Planning Company Growth And Telecommunications Submitted by Louis Sokol & Michael Mosier, Select Phone Solutions 281-501-6464 / lsokol@tservgroup.com / mmosier@tservgroup.com / www.SelectPhoneSolutions.com Successful businesses start out with a business plan. It keeps them on track, on budget, and on a road towards growing the business. Of course the key to a great business plan is the thought and planning that goes into it. Do you talk with your lawyer, CPA and other trusted advisors when creating that business plan? Does that group include your technical vendors? To build a worthwhile business plan you need accurate information from all of your trusted advisors. Not including your technical help is a recipe for wasted money, questionable growth and lost time. Technical vendors should include IT, phone systems, telecom, cabling infrastructure and security. You may have vendors who perform more than one of these but make sure that they are all covered. You must find out what your requirements will be for the present time and then project what your needs will be six months, a year, perhaps even three to five years in the future. You will want your technical capabilities to be proper for today and then capable of scaling up into what is necessary as you grow. Saving a few dollars each month at the start may cost you much larger dollars in the future if you are forced to totally scrap some technology and start over to grow. For example, spending $1000 for a few four-line phones from the local experts at the office supplies store may work for you right now. Your basic functions work but you have no metrics on how your phone system is used. You must mold your business to the features of the four-line system. You will miss benefits that your competitors may be using to get, keep and impress clients and prospects. You have no remote capability to connect into your phone system from the field for sales or technical staff. You are spending telecom (dial tone and long distance) money each month to support your phones and you are adding Internet service on top of that. You are likely in the $250 to $350 per month range when you total up everything. Push forward to needing 6 phone lines for more people and more handsets. You will have more computers to feed with increased bandwidth. Now you have to throw away your four-line phone system and buy a larger system. Your telecom costs are over $500 per month. It is time for a T-1 line that includes both the phone lines and the Internet bandwidth for $500 per month. It is time for a review of what you have and where you will be. But wait, didn’t you plan for this growth in your business plan? This growth should not be a surprise. Weren’t you aware that you would reach this point and plan for it from the start? Your technical advisors should have told you to get the T-1 and the larger phone system from day one if you are properly capitalized and you have faith in your business plan. You should have purchased a VOIP phone system that is scalable to 50 phones at little additional cost. The VOIP features for remote access, report metrics, and larger company benefits would have made your growth more likely without wasting the $1000 spent on the four-line phone system that hindered your growth. You might have spent $2000 to $4000 for the initial VOIP phone system but the benefits would already have made themselves worthwhile and linked you to future growth. What if you don’t have a business plan? Start one now! Gather your technical advisors and ask them what they recommend for your company. You can only improve your company’s future. Ask for your free phone system audit from Select Phone Solutions by calling 281-501-6464. About Our Show Advisors: Select Phone Solutions is a specialist in VOIP and especially for small businesses. We have 16 years experience in IT and because of that we know computers, networks and the infrastructure that makes the system work. Many phone system vendors today only know what the manufacturers tell them on sales sheets. They have to defer to tech support lines when anything goes wrong with your phone system. Can you wait for them to learn how to fix your phones? Because of the nuts and bolts experience of Select Phone Solutions technicians, they can both design the system that you need and also provide firsthand tech support for you without the need to first learn the system. Whether your system is 2 phones or 50 phones, you can have 24x7 monitoring of your system and an SLA to let you sleep at night. “Productivity Through Technology”