Tag Archives: Fremont

About 3122 days ago Telecom and Wireless

Can You Hear Me Now?

Paul Hollen has been in business for more than three decades. He’s managed an industrial parts distributorship and worked as a stockbroker, and currently serves as executive vice president and chief operations officer for Southcoast Community Bank, which he helped found in 1998 in Mount Pleasant, S.C. The higher he’s ascended the career ladder, the more the phone company has let him down. No matter which company he was dealing with or what the problem was, Hollen felt he was charged an arm and a leg for service that never failed to disappoint. The final straw came when he learned that he could not move a loan officer from one side of his bank to the other without calling in a technician. He began taking steps to get the phone company out of his life once and for all. It wasn’t difficult to do. Hollen simply purchased a PBX, or premise-based exchange — industry lingo for a phone switching system — that works with both the regular phone network and emerging voice over Internet protocol, VoIP, technology. Now, rather than going over the phone lines, most of Southcoast’s calls take place over the bank’s high-speed Web connection. Hollen uses a mouse to drag-and-drop employee phone numbers, making rearranging the office a cinch. If he needs to spend the day working in one of the bank’s six branches, he can have his regular phone number follow him there — again with the click of a mouse. Because the bank needs fewer phone lines, Hollen has shaved thousands of dollars a year off his phone bill. But even without the savings, he’d still be sold on VoIP. “The main business case,” he says, “is the flexibility VoIP allows me to have in my system.” Entrepreneurs attracted to Internet phone systems to save money are surprised by the superior features. If you know about voice over Internet protocol, it’s probably because you’ve heard how much cheaper it is than regular phone service. But entrepreneurs attracted to Internet-based phone systems to save money are finding that the ease of use and superior features are what keep them coming back for more. VoIP technology takes phone calls and turns them into digital files, which are broken into packets of data, sent through the phone network, and then converted back into voice calls on the other end. It’s similar to how the Web handles e-mail. The advantage of breaking voice calls into digital packets is that you no longer need a phone line to make a call — you simply use your broadband connection. It also means you can treat your phone calls like data files, which lets you fine-tune your phone system. VoIP has made significant inroads among consumers eager to trim their long- distance bills. But businesses are catching up. Already, 20% of companies with fewer than 99 employees either have some sort of VoIP service or expect to purchase it in the next 12 months, according to Access Markets International, a New York City-based research firm. As the size of the company expands, so does interest in VoIP, with 39% of all firms with 100 to 1,000 workers expressing interest in or making plans to purchase the technology, AMI found. “There’s definitely a transition going on,” says Robert Benhabib, the firm’s senior vice president. Steve Fleury began making the shift three years ago. Fleury, president and COO of Cambria Bicycle Outfitters, a bike retailer and mail-order firm in Cambria, Calif., dumped his phone and data provider after huge headaches resolving billing questions. He signed up with a VoIP company called GoBeam (which has since been acquired by Covad Communications Group). Monthly savings have been about 30%. But equally important is that Fleury now gets a bill he understands. “Instead of a 60-page invoice with all sorts of weird crap on it,” he says, “I get a bill that says you owe this much and here’s what you used.” New employees can be trained to use the system in less than an hour. Fleury also likes that he can save voice mails as files on his computer. Sure, there are some downsides. He misses the ability to redirect calls automatically when people are on the line, a feature he had with AT&T. But he likes VoIP well enough that he’s finally selling his old PBXs, which he had kept just in case the new system didn’t work. “We live and die by the phones, but VoIP’s been pretty darn solid,” he says. VoIP is not for every small business. Some of the software systems have a hard time accommodating more than 10 users. And there’s a flipside to VoIP’s low costs. The service is so cheap largely because it runs over the public Internet — which means it can suffer from service hiccups. “VoIP is not perfect,” concedes Bryan R. Martin, CEO of 8×8, a Santa Clara, Calif., maker of VoIP software. But Martin says many of his small-business customers see the gain in features as enough reason to accept a small drop-off in reliability. Another issue to consider is what would happen during a blackout. The phone companies run their own power generators; that’s why you can still make a call when the power grid goes out. Not so the Internet. If your company requires absolutely rock-solid service, opt for a hosted service, such as Covad’s vPBX and PBXi. It’s pricier, but more reliable because hosted services route calls over a secure network rather than the public Internet. A bulletproof system, such as the one used by Southcoast’s Hollen, can cost as much as $50,000. Whatever you buy, you may need at least one landline for your alarm system and 911 calls — which many VoIP services do not support. But even if VoIP isn’t ready yet for your business, keep an eye out. With the technology spreading, some traditional phone companies already are trying to match VoIP’s features and prices. Traverse Networks, a telecom start-up in Fremont, Calif., for example, is working with large wireless carriers on a service called InTouch, which includes VoIP-like features such as call management and a unified voice mailbox. Indeed, some of the coolest VoIP features are yet to come. For example, 8×8 plans to add a feature Martin calls “Hollywood Squares conferencing,” which lets you put multiple people on the video screen at the same time. Meanwhile, look for VoIP systems geared to specific kinds of businesses. A package geared to law firms, for example, will log phone calls into the firm’s accounting systems automatically, making it much easier to account for billable hours. Companies of all sorts might integrate their phone systems with customer databases so customers on hold will be reminded of recent purchases or told of specials on things they might not have purchased in a while. Down in South Carolina, Paul Hollen is waiting with excitement. “I’m not smart enough to think of all the things we’ll be able to do,” he says. VoIP Venders Looking to ditch the phone company? Here are some options. (All charges are per month.) 8×8 Santa Clara, Calif. www.packet8.net $35-$40per line Free, unlimited videoconferencing. Covad Communications Group San Jose, Calif. www.covad.com $37-$60 per line Runs on a Covad T1 line, not public Internet — that means better service. Nuvio Kansas City, Mo. www.nuvio.com $40-$50 per line Runs on phone lines, not the public Web, providing greater flexibility. VoicePulse Jamesburg, N.J. www.voicepulse.com $46 per line Easy to use, but geared more to consumers than businesses. Vonage Holdings Edison, N.J. www.vonage.com $40-$50 per line Service works best with fewer than 20 employees.

