Buying/Evaluating a phone system?
October 27, 2009
For starters interview several vendors and “partner” with the one that you want to do business with. This is an important first step as most reputable manufactures (Avaya, Interactive Intelligence, Siemens and Cisco) all have similar products and depending on the size of your company all will perform well. This is why it’s important to find the correct vendor for your business and make sure that they understand what you do, how you do it and what goals you’re trying to accomplish – not just how many phones you need and what the “flavor of the week” is in terms of the technology. It’s not the technology that solves problems, it’s the people; the technology is the vehicle in which the problem is solved. Also, try to find a vendor that will educate you on what is available in the market place and also represents several manufactures. This will enable you to make the correct decision that is right for you – empower yourself. The sales cycle is typically 6-9 months (give or take) because there is so much that goes into the evaluation process. Most legitimate best in class business phone systems range in price from $8k to over $100k depending on applications and complexity.
Technology as a Business Strategy
April 24, 2008
When you think of business strategy, you think competitive advantage, or pricing, or promotion. But what if Technology could actually give you an advantage in growing your business?
When we talk with business owners/presidents/leaders, we ask the very simple question:
“Based on what you want to accomplish over the next few years, what are some of the strategies you will engage in to get to that vision.”
What we are looking for is how technology can actually help quicken the process from your Current Reality to your Future Reality.
One company we know told us their vision was to be the largest producer of their product in the state. In order to get there, they had to invest in infrastructure so they could grow quickly.
Fortunately for them, there were distinct advantages that technology could bring them–one of which actually helped them bring more customers – which was part of their goal.
Your business strategy can include many things–but technology just might be something that can touch other elements of strategy. Thus, it makes your path to your vision quicker and more efficient. G3 is committed to understanding what’s most important to your business and takes a future oriented approach to reaching your objectives. The bridge below helps illustrate this ideology.
Of course your objectives may differ from those in the model and that is where we can help. G3 adapts to your situation to provide you with the most ideal technology solution to realize your vision effectively.
Discovering Opportunities to Drive Competitive Edge
April 2, 2008
We caught up with Lisa Hill last week. Lisa is our VP Sales and is quite involved in helping clients identify the major issues they’re trying to solve with technology solutions.
Lisa and her team have a unique way of handling customer meetings and the sales process itself. We thought you’d like to hear it in her words. This may help you know what to expect when you ask G3 in to discuss your goals and issues.
How to Create Value: Process, Product, or Both?
March 21, 2008
Well, to be honest, we get a lot of questions upfront: Are you going to blow me away with technology terms? Or, try to sell me something that I’ll never understand how to use? Or, sell me more than I need?
Those are good questions. (It sounds like you’ve bought technology before.) Well, we do things differently here, and our philosophy is that we don’t aim to sell any particular product like others do. We actually care about the product only to the extent that its solves your problems.
Here is Our Thinking:
We want to provide the optimum value when you get your new system installed, whatever it might look like. In the past, when we haven’t done our due diligence — to find out exactly what you need — we realized down the road that there were things that were left out. That isn’t good for anyone. Consequently, the G3 Process is a vital part of our value to you.
Explore Your Business
First, we Explore your business. We ask you questions about your direction, your strategy, your technology initiatives and other important items. Then, we tell you a little about how our best customers are using technology to solve business problems.
Deeper Diagnosis
Next, we go into a Deeper Diagnosis of the issues and goals you have. If technology isn’t solving a business problem, then we won’t recommend it. You may meet some other people from G3 at this point. And you might bring in more of your people to make sure we have input in all areas before we recommend anything.
We used to witness the “One Purchaser” phenomena where one person would buy technology then no one would use it because they were never consulted. That’s a mistake we won’t let you make.
Recommendation
Then, we come back with our Recommendation. That way, we are recommending solutions that fit the business goals and objectives that we discovered in the Exploration phase.
You might think this is overkill – too long of a process – but technology has taken on such an important part of a company’s competitive strategy that we would be doing you a disservice if we didn’t pay attention to the long term vision.
And, we don’t want to get that phone call from you in six months where you say, “Hey, why didn’t you tell me you did this? If I’d have known that…” well you know the rest.
If you want to speak with one of our specialists, call us at 317.872.8888 and we’ll be glad to walk you through our process in more detail.