As the Greeks are topical at the moment I thought I would start with the thoughts of Sophocles. Finding the right advice is not costly but the wrong advice is really expensive and I am recommending someone else!
We are often asked about things like Websites, SEO or communications, as in telephones. This often occurs because many IT companies “dabble” in these areas without being experts. Although we started as a company that sent data over telephone lines in the ’70’s we know the difference between “Doing” and being an expert.
Anyone can make a web site but it takes the knowledge of an expert to design it, make it work and get it seen. That’s enough of a job for anyone. Our guys at cmx could probably become experts at it but its a time bandit and it isn’t what we do. The reason? for example with all respect to car mechanics its cheaper for us to pay you guys to service our own cars rather than take time out the working day to do it ourselves.
Its like that with telecoms. It used to be that you would phone up BT get a few normal “phone” lines and hang a phone off the end. We know a lot of businesses that have come a cropper still thinking life is that simple. The BT salesman ends up extracting £6K for ISDN lines or VOIP be selling the “honest guv, its only few pounds a week routine”.
We know of a few firms who have been sold totally inappropriate kit. For example a company had all the big toys in terms of telecoms but wanted to relocate to a home office with three lines. The quote they received from BT was in excess of £3,000 a year. All they wanted was to make outgoing calls from three people. We talked to them, they added a line to their existing arrangement added an Orchid phone system and three phones, total cost £400 for the equipment. We don’t do “Telecoms” but we know how to add a few lines and a basic system onto the wiring we install for computers.
If you want proper phone systems and proper communications then don’t talk to BT, Virgin, Talk-Talk, Sky they can only sell you their products and the more the salesman can rip you off and tie you in the more commission the sales person gets, not the best basis for Trust and a decent recommendation. The long deceased MD of CMX whom I replaced was a wise guy and I cherish a lot of his motto’s and as the text at the top says “Don’t base your decisions on the advice of those who dont have to deal with the results” was one of his.
We often get caught up in the, “Do you do phones?” question, immediately we can tell if our 4 lines and 16 extensions is suitable or not and we never recommend the other equipment “that we can get hold of” because its not right for the customer and breaks our ethos of being IT experts not “jack of all trades”.
Instead we turn to another expert and pass it to them, sometimes its just a question of what is best for a client but we are happy to hand over all the clients needs to these people who we know, like, and above all trust.
One of the questions I recently asked them was regarding one of our biggest clients and the advice was confirming what their own people had said, when I mentioned who this was and they did the decent thing as said oh they are good and if he is dealing with them, stay with him. I trust that advice, I know all the reasons, which I’m not going to share but they were good and again, ethical. I trust people who do that.
The choice is now staggering and I know many people who have installed VOIP to save money but they get inundated with false calls, The people who install ISDN for no good reason apart from they were sold it and the expensive stuff that goes with it.
If you are looking at phones for your business then talk to a whole of market expert, they need to get you the best deal so that in five years time, its still a good deal. We have a rule at cmx of “prove the need”, one of the ways you can do that with comms is to add up all the costs including calls in and out, yes incoming calls can cost you too, for a five year period, if you need a sit down when you see the figure then don’t do it without talking to an expert first. Don’t forget good advice is often free, its bad advice that really gets expensive. Talk to Sam O’Doherty at Ocean telecom 01284 729 869 and tell him I sent you.
On that topic before we disappear we were talking about BT a short while ago and they never cease to amaze us how they can screw anything up even if you plan for all eventualities, that’s why we like to deal with a UK telecoms company who deal with BT in the UK rather than the customer arranging everything through the nice people of India, I mean nice people, its their job and its not their fault they speak English and not talk it, there is a difference. Anyway, the ultimate screw up happened at one of our clients, they organised the comms to be installed three days before they opened. We had installed all the IT for the engineer to do the broadband next day. The engineer rolled up but unfortunately he could connect the broadband as the phone lines hadn’t been installed. The delay was an extra two weeks, HOLD THE ADVERTISING, MAGAZINES, OPENING PARTY, WEB SITE, LEAFLETS WE CANT TAKE CALLS OR E-MAILS, what a cost for all that hassle and missing launch dates! Should have talked to Sam at Ocean Telecom, he would have been on top of it every step of the way, how do we know that? Did I mention he is an expert in telecoms, which we, BT sales et al are not, and I know like and trust him and his company.