Utah Bar Journal

I started watching VoIP development in the mid-1990s when the Baby Bells started screaming that early adopters were using headsets connected to PCs to place free calls across the Internet to avoid pricey long-distance and overseas toll calls. I also started using it, but there were issues with the connection quality. Calls either broke up or suffered lags that made conversation difficult. In the past 5 years, however, VoIP has quickly matured to the point that Baby Bells are starting to provide it as a default phone service option in certain metro areas and a number of companies, such as Vonage and AT&T CallVantage, are rapidly expanding their subscriber base.

Why VoIP?
As a technical person, the appeal of VoIP was the consolidation of voice and data into a single framework that would be easier to manage than the two separate systems. Another attraction was the ability to create applications that would allow the ability to tie data to the phone system. (For example, when a memberÕs record is called up in the membership management application, a staff person could tap on it to either call or send a fax to the numbers on file.) VoIP is better suited to provide unified messaging where the voicemail and email are accessed via an integrated mail client such as Outlook, GroupWise or Lotus Notes.

All that geek-love aside, the primary appeals of VoIP are practical and economic. In my professional life, I have managed a dozen transitions to new phone systems. In terms of logistical requirements, the VoIP solutions seem to have the fewest numbers of hurdles and potholes in terms of installation, programming and maintenance, thereby making for a relatively low cost implementation. In the long term planning view VoIP and related technologies are where the equipment makers and service providers are heading, and while I am comfortable buying 'behindÕ the curve on business computer equipment and software, doing it with a phone system is an ugly gamble.

The Utah State Bar Goes Shopping
The first issue we looked at in considering a new phone system was at our existing phone and communications bills. With the Internet connection, phone lines, conference services, and long distance, the Bar averaged a monthly phone bill of $2,000. A major goal was to find a solution that would consolidate and reduce phone service costs.

Our first call was to the provider of our phone lines to see what could be done to expand the level of service while reducing overall costs. Once we had a bid in hand from the phone company detailing what types of phone lines would yield the best combination of service and costs, we went looking for gear to match it.

The Bar and the Utah Law & Justice Center had several fundamental requirements going into the hardware search:

1. Reliability in phone and voice mail services
2. Supportability
3. Low cost per user
4. Ease of use
5. Local and Long Distance call accounting
6. Staff access to training and documentation

The Bar staff also had an extensive list of features that were on a wish list:

1. Receptionist Station that could quickly determine staff status and route calls to either individuals or departments
2. Caller ID
3. Call recording
4. Secure fax to desktop
5. Conference calling
6. Forward to offsite extension
7. Telecommuting
8. Headsets instead of handsets
9. Improved call management

Bar management had its own set of requirements for a new phone system:

1. Low lease cost
2. A minimum lifespan of 10 years
3. Productivity tools to assist the Bar in maintaining its low staff to member ratio
4. The ability to quickly expand AND contract services as staffing or requirements changed
5. The ability to generate usage reports down to the phone level for time management and records purposes

With these goals and costs in hand, we contacted several vendors of local phone equipment and a company that provided phone service outsourcing. After receiving bids from the phone equipment re-sellers, the average phone equipment hard cost of maintenance and lease in a 60 month term was $1,000, which would sit on top of that phone service cost of $2,000. The upside to these proposed solutions would be that at the end of the 5 year term we would eliminate the equipment cost and continue to operate under a maintenance contract that would be about $350/month and would have the gear in-house allowing us to change maintenance providers if the need arose.

The outsourcing vendor provided a bid that was a radical departure from these traditional hardware bids in that they would provide access to a centralized switch with the phone lines, long distance and fire-walled Internet access. The cost would be variable since long-distance was included but the target average monthly bill would be $2,500 with a base minimum of $2,100 per month over a 60 month contract term. The downside to this was a certain loss of control as the primary phone gear would not be in our building. However, this risk could be moderated by selecting an equipment option that would allow us to plug in standard phone lines and provide basic phone service to the building should the need arise. As our confidence in the system grows we could remove this option and further reduce our monthly costs. Another downside is the risk associated with uncertainty. This is a new service and a new way of using phone service and this change is not without challenges in dealing with the existing culture and experience with the old phone system.

The upsides in this migration to an outsourced solution were enough to make the jump worthwhile. From an accounting standpoint, the system exists in our GL as a slightly higher but predictable utility payment, making our CFO happy. From a capacity standpoint, we have gone from being able to handle sixteen active calls to being able to handle up to 45 with little strain on the system. The system has excellent support for telecommuting, making it possible for a staff person to take home a phone, plug it into their broadband internet access and operate the phone as if they were in the office. (A warning note for telecommuters is that VoIP phones do not work well, or at all, with a standard dial-up internet connection.) This system provides better disaster recovery/business continuation options in the case of our lines being cut. If the worst should happen, the calls are immediately routed to the service providerÕs switchboard and their receptionist service answers the call as the Utah State Bar and then can route calls to either the voicemail located in their building or to a pre-programmed set of cell phones.

This difference in service delivery, rather than just the purchase of phone equipment, was recognized by the companies selling equipment. Each vendor I spoke to told me that they were moving forward to developing partnerships and implementing their own outsourcing solutions. The timelines ranged from 3 months to 18 months before implementation. As I had mentioned at the beginning of this article, the Baby Bells were unhappy with the appearance of VoIP, but they are now working to deliver VoIP as a standard service offering that harkens back to the old Centrex services.