About 3733 days ago Telecom and Wireless

Technology: Good Call

Technology When Jim Violette, chief financial officer of Hamon Corp., needs to phone a coworker down the hall, he dials four digits. To call somebody in company offices across the street, he dials four digits. To reach employees in the Kansas City unit, he dials — you guessed it — four digits. He pays the same price for each call: nothing. At Hamon, most intracompany calls — and even some long-distance calls outside the company — are free. Hamon isn’t ripping off the phone company, just bypassing it. The manufacturer of air-pollution-control devices in Somerville, N.J., has switched to a system that uses voice-over Internet protocol, or VoIP. It digitizes voice signals, shoots them over the Net, and switches them back to voice signals on the other end. The process takes milliseconds. When it works correctly, there’s no distinguishable time lag in conversations. Online callers pay only for equipment and connections, with no toll charges for dialing anybody who’s using a similar VoIP system. The reductions can be significant. “I’m saving $12,000 a month easily, if not more,” says Violette. Audio quality — which only a few years ago sounded as if you were talking into a tin can — now often rivals that of traditional telephone systems. So do options like speed dialing, computer access to voice mail, and call forwarding. VoIP caught Violette’s attention in the late 1990s, as Hamon mushroomed from about 130 to nearly 500 employees. That caused all kinds of telecom headaches — particularly its cost. Hamon’s standard telecom system required expensive new hardware for each expansion but accommodated only a limited number of new users. At one point Hamon spent $50,000 just to equip 12 employees in a temporary facility. Violette asked himself, “Why are we dumping money into this when it can’t grow with us?” At a hockey rink where his son played, he found a solution. Another player’s father, a sales rep for AltiGen Communications, a maker of Internet phone systems in Fremont, Calif., told him that AltiGen could outfit those 12 workers for less than $20,000, including installation, training, and service. How can VoIP providers sell service so cheaply compared with what telecom giants charge? The system requires virtually no equipment, except for a few servers and the phones themselves. Hamon adds extensions by updating the software. When employees move, they simply use cable plugs to hook up their IP phones at their new locations. Such flexibility was key when Hamon moved a large contingent of workers to a new building. With standard phone service, they would have all needed new phone numbers. But since the VoIP system forwards calls, employees kept their existing numbers, and Hamon saved not just on hardware but also on reprinting stationery, business cards, and other documents. CHEAP TALKER: Jim Violette slashed toll charges and equipment expenses by switching to VoIP.

About 3761 days ago Telecom and Wireless

Making the Switch to VoIP

In the March 2003 Inc article, “Good Call,” Hamon Corp.’s move to voice-over Internet protocol (VoIP) helped the company more effectively — and affordably — handle intracompany calls. Though the Somerville, N.J., manufacturer’s switch went off with nary a hitch, it’s not always that seamless. Craft Diston Industries, a shower-door manufacturer in Wichita, Kan., first tried a VoIP system in 1999, hoping to cut the cost of calls between headquarters and 10 factories and distribution centers scattered throughout the United States. That initial system, which happened to be from AltiGen, ( http://www.altigen.com), a maker of Internet phone systems in Fremont, Calif., “was pretty rough,” CFO Michael Gayeski recalls. Calls echoed or faded or cut out; sometimes transmission was so slow that callers’ sentences overlapped. Craft Diston quickly switched to another vendor’s system, which also ultimately failed. Still desperate to control telecom costs, Craft Diston decided to give AltiGen one more chance, after the phone-system business assured its former customer that it had corrected all the quality problems. The result? “It’s 10 times improved,” says Gayeski of the new system, which was installed in mid-2002. “No problems whatsoever.” The 240-employee company, which had about $30 million in sales last year, now saves more than $9,000 a month on its phone bills. IT director Jesse Santana calls the system simple to use because it works on the familiar Windows NT network and doesn’t require any special training or equipment.

