not they already have an IP-PBX or TDM solution in place. When I evaluated the plans of My1Voice and the minutes of each and with overage of any plan, it's easy to see that the base price is just 7 cents per minute and overtime is 5 cents per minute for the basic plan. The other two plans come in at .03 cents per minute and the overtime charge is still 5 cents per minute. Whether or not you use SIP trunking services as a mechanism to lower costs, the My1Voice rates are competitive until you get into medium and large enterprise usage volumes and then you are encouraged to negotiate with My1Voice. So for the many small and dispersed businesses wanting to get that communications glue and keep it intact, it's hard to beat what Protus offers.
So for now I'm left with some questions that I want to resolve on my own adventures before going further. We're signing on for a customary free trial demo with My1Voice and no, I'm not ditching my IP-PBX. I'll report back why I'm signing and with what I find.