Some Lessons Learned in Investigating VoIP
Whether you are planning on purchasing the equipment or accessing it as an outsourced service, there are some things to look for in making the selection of a VoIP solution. The major difference in evaluating a VoIP solution is not the equipment, but the software and applications that the system uses. Some sample applications that can be found in a VoIP solution are these:

1. Web based configuration of user phones, allowing for greater personalization of the phone.

2. Support for telecommuting. Whether this is taking a phone home and plugging it in or forwarding calls to a remote location or cell phone, this application determines how much of the phoneÕs functionality can be accessed and used by the remote user.

3. A soft phone application. This option will remove the handset equipment from a desk and turn the PC into the phone. This is a great application as it frees up desk space and generally will integrate with contact management software making the PC operate more like a cell phone than like a typical desk phone

4. Conditional messaging in Voice Mail. This is the ability to program the phone to provide a different message based on what the user is currently doing.

5. Presence Management. This is the ten-dollar term for knowing who is in the office and what they are doing. A good presence management application will allow a user to see the same type of display as the front desk receptionist does.

Questions for VoIP Vendors
1. How many VoIP installations have they done and for whom? Referrals become extremely important when making the switch. Being able to talk with, and make site visits to, other clients is crucial to evaluating a solution. Referrals should be able to answer questions on how the change over went, the degree and quality of the training, and what hiccups took place during the change. I also recommend asking for one negative referral source such as a client who left or a potential client who chose not to purchase the service. Part of this is entertainment because sales people really squirm when you hit them with this, but the main part is to see if there was something that was missed in terms of price or performance that killed the relationship or sale.

2. Can they provide a service contract for review? This service contract should spell out maintenance response times, levels of service and performance of the equipment, disaster recovery procedures and remedies for failure to meet these commitments. Once we had selected the vendor, the biggest time hit came to ironing out the contract. Our general counsel put in a lot of hours to ensure that the contract took care of us.

3. What is their financial standing? The telecommunications industry has gone through massive upheaval and consolidation in the past few years, so it is a fair question to find out the financial status of the company proposing the equipment and/or service.

4. How large is the local install base for the proposed equipment? In our case, three of the proposals were for the same piece of equipment, with key differences in implementation. If you have settled on a particular brand of phone equipment, call the manufacturer and find out how many service organizations in your area can support the gear. ItÕs comforting knowing you can jump if you need to.

Evaluating the Proposals
Vendor and equipment selection is a team effort. You should have the largest consumers of your phone service be the ones to help evaluate a proposed phone system. Demonstrations should be done at the vendorÕs location and onsite at a customerÕs place of business. I kept this team to about five, consisting of the building receptionist, two paralegals, the office manager, and a department head. After each demonstration, I had them fill out a two page evaluation sheet that rated the companyÕs performance at the demo, their satisfaction with the answers they received to their questions and their impression of the systemÕs performance.

The Initial Implementation
One of the great things about a VoIP system is that you can install it before pulling the plug on your old system. This allows for extensive testing prior to change over. We had our staff training completed and the system installed with phones on the desk for a week prior to the migration of our phone numbers which allowed the staff the opportunity to play with the phone and to get comfortable with its operations. We were able to sit down and determine the best default programming for the buttons and to provide the staff with a list of alternative button options so that they could customize the phones to meet their needs.

The one big snag that we hit was in the porting over of the phone numbers to the new service provider. After signing with the company, we signed a Letter of Authorization that would allow the phone company to move our existing numbers to the new provider. Friday was to be the day of the scheduled change over, but the BarÕs provider denied the port due to a perceived number mismatch. They wanted to do the port on a Monday morning, which would have been a disaster, so we negotiated to have the port take place on a Monday night one week later. Number port orders are a large variable, with the port generally taking place from 10 to 21 days after the order is received. Number port requests should be based on the current phone bill, which should have a complete listing of the phone lines and numbers in your office.

Once the system was installed we went through and called each number from a cell phone to ensure that the calls were being routed properly and that the unanswered calls wound up in the correct voice mail box. At each staff location we left a quick start guide, the phone user manual, and the voicemail user manual. We also sent an email reminding the staff of the key differences from the old system and the key facts of the system that were delivered during the training. The system does provide fax to desktop and unified messaging but we chose to focus the installation on basic phone system and plan on returning to the other applications with a follow up training session 30 days later.

There were also some costs that were not covered with the initial service. Headsets were not popular with the old system as they required a separate module that went between the set and the phone. The new system offered direct integration for headsets, so their use went up. We also had requests for longer phone cords and neck rests, which are not cheap but are worth it in curbing neck ache complaints.

The Aftermath
We have now been on the new phone system for a few weeks and as phone migrations have gone, this was the smoothest by far. We have found little hitches that were quickly solved and the staff has been very aggressive in learning what the system is capable of and requesting programming changes to take advantage of them. (Fortunately programming changes are covered by the maintenance agreement.) One thing I would recommend in light of this is to schedule some follow up training 2 to 3 weeks after installation to allow the staff to ask new questions once they have had a good opportunity to learn the system.

The staff has been impressed with the voice quality and the ease of operation and the receptionist is delirious with the PC based receptionist software. Already her average call time has dropped from 90 seconds to 50 seconds (Which is long in the receptionist business.) Members have commented that it is faster to get to a live person with fewer instances of winding up in 'voice mail hell'. From a financial standpoint, the projected monthly costs are inline with the initial estimates and have been flat across the board. In terms of long-distance, the bills are coming in under the average costs from previous years, so the CFO's outlook is still cheery. I plan on logging phone system events for the next year and will create a follow up article then. If you have any questions or comments on our migration experiences please feel free to send an email to webmaster@utahbar.org.