About 4067 days ago Telecom and Wireless

Special Technology Report: Inside Story

Special Technology Report The Internet promised to drastically change your business. Now state-of-the-art small-company intranets are actually delivering on that promise. Instant word-association test: What comes to mind when you hear the terms intranet and extranet? Chances are, it’s something like this: Big-company stuff. Internal Web sites with multimillion-dollar price tags at places like Hewlett-Packard and GE and Charles Schwab. Hotshot technology that my small business wouldn’t use and doesn’t need. And even if we did need it, we couldn’t afford it. Right? Guess again. True, intranets come to the party with a big-company, big-bucks reputation — and deservedly so. The earliest private Web-based networks began at Fortune 500 giants like Ford Motor Co. and Sun Microsystems. The best, in some cases, save more money than many small businesses make in a year. And true, they’ve typically involved large-scale initiatives, such as linking thousands of workers worldwide or putting millions of documents online. But here’s some news that is just as true: private Web sites are changing small business, big time. Small and midsize companies are turning to intranets (and their external cousins, extranets) in much the same way they turned to the public Web a few years ago. And in some cases, they’re getting far more favorable results with the private sites. Many are using them to fundamentally change some aspect of their business. A pioneering few are using the sites to drive their company’s entire strategy. And they’re doing it using technology once viewed as strictly a big-company tool. We’re not talking about companies’ using internal networks as electronic filing cabinets for human-resources forms or bulletin boards where Joe in accounting can advertise a used Jeep for sale. We’re talking about entrepreneurs’ strategically using a broad range of intranet-extranet efforts to gain a competitive foothold in a tight economy, typically by nurturing existing relationships or creating conduits for new ones. On one end of that spectrum are the rare companies run primarily, or entirely, on private Web sites that let them easily connect with employees, partners, or customers. One of those companies is 1-800-GOT-JUNK, a Vancouver, B.C., trash-removal business whose intranet for its franchisees, called JunkNet, helped to fuel the company’s growth from $2 million in revenues in 1999 to $10 million last year. Another is Boston-based SeniorLink, a fledgling company that will launch an extranet later this year to help baby-boomer customers nationwide find care-management services for their aging parents. On the opposite end are traditional companies that are using intranets to transform one practice, with effects that ripple through the rest of their culture. A sterling example: Extreme Logic Inc., an Atlanta-based technology consulting firm. Like many growing companies, Extreme Logic handles job-performance reviews online. What’s unusual is that the company encourages its corporate clients to log on and evaluate the employees who serve them. As a result, company officials say, Extreme Logic has deepened relationships with customers by letting them know they’re trusted partners whose opinions count. In the middle of the spectrum are companies with the most intriguing stories: those whose private sites create unprecedented opportunities. At TemPositions Group, a New York City-based staffing company, an intranet instantly matches customers’ requests for temporary employees with contractors who best fit the bill, allowing the 125-employee business to successfully bid against giant national staffing companies for major contracts. Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, a Pittsburgh-based law firm, now coordinates hundreds of product-liability claims filed nationwide against one of its major clients, thanks to sophisticated technology that makes it possible for the firm’s lawyers to share court documents with other lawyers in 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. And Eminent Research Systems, in Minneapolis, uses an intranet to dramatically speed up its ability to coordinate protocol documents for medical-device tests, thereby helping the company to increase its business capacity tenfold. It’s impossible to find hard numbers on how many companies are jumping onto the private Web. The few studies done to date confirm only that a growing number of small companies have either launched a private network or expect to do so soon. Most, it appears, still use the technology for pedestrian purposes: storing documents, sharing files, ordering supplies. But we’ve found a handful of cutting-edge entrepreneurs who are using intranets and extranets to transform their business strategies, in most cases by helping their companies forge new relationships. OPEN BOOK: Dennis L. Veraldi says that his law firm’s extranet improves services for clients. What’s propelling this small-business intranet revolution? Experts tick off a number of drivers: the migration of big-business practices to small-business scale, recession-driven pressure to find new ways to get new customers or better serve existing ones, and increased comfort with doing business online. “All the things that the major corporations were doing two or three years ago are trickling down to the small-business realm,” says Ryan Bernard, president of Wordmark Associates Inc., a Houston consulting firm, and author of The Corporate Intranet. “The larger corporations were the proving ground.” Web-usability consultant Jakob Nielsen, whose Nielsen Norman Group, in Fremont, Calif., annually honors 10 outstanding intranets, has recently noticed that more small companies are making the list. Says Nielsen, “That proves it’s possible to get good effect out of an intranet without being a huge corporation.” Other experts call the trend evolutionary, saying that it is picking up speed as companies conduct more and more business online. Nearly everyone can use a Web browser, which means that nearly everyone can adapt almost instantly to a Web-based network. And small companies can now choose from a broad range of intranet options, from cut-rate do-it-yourself models to cutting-edge, custom-designed systems. Admittedly, the trend’s leaders tend to spend freely to launch, staff, and maintain their private Web sites. Initial five- or six-figure investments aren’t unusual, and some ambitious companies may well spend more. But there are plenty of less pricey options, ranging from having a savvy staffer do the job in-house to renting the service. (See ” Spin Your Own,” below.) Perhaps the most remarkable cultural change is how many entrepreneurs are overcoming their natural reticence to share information, inside the company or out. Brian Chavis, CEO of ARGroup, a Web and intranet developer based in Leesburg, Va., says that he used to have to pitch the idea of private networks to his customers. “I don’t have to do that anymore,” he says. “Our clients