Small Business VoIP

As some observers have been predicting, competitors to Nortel (News - Alert) and to the firms that are buying the organs from this dying communications technology giant are now becoming the beneficiaries. Customers who want to avoid the hassle of dealing with product “end of life” issues and uncertainty with the new owners -- whose offerings that they had rejected before -- are going elsewhere.

SoTel Systems (SoTel), a wholesale supplier of business communications products and SIP services provider, is an example of this: It has entered into a strategic two-tier distribution agreement with Siemens Enterprise Communications Group (SEN Group), becoming the primary reseller of the SEN Group’s HiPath OpenOffice ME (HOOME) in the U.S.

Equally, if not more importantly, SoTel also selected HOOME to replace its existing Nortel communications infrastructure. Because SoTel’s TDM telephony solution from Nortel was approaching the end of its lifespan and the company recognized the value of SEN Group’s SMB products, it made perfect sense for SoTel to deploy HOOME in its own offices. SoTel is headquartered in Maryland Heights, Mo. with a satellite facility in Lancaster, S.C.

HOOME is an all-in-one UC appliance aimed at organizations with 20-150 workers. It combines phone calls, voicemail boxes, conferencing, fax, and messaging into a single, unified solution. It has other features including presence awareness, Microsoft (News - Alert) Outlook integration and mobility capabilities.

“We wanted to improve the way we communicated with each other at SoTel and externally with our customers, but we also wanted to be able to vouch for the value of HOOME when presenting it to our customers,” says John Reynolds, CMO at SoTel.

As an SMB, SoTel has a long history, it says, of providing quality telecommunication products with a focus on Voice over IP (VoIP) and resellers who effectively understand the needs of this market. It also has a deep understanding of SEN Group solutions and the value of VoIP, plus relationships with over 500 resellers, SoTel is well positioned to immediately deliver value and support to businesses looking to leverage the efficiencies of UC. By delivering the solution via two-tier distribution, SMB customers can now also take advantage of additional value-added services and ongoing support that SoTel can offer, tailored to their specific needs.

“Because we run HOOME in our own offices, we can tell potential customers first hand about the rich features and benefits of this product,” says Reynolds. “Since deploying it, we have recognized pure efficiency gains by moving to UC, which has helped us serve our customers quicker and better.”

One example of how the company is better serving its customers thanks to HOOME came shortly after deployment. A customer called an account representative on a Saturday looking to get two license cards delivered by Monday. The system routed the message to the representative based on his personal settings, allowing him to get the request and overnight out the cards in time to meet the customer’s requirements.

This was “a five thousand dollar opportunity that would have been missed, if not for the [HOOME system],” says Reynolds.