When selling VoIP solutions, vendors and service providers must focus on how the solutions address SMBs’ top business challenges. As small businesses purchase technology solutions to solve their critical business challenges, these challenges, in the end, are inextricably linked to helping a small business increase its top-line revenues or lower expenses. Certainly in the world of converged technology solutions like VoIP--a world where devices, applications and communication services merge--vendors, service providers and channel partners must prove the impacts on the SMB’s top-line and bottom-line, not focusing on the bits-and-bytes of the technology itself.
The primary driver of VoIP adoption is cost savings, the following two drivers of adoption are revenue enhancement for SMBs. According to the Yankee Group’s 2005 SMB Communications, Broadband, VoIP Survey, 37 percent of small businesses have purchased or would purchase VoIP to save money on inter-office calling. Thirty-two percent of small business have purchased or would purchase VoIP to improve employee productivity, and 31 percent of small businesses purchased or would purchase VoIP to better allow their employees to work remotely.
Price-related issues will always provide ample fodder enticing SMBs to consider technology solutions. However, vendors and service providers, in order to avoid creating a world of commoditized converged solutions, must create market messaging around solving SMBs’ business challenges.
--Steve Hilton, Director of SMB study, The Yankee Group
Where startups and small businesses are concerned, expectations of results from VoIP vary greatly, depending on who, within the company, is responsible for evaluating–-and purchasing--business communications solutions. For example, one of our customers--a controller for a financing company--is completely focused on cost savings, even though the Avaya IP telephony system at his company has clearly transformed his business and enabled his firm to quickly add communication capabilities for employees during extremely busy times. Another Avaya customer, the president and CEO of a leading supplier of telephone headsets, is totally driven by providing exceptional customer service. He chose Avaya IP telephony for capabilities such as increased mobility, so he’s never out of touch with his customers or his employees. And the chief technology officer at a financial services firm chose the Avaya IP telephony system so he could manage his network by himself and use any kind of phone–-analog, digital or IP--with the Avaya system. His firm, in fact, saved over $40,000 in conferencing and site-to-site costs – but for them, that was viewed as a bonus benefit, and not a driver.
Intelligent communications for small businesses--which give businesses and workers increased agility through greater speed and responsiveness and provides greater control over communications--is flexible. As a result, small and medium businesses’ requirements from VoIP may differ, but they can attain their results, whether the initial focus is on cutting costs or generating revenue.
--Patricia Hume, Global Group Vice President, Small and Medium Business Solutions, Avaya