are telling me that they want this.” What they want, as the leading examples show, are new and better ways to connect with customers, employees, and partners. Rather than blindly following the late-1990s mantra to endlessly hurl money at their public Web sites in hopes of expanding their reach, many companies now look inward for ways to better serve customers they’ve already got. “Companies are saying, ‘Let’s really strengthen those relationships as much as possible,” says Ray Boggs, vice-president of small-business and home-office research at IDC, in Framingham, Mass. Randy J. Hinrichs couldn’t agree more. Hinrichs, group research manager in learning sciences and technology for Microsoft Research and author of Intranets: What’s the Bottom Line?, says intranets and extranets provide the perfect environment for small companies to create and nurture the partnerships they need to thrive. He makes the goal sound almost romantic. “You make long-term, meaningful relationships by saying, ‘We can share each other’s data,’ and knowing that it’s going to be consistent and trustworthy,” he says. Executives at Atlanta IT-consulting firm Extreme Logic consider it critical to forge long-term commitments with both employees and customers. So the company sends both to its combo intranet-extranet for performance reviews. The system hasn’t directly affected Extreme Logic’s revenues, which topped $30 million last year. But it’s improved the company’s own showing in two top-priority areas: retaining star performers and nurturing all employees. When workers leave — whether they’re hired away by competitors or fired for poor performance — the company spends as much as three times an employee’s annual salary to find and train a replacement. Getting quick online feedback directly from customers lets Extreme Logic reward its stars and provide specific improvement goals for everyone else. The approach seems to work. Mike Williams, who oversees human resources, says the company’s turnover rate is 5% to 10% lower than the IT industry standard. And since the company added the performance-evaluation feature to its intranet, 18 months ago, about 80% of its employees and managers feel that they’re working toward the same goals, compared with 52% before, according to an internal study. For TemPositions, making connections quickly is what counts. The company, one of 350 temporary-staffing agencies in New York City, has begun bidding against the big boys — including $4.1-billion Kelly Services — for major contracts. To compete against the industry giants, TemPositions focuses on what CEO and president James Essey calls its core strength: delivering the perfect worker faster. And to do that, TemPositions relies on an intranet that, much like a dating service, instantly matches customer requests with the best available contract employees. If, for instance, a client company needs a registered nurse with pediatric experience, the TemPositions intranet automatically E-mails the job offer to the best-qualified candidates. The system excludes temps who are already on assignments or unavailable because of vacation or illness. When contractors accept gigs, the intranet automatically E-mails them a link to their own personal job bank sites, where they find assignment sheets with dates, prices, a map, and supervisor contact information. When temps reject offers or don’t respond, the intranet solicits the next person in line. Corporate customers can even make their own temp requests online. Essey says the do-it-yourself convenience “cements us to the customer in a big way because once they get into the system and see all the information there, they’re less likely to go to a competitor.” That’s a far cry from the traditional temp-placement process, which typically requires hours of telephone tag. (Customers call the agency with a personnel request, and then agency employees dig through paper files, call candidates, and wait for return calls.) And the streamlined process, in turn, has allowed the 40-year-old company to go after huge long-term contracts it couldn’t even have considered before. At press time, TemPositions was competing for a contract to supply the New York City schools with more than 1,000 temps in a variety of areas, including curriculum and course development and counseling. “We couldn’t bid on it if we didn’t have these tools,” says Essey. “We’d need enough employees to fill a football-field-size call center.” TemPositions, which had about $30 million in revenues in 2001, spent $250,000 building its intranet in 1998 — primarily, Essey says, on Web design and for the salaries of a chief information officer, a programmer, and a technology troubleshooter — and it continues to spend liberally on salaries, equipment upgrades, and maintenance. “It’s not free,” he acknowledges. At the same time, he expects the intranet to reduce the company’s head count — eliminating, for instance, the need for data-entry staffers. Essey says those savings are well worth the investment. GRAND SCALE: James Parks credits his firm’s extranet for letting Eckert Seamans go national. Speed was the issue at Eminent Research Systems, in Minneapolis, where clogged procedural arteries were stunting the company’s growth. The $7-million, 22-employee company specializes in coordinating trials for heart and blood-vessel devices such as stents — products that typically have a market life span of only 18 months before they’re replaced by newer models. Previously, Eminent sent 150- to 500-page study-protocol documents to participating physicians and regulators, who marked them up and mailed them back. Sometimes the hefty hard copies made several round trips before everybody agreed on protocols — a process that typically took at least two months. The lengthy procedure caused some customers to forgo putting their devices on the market altogether, which meant less work for Eminent. “Turnaround time is key,” says Linda Laak, vice-president and chief operating officer. “Our competition is not necessarily another company but whether or not the client will do the study at all.” That changed in February 2001, when Eminent launched an extranet that allows doctors nationwide to collaborate on protocols electronically. The system sliced the approval process from two months to two weeks. Meanwhile, although Eminent spent $50,000 to launch its private Web site, Laak estimates that the company saves 10 times that amount by eliminating the “heavy lifting”: shipping, storage, and paying the salaries of two administrative people who handled all the documents. And the company can handle 10 times as many projects at once as it could before, resulting in a 40% increase in revenues. At Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, the Pittsburgh law firm, an extranet became the key to going national without opening any additional offices. The 44-year-old firm wanted to serve as the national coordinator for thousands of product-liability claims against a major client. But the firm couldn’t possibly set up shop in all the affected