Ringgggg!!!
Telephone's ringing! Sounds like a VOIP call.
By Oliver B. Patton,
Washington Editor
If you're looking for ways to improve customer service, tighten management control and save some cash, you might want to consider dropping your plain old phone service and plug into the Internet. Protocol telephony – it goes by a variety of names, including Voice Over Internet Protocol or VOIP for short – has been available for several years. Today it's the preferred option for businesses that are installing new phone systems or upgrading old ones. Through VOIP, voice and data lines are integrated so that your telephone is linked to your computer, creating the opportunity for cost savings and productivity gains. It used to be practical only for the largest companies with big telephony budgets, but now providers are offering systems that can be attractive to smaller businesses.
Not a lot of truck lines have made the move yet, but technology consultant Jeffrey A. Keller of Keller Services says that sooner or later, everyone will. Keller, who was speaking at a conference in Tarrytown, N.Y., sponsored by Carrier Logistics Inc., a provider of management software to the LTL industry, was not overstating it by much. According to Larry Stein, marketing director for IP system provider ShoreTel, at least 80 percent of the business phone systems installed today are IP systems.
One truck line that made the move recently is Gless Brothers Trucking, a nationwide tank line based in Bluegrass, Iowa. President Steve Berger said he got interested when his local telephone integrator, Midland Communications, introduced him to ShoreTel's system in a presentation.
Gless, which runs 110 tractors and 200 trailers and has 145 employees, saved money with its new system, but just as important, it gained more control over its communications, Berger said. "Your computer terminal can be an extension (of your phone)," he said.
That computer-telephone connection can be quite powerful, particularly in an industry like trucking.
"(Trucking) tends to have decentralized operations, and that's really where the economies of VOIP play out," said Lou Person, president of Traxi Technologies, a communications service provider who also spoke at the CLI conference.
With VOIP, a carrier can centralize communications-intensive operations such as customer service and dispatch, as well as management of the system, Person said. "You can also distribute it very easily," he said. One person at headquarters can handle all calls for all branches, or the calls can be distributed directly to the branches. And, if a call is not being answered at one branch, it can be answered at another – without the customer knowing the difference.
Wiers International Trucks of Plymouth, Ind., demonstrates the point. Wiers doesn't haul freight, but it sells trucks from 10 locations and has found ShoreTel's VOIP system to be key to its aggressive expansion.
Geoff Payne, chief financial officer, explained that he started looking at VOIP a couple of years ago as a way to simplify and control the process of opening new dealerships or branches.
"Prior to the change, we had five different phone systems among 10 stores," he said. "Each store had its own local phone switch, and utilization of equipment was different everywhere." The company had plain old telephone service between stores, high-volume T1 lines into some stores but not others, and, as Payne put it, "a fistful of data services" such as frame relays, ISDN, DSL and dial-up.
"VOIP simplified that," he said. "By integrating voice and data it allowed us to worry about only one network. We didn't have to install a separate phone system in each location. We have one central infrastructure and simply add nodes."
In order to make it happen, Wiers had to upgrade its data network – it now has dedicated T1 lines at all locations. That, plus switches, licensing fees and ShoreTel handsets, made for upfront installed costs of about $600 per handset, but day-to-day running costs go way down, Payne said. (Lou Person noted that installed costs might run higher – up to as much as $1,000 – depending on the number of users.)
For example, with plain old telephone service you might pay a vendor as much as $400 to move a phone from one cubicle to another. "Today," said Payne, "all you do is pick up the phone and plug it into a new jack."
There is more to it than that: Someone has to tell the system to make the change. With VOIP, that just involves a few keystrokes at the computer.
Payne listed other cost savings: Former long-distance calls are now local if the destination is local to any branch of the company; all calls between branches are free; and by aggregating all long-distance it has enough volume to negotiate a block rate on a T1 line.
There are additional operational benefits from the unification of voice and data – what Person of Traxi Technologies calls CTI, or computer telephony integration. For example, Payne of Wiers International described a ShoreTel product that links the phone system with his Windows Outlook program. Now he can place a phone call from his computer by typing in a few letters of the person's name, and voice messages can be forwarded like an e-mail message. More valuable, he said, is a system that allows him to make conference calls without hiring a third party to do the set-up, and the ability to forward office calls to cell phones.
Gless Brothers and Wiers International represent two different approaches to the VOIP changeover.
The tank line had its telephony integrator handle all the particulars. It leases the equipment and pays a monthly maintenance fee. "It was not hard to get it running," said Berger. "It took a little training but the staff picked it up pretty quickly."
The truck dealer took a more hands-on approach. Payne used a local integrator to help with the initial installation. An in-house network technician shadowed that job, and with the help of ShoreTel Wiers was able to complete the installation on its own.
For the first installation, Wiers started up the VOIP system in parallel with its existing system, but after that the installation was completed in one evening. "One day they were using the old telephones and the next day they came in and they had the new telephones," Payne said.
Payne's experience is consistent with Person's counsel: While it is possible to ease into VOIP, you should be wary of setting up a system with too many parts. "If you are leveraging existing infrastructure with brand-new infrastructure, you have to weigh the pros and cons," he said. "If, for example, you keep your old handsets with a plan to replace them in a second phase, you're still supporting two systems and they have to talk to each other."
One big thing to watch for, said both Person and Payne, is the quality of the communications network. "Make sure the network is robust enough, otherwise your calls can sound like two chickens talking to each other," Person said.
Payne suggests installing a pilot system before making the plunge. "Don't purchase unless you can get a pilot on a scale that reasonably approximates what the finished product will look like," he advised.
