If you know the profile of the organizations that are likely to rent IP-Centrex, you should be able to focus on those good prospects and do a complete job of specifying the optimum solution for those customers. The concerns of a typical IP-Centrex customer now consist of two parts: considerations that are general to Centrex (as a rented, outsourced service) and considerations that are more specific to IP-Centrex (with powerful call-processing capabilities and related applications situated in the network, rather than on the customer's premises). The general Centrex-favoring factors are:
- Purchases are based on value, not simply on cost.
- Operating expenses are preferred to capital investments.
- Office size or telecom needs are changing quickly.
- Do not want to own or manage telephone systems.
Those additional factors, which tend to favor IP-Centrex, may be summarized as follows:
- Multiple business sites, especially nationwide or international, with a managed intranet is in use or planned.
- There are major requirements for flexible video or multimedia communications.
- More than 10% of employees are at-home workers, telecommuters, or travel extensively.
- There is significant need for contact center or unified messaging capabilities.
- Seasonal activities change telecom requirements considerably;
- Major IT activities, such as Web sites, are outsourced.
Small businesses, with up to 50 employees, are good IP-Centrex prospects, especially if they provide professional services, such as law firms, insurance agents, financial advisors, real estate agents, or health care centers. These small operations do not have any dedicated IT or telecom personnel, and thus rely on technical support from the service provider. Additionally, the advantages of combining all access lines into one are more significant for the smaller-scale offices.
The senior management of large organizations now view telecommunications as a strategic resource. These corporations expect high standards of quality, reliability, support, and vendor reputation, with ease-of-use and a full range of advanced features that enable outstanding customer service levels. Major businesses that handle large volumes of inbound or outbound calls worry about jeopardizing sales and customer service operations when their system is running at full capacity.
The redundancy of servers and network accesses that is the hallmark of carrier-based IP-Centrex is especially attractive in this environment.
These five questions may help a manager make the IP-Centrex or IP-PBX choice:
Is it significantly easier to obtain an annual operating budget rather than a capital budget for the purchase of telecom and IT technology? That is, does your company prefer "pay as you go" solutions?
Is management concerned about head count? Would they prefer to run operations with limited internal support personnel?
Are you finding it difficult to recruit competent network support personnel?
Does your company experience fluctuation in staffing levels?
Are you concerned with the ability of telephony system vendors to provide reliable service and support?
Two or more "yes" answers to these questions indicate that an organization should at least consider IP-Centrex service, if and when it becomes available in its location(s).
To summarize, in the medium and large telecom markets the organizations that are considered to be good IP-Centrex prospects are as follows:
- Financial services, especially banks;
- Retail store chains;
- Governments at all levels;
- Educational institutions of all types;
- Businesses that prefer outsourced solutions.
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