jurisdictions: 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Instead, the firm’s executive team decided it needed two things: a network of partners and a network connecting them. Those partners were, and are, “local counsel” — dozens of far-flung law firms that Eckert Seamans hired to handle claims in their own states. The network that connects them is Eckert Seamans’s extranet, which contains all related documents, including briefs, transcripts, interviews, research, medical and scientific information, and correspondence. Obviously, storing paperwork in one location helps everybody access documents faster. But Eckert Seamans argues that the extranet provides two more important benefits. First, it’s an unprecedented way to provide clients with a consistent nationwide defense by making sure that all the lawyers are literally on the same page. In addition, it saves time and money by providing those far-flung partners with research to strengthen the cases in their states. And the extranet lets the firm’s 215 lawyers coordinate cases in a way they couldn’t have before. “There is no way we could have managed and provided oversight to claims in Texas or California,” says the firm’s executive director, James Parks, citing the time and cost of constant travel, telephone calls, and shipping tons of hard copies cross-country. The system, part of a firmwide technology overhaul, didn’t come cheap: Parks estimates that Eckert Seamans has invested nearly $1.3 million so far, including construction costs to create a separate technology center. But chief operating officer Dennis L. Veraldi is philosophical about the cost. “Sophisticated, larger clients just expect that you’re going to be able to do those things, that you have the capability to service them,” he says. The firm doesn’t even worry much about tracking the system’s return on investment. “It’s part of the infrastructure, part of the overhead,” Parks says. “You have to manage it the same way you manage supplies or telephones or receptionists or libraries or anything else.” But he credits the technology with cutting legal-work costs by 6% to 7% annually and allowing the firm to take on more clients. But Eckert Seamans does worry about security breaches — and not just those involving hackers. The firm must also protect itself against possible security breaches involving the very partners for whom it established the intranet: those local-counsel firms. “Yes, we’re working with them, but they’re still competitors,” Veraldi says. So the firm relies on a combination of firewalls, multiple passwords, and encryption to make sure those faraway lawyers get access only to the appropriate cases — and only for the length of their contracts. For Eckert Seamans and other early adopters, the challenge now is staying ahead of the curve while not getting too far out in front. As Parks puts it: “We’re going to be very judicious about what we implement. We have to ask, ‘Are we letting the technology drag us? Or are we dragging the technology in a way that’s beneficial to us and our clients?’ “ But intranet evangelists believe the potential drawbacks — security concerns, cost, and the constant challenge of keeping current — pale when compared with the rewards gained from creating new partnerships and strengthening existing ones. Especially in a tough economy, the ability to forge new and stronger links offers small companies the best kind of competitive advantage. Anne Stuart is a senior writer at Inc. Jill Hecht Maxwell is a staff writer. Send your comments to editors@inc.com. Spin Your Own Why not? It’s getting cheaper. The companies mentioned here got transformational results from their intranets, but they spent a bundle. You don’t have to pay your way into intranet nirvana. There are less costly ways to get a little closer to the light. As more small businesses have started using private Web sites, software vendors and application service providers (ASPs) have found ways to reduce the pain of building them. Their offerings range from robust software packages to cheap, basic ones that a monkey can set up online in minutes. So how do you decide which path to follow? James Parks, who led the intranet project at Eckert Seamans, offers a few suggestions. BEEF UP SECURITY. Parks won’t touch a system that doesn’t force users to pass through three electronic checkpoints to enter. But if you don’t run a law firm, you may not need security worthy of the CIA. CREATE MULTIPLE LEVELS OF USER ACCESS. Some users need to read files; others need to edit them. Only a few should be allowed to delete them. So you should be able to determine whom you’ll allow into each part of your intranet and what they can do once they get there. DO AN INVENTORY OF YOUR EXISTING DATA. Can you easily move information from your company databases onto the intranet? When Parks started his firm’s project, Eckert Seamans already had 40-plus years’ worth of data living on its systems. CONSIDER STORAGE. If you’ve got 40 dedicated databases on seven mammoth servers, as Eckert Seamans does, don’t even consider the intranets that you can rent for a few dollars per user monthly. They won’t provide anywhere near the storage space you need. So if you need high security and have lots of users and mountains of information, you should start by looking at midpriced software packages — and perhaps talking with a consultant who’s built at least a few intranets before. For less than $6,000, you’ll find software from more than a dozen vendors, like Planet Intra, in Mountain View, Calif. Planet Intra’s software lets regular nontechie people create multiple levels of security access. All employees can use it to publish Web-ready content on a site, even if they don’t know HTML from TCBY. Of course, if you have a decent techie on staff, you can build your own simple intranet with a program like Microsoft FrontPage. You won’t need a firewall if you’re not letting anyone outside your office log on. Finally, if your needs are simple — say, you want a group to share a calendar, swap documents, and hold online discussions — you can set up an intranet for practically nothing. Intranets.com, the King Kong of off-the-shelf intranet ASPs, charges between $3 and $6 per user per month. Competitor InfoStreet charges $3 per user per month. Or try Microsoft’s SharePoint Team Services, which comes free with Office XP Professional Special Edition. Intranet gurus say that no matter which method you elect, there’s at least one thing you should do to ensure that your intranet doesn’t turn into the electronic equivalent of Euro Disney. Find out what would make your employees’ lives easier. People won’t use the intranet if it doesn’t help them. “Think about human needs as opposed to technology,” says Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group. –Jill Hecht Maxwell Still want more information on building your private Web site? Visit www.inc.com/keyword/intranet. Please E-mail your comments to editors@inc.com. Related Links: TemPositions Intranet Make Your Intranet Click Intranet Shortfalls

About 4218 days ago E-Commerce

The Best Small-Business Sites in America

Web Awards: Best Practices We went looking for a few outstanding Web sites. That’s exactly what we found. Earlier this year Inc invited entrepreneurs to enter the magazine’s third annual Web Awards competition. Nearly 800 did so. The Inc editorial staff and a blue-ribbon panel of outside experts reviewed the entries, slowly narrowing the field to an elite constellation of 16 small-business Web stars. One of those sites — a California adventure-travel site — was named our all-around champion, earning Inc‘s prestigious General Excellence award. So what distinguished the honorees from the also-rans? What lifted those few finishers out of the crowd and into the winners’ circle? For our best-in-show choice, it’s a pretty simple formula: cool, useful features plus strong customer service equals big-time success online. Judges unanimously praised All-Outdoors Whitewater Rafting, of Walnut Creek, Calif. ( www.aorafting.com), for creating a site with streamlined good looks and nifty mile-by-mile virtual river tours. But they were even more impressed with the company’s online customer service. Web-site visitors can check trip availability, ask questions, make tentative reservations, price gear, get maps, check river and weather conditions, arrange accommodations, and even qualify for last-minute discounts. (See ” A Web Strategy Runs Through It.”) “What’s not to be wowed by?” asked judge Ron Zemke, president of Performance Research Associates Inc., in Minneapolis. “It loads quickly, it’s clean, it’s easy to understand. It has a wonderful balance of information, glitz, and service features.” Not to mention the family-owned company’s remarkable return on investment; in fact, the site is also Inc’s second-place finisher in the ROI category. Then there’s Nova Cruz Products LLC ( www.xootr.com), a New Hampshire scooter manufacturer that earned Inc’s honorable mention for General Excellence, as well as first place in Design and a third-place finish in Marketing. The Nova Cruz site looks terrific. More important, though, it gets the job done. As one judge put it: “They exhibit their products well and make it easy to find out what you want to know in a visually appealing way.” Overall, however, our judges insist there’s still plenty of room for improvement. They visited many sites where, as Gertrude Stein once observed of Oakland, Calif., there was no there there. “Too many were devoid of content and did nothing but look good,” said judge Jakob Nielsen, a principal at the Nielsen Norman Group, in Fremont, Calif. Put another way, many sites simply lacked value. Said Nielsen: “There has to be some reward to the user from visiting a site. Especially in business.” Even some of the best small-business sites could benefit from better online branding. One judge called the much-admired Nova Cruz site pretty but somewhat unfocused. “What is the name of this company?” asked a slightly exasperated Bill Demas, an executive vice-president at Vividence Corp., a consulting company in San Mateo, Calif. “Is it Xootr? Urban Transport? Or Nova Cruz?” (He’s referring to the Web site’s home page, which features all three names. For the record, Nova Cruz is the name of the company, Xootr is its product’s name, and urban transport is its mission.) And many site owners still haven’t learned that Web users have no patience for pages that take forever to materialize. “It took over a minute for some product photos and descriptions to load,” one judge observed in disgust. “Totally unacceptable in a world where customers get itchy fingers after eight seconds.” Other sites use Flash technology to create intricate introductions with dancing graphics on their home pages. Increasingly, those same sites feature a button that users can click to skip the show — raising the question of why the company bothered with Flash technology in the first place. Many small-business sites seem to fall victim to the too-much-is-better theory: they cram every centimeter of every page with tiny, hard-to-read text and links. Or they indiscriminately clutter their sites with additional articles, tips, and other resources. In its Web Awards application, one entrant wrote the following about its content-stuffed site: “The first impression you get when you come to our site is that it is an exclusively information [sic] site.” “That’s a problem,” pointed out judge Phil Terry, CEO of New York City-based Web-strategy company Creative Good Inc. However well intended, that tidal wave of supporting materials drowns out the retailer’s real mission: selling products. “It took eight clicks to find a price list,” Performance Research’s Zemke observed of the same site. “That’s something consumers hate.” Even the best small-company sites still struggle with technology. Nova Cruz, our General Excellence runner-up, was off-line for several days during judging owing to a router problem. “It was shocking to see that several sites were not up and running during the judging,” tsk-tsked Marcia Yudkin, a Boston-based author of several Internet-marketing guides. One travel agency’s site, rated highly by several judges, missed becoming a finalist because of its own technical horror story. But for all those warts and wrinkles, this year’s best sites prove that the Web still offers promise. “I see companies slowly becoming more sophisticated about using the Web as a place to do business in all its forms,” said judge Ryan Bernard, president of Wordmark Associates Inc., in Houston. “The entrants ran the gamut of sophistication from those who still see the Web as only an E-commerce tool to those who see it as a way to build and manage business activities.” Judge John Hartnett, CEO of BlueMissile, a Web-design company in Minneapolis, agreed. “What struck me was the diversity in budgets and approaches — all of which seemed to add up to the same excellent results,” he said. Based on those results, we developed what amounts to a blueprint for small-business Web-site success. Call it the “Seven Best Practices of Highly Effective Web Sites.” The winners have these characteristics: 1. They’re run by people who know what they want. Whether they’re one-person marketing sites, corporate intranets, or E-commerce efforts, our winners have clear strategies, goals, and priorities. Best example: All-Outdoors Whitewater Rafting. CEO Gregg Armstrong wanted to boost revenues by scheduling more trips and reducing the number of empty seats on each day’s expeditions. In addition to generating new business by expanding the company’s reach far beyond its northern California base, the site makes trips more profitable by offering discounts to customers who fill last-minute vacancies or book trips for off-peak dates. That helped the nearly 40-year-old company hit a record $2 million in revenues last year, up from $1 million in 1993. 2. They use technology that’s appropriate to their mission. Again, our General Excellence honorees provide sterling examples. At All-Outdoors Whitewater, it’s the virtual mile-by-mile tours and equipment illustrations. At Nova Cruz it’s the all-angle views of those hot little scooters. Cadkey Corp. ( www.cadkey.com), a software company based in Marlborough, Mass., our second-place finisher in Customer Service, earned our judges’ respect for its judicious use of Flash animation technology. Cadkey’s Flash presentation appears on the middle of its home page “but doesn’t dominate it,” said Bruce D. Weinberg, associate professor of marketing and E-commerce at Bentley College, in Waltham, Mass. “Every other part of the home page is visible and available” — a blend of dazzle and restraint that customers undoubtedly appreciate. 3. They streamline design. More and more, successful Web sites are demonstrating that when it comes to design, the most important issues are clarity and ease of use. “Too many sites used nonstandard navigation, probably in an attempt to be leading edge. One of the entries even mentioned this as a goal,” said Web-design guru Nielsen. “You don’t impress people by being difficult to use. You impress them by taking the standard design elements they already know and using them well and by stressing informative and helpful content.” Of course, there’s no such thing as the one best way to design a Web site. Successful approaches are as varied as the customers they target. What’s important is that a site’s design reflect an understanding of the needs and desires of its end users. (See ” Duh-sign of the Times.”) 4. They make sure their sites work. Enough said. 5. They make it easy for customers to learn about and contact them. Often, accomplishing that is as simple as creating two key pages — “About Us” and “Contact Us” — and making them highly visible on the home page and easily accessible from anywhere else on the site. The About Us page should tell the company’s story, at the very least including a mission statement or explanation of “what we do,” a brief history, and short bios of key executives. It might also include customer testimonials, press releases, and links to media coverage. The Contact Us page should give visitors everything they need to reach the company: mailing addresses, E-mail links, phone and fax numbers, and, if appropriate, driving directions and a list of whom to contact for what. In addition, it’s a good idea to prominently post the company’s privacy policies, explaining what information the business is collecting and how it will be used. 6. They do ROI reality checks. It’s important to know just what you’re gaining from all that time, money, and expertise you’ve poured into your Web site. Nobody does it better than our first-place ROI winner, Ipswitch Inc. ( www.ipswitch.com). Because the software developer, based Lexington, Mass., examines ROI from every conceivable angle, its executives know that for every dollar they spent on Web- related salaries and resources last year, they generated $22 in online sales. They also know that had those sales been handled by real live customer-service and sales reps, the company would have spent an additional $2 million on salaries. (See ” Many Happy Returns,” page 150.) 7. They constantly look for new ways to expand their Web use. Those range from digital newsletters to online forums to contests to relevant activities encouraging customer loyalty and participation. For example, Earth Treks Inc. ( www.earthtreksclimbing.com), a mountaineering company based in Columbia, Md., won second-place Marketing honors for creative features such as climbers’ journals and virtual participation in climbing expeditions. (See ” Traffic Magnets.”) Such interactive efforts are, in fact, a prerequisite for success on the Web, says judge Beerud Sheth, cofounder of eLance Inc., in Sunnyvale, Calif. “Web sites need to facilitate interaction and transaction,” he says. “Teasing Web users with content online just to pull them off-line is not the right approach. The businesses that will succeed online are the ones that provide users with as much of that experience online as possible.” Overall, our judges say, this year’s competition proves that, despite the setbacks of the past couple of years, Web-based small business is far from finished. “The Web lives!” crowed Richard W. Oliver, professor of management at Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. “Companies with a good plan and reasonable dollars and a sensible approach can still make money on the Web.” Anne Stuart is a senior writer at Inc. The 2001 Inc Web Awards The Best Small-Business Sites in America The 2001 Inc Web Awards: Winners A Web Strategy Runs Through It Traffic Magnets Duh-sign of the Times Home Groan Many Happy Returns Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4218 days ago E-Commerce

The 2001 Inc Web Awards: Winners

The 2001 Inc Web Awards General Excellence Winner All-Outdoors Whitewater Rafting www.aorafting.com First place, Customer Service Second place, ROI Marketing finalist Honorable Mention Nova Cruz Products LLC www.xootr.com First place, Design Third place, Marketing ROI finalist Customer Service First place All-Outdoors Whitewater Rafting www.aorafting.com Second place Cadkey Corp. www.cadkey.com Third place Street Glow Inc. www.streetglow.com Design First place Nova Cruz Products LLC www.xootr.com Second place TidalWire Inc. www.tidalwire.com Third place Mosca www.moscahome.com Management (intranets and extranets*) First place Sunbelt Business Brokers Network Inc. www.sunbeltnetwork.com Second place National Services Group www.nationalservicesgroup.com Third place SLP Capital www.slpcapital.com Marketing First place Merriman Capital Management www.fundadvice.com Second place Earth Treks Inc. www.earthtreksclimbing.com Third place Nova Cruz Products LLC www.xootr.com ROI First place Ipswitch Inc. www.ipswitch.com Second place All-Outdoors Whitewater Rafting www.aorafting.com Third place The Connoisseur.cc Ltd. www.low-carb.com Sole Proprietors First place Limelight www.limelightart.com Second place Somerset Estate Sales www.somerset-estate-sales.com Third place Restaurant Connection Inc. www.restaurantstaffing.com *Management awards are given for Web sites that are password protected, so the URLs are only for the companies’ general sites. How the 2001 Inc Web Awards winners were selected: Earlier this year, 800 small businesses applied online for the 2001 Inc Web Awards. Using an Internet-based judging site, members of the Inc editorial staff screened all applications, eliminating ineligible entries and selecting finalists in six categories: Customer Service, Design, Management (intranets and extranets), Marketing, Return on Investment (ROI), and Sole Proprietors. We then had outside judges (listed on facing page) review the Web sites and submit comments and recommendations. Based on the judges’ input, Inc selected the winners. The Judges Ryan Bernard is president of Wordmark Associates Inc., in Houston, and the author of The Corporate Intranet. Mary E. Boone is the president of Boone Associates, in Norwalk, Conn., and author of Managing Inter@ctively: ExecutingBusiness Strategy, Improving Communication, and Creating a Knowledge-Sharing Culture. Bonny Brown is director of research at Vividence Corp., in San Mateo, Calif. Erik Brynjolfsson is codirector of the Center for eBusiness@MIT at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Mass. Michelle Chambers is the president and founder of New Tilt, in Somerville, Mass. Larry Chase is a New York-based marketing consultant, author of Essential Business Tactics for the Net, and publisher or Web Digest for Marketers in New York City. Steve Crummey is the cofounder and chairman of Intranets.com Inc., in Woburn, Mass. Bill Demas is an executive vice-president of Vividence Corp., in San Mateo, Calif. Paul Edwards is a self-employment consultant and the coauthor of Home-Based Business for Dummies. He is based in Pine Mountain Club, Calif. Martin T. Focazio is the CEO of Martin T. Focazio LLC, in Upper Black Eddy, Pa., and author of The e-Factor. Jeffrey Harkness is the cofounder of Diesel Design in San Francisco and the host of CNet’s monthly Design Talk radio program. John Hartnett is the CEO and president of BlueMissile, in Minneapolis. Randy J. Hinrichs is the group research manager in Learning Sciences and Technology, Microsoft Research, Microsoft Corp., in Redmond, Wash., and the author of Intranets: What’s the Bottom Line? Donna L. Hoffman is a professor of management, director of the electronic commerce concentration, and codirector of the eLab at the Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, in Nashville. Peter Kent is president of Top Floor Publishing, in Lakewood, Colo., and the author of Poor Richard’s Web Site. Michael P. Largey is the executive vice-president of IT Web Solutions Inc., in West Long Branch, N.J. Terri Lonier is the president of Working Solo Inc., a consulting firm in San Francisco, and the author of Working Solo: The Real Guide to Freedom & Financial Success with Your Own Business. Harley Manning is a research director at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. Jakob Nielsen is a principal at Nielsen Norman Group, in Fremont, Calif., and the author of Designing Web Usability. Richard W. Oliver is a professor of management at Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, in Nashville. Don Peppers and Martha Rogers are founding partners of Peppers and Rogers Group, in Norwalk, Conn., and the coauthors of One to One B2B. Patricia B. Seybold is CEO of Patricia Seybold Group Inc., in Boston, and the author of Customers.com: How to Create A Profitable Business Strategy for the Internet & Beyond and The Customer Revolution. Beerud Sheth is the cofounder and general manager of eLance Inc., in Sunnyvale, Calif. James Slavet is the cofounder of Guru Inc., in San Francisco. Robert Spiegel is the author of The Shoestring Entrepreneur’s Guide to the Best Home-Based Businesses. He lives in Albuquerque. Phil Terry is the CEO of Creative Good Inc., in New York City. Mark C. Thompson is chairman and CEO of Network Public Broadcasting International Inc., in San Francisco, and chairman of Integration Associates Inc., in Mountain View, Calif. Bruce D. Weinberg is an associate professor of marketing and E-commerce at McCallum Graduate School of Business, Bentley College, in Waltham, Mass. Marcia Yudkin is the Boston-based author of Poor Richard’s Web Site Marketing Makeover and other Internet marketing guides. Ron Zemke is the president of Performance Research Associates Inc., in Minneapolis, and coauthor of E-Service: 24 Ways to Keep Your Customers When the Competition is Just a Click Away and other books. The 2001 Inc Web Awards The Best Small-Business Sites in America The 2001 Inc Web Awards: Winners A Web Strategy Runs Through It Traffic Magnets Duh-sign of the Times Home Groan Many Happy Returns Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4402 days ago E-Commerce

The Real Economy

Small Business 2001 High technology can seem like the land of the quick or the dead: either a company grows rapidly to dominate its industry or else it dies aborning. The rocketing tech businesses that turn up on stock pickers’ lists of hot companies fit that image to a T. To fans the businesses are tomorrow’s Microsofts and Dells. To skeptics they’re candidates for dot-com-style flameout. Whichever the outcome, everyone agrees: they won’t stay small for long. But that picture is incomplete. For every Microsoft there are a thousand small, specialized software companies churning out programs for niche markets. And for every eToys — the #2 site on the Web during the holidays last year and now in bankruptcy — there are any number of small shops actually making money on the Internet. “Tens of thousands of small businesses you’ve never heard of are quietly making a go of it online,” reports Business Week’s Robert D. Hof. Example: ElectricShaver.com, a sales, service, and repair outfit that does 90% of its $1 million in revenues on the Web. And when you step out beyond the usual confines of big computer companies and the Internet, you see still more of what small companies do in high tech. They pioneer technologies that big companies haven’t yet begun to explore. They make the parts and provide the services that make places like Silicon Valley hum. Two reports from the field: MEMS the word Ever hear of MEMS? The acronym stands for microelectromechanical systems. Rick Snyder, CEO and cofounder of Ardesta LLC, in Ann Arbor, Mich., a venture-capital firm that describes itself as an “accelerator” for the industry, calls MEMS “small tech.” Hundreds of small private companies, many affiliated with research labs, are working to make this new technology as pervasive as semiconductors. MEMS are components — superminiaturized machines that can be used as pressure sensors, for example, or as part of an optical switch. The tiny machines are having an impact on industries ranging from telecommunications and biotechnology to ordinary manufacturing. “There are at least 1,000 different MEMS products and prototypes, and up to 20 variations on each of those,” says Steve Walsh, director of technology entrepreneurship at the University of New Mexico and cochairman of an international MEMS conference. “There are at least 15 of them in a new car, and more than 100 in the next-generation John Deere tractor.” Walsh can rattle off a list of small companies around the world that are working on commercial MEMS applications, including many of the 70 or so businesses that are using the technology to develop an all-optical switch for the telecommunications industry. Why hasn’t a larger company taken the lead in this expensive research? “People who are winning in an existing industry don’t want to reinvent themselves, because they don’t want to lose their existing position,” says Walsh. Snyder agrees: “Large companies have traditional ways of doing things that work. The industrial and consumer markets will be gigantic, but it’s going to take longer for larger-scale companies to say, ‘We need it.’ “ Out of the spotlight While it seems that every day a new small company from Silicon Valley makes its debut in the public eye, plenty of neighboring businesses toil in the background — never the hot IPO, never the subject of a “companies to watch” article, but critical nevertheless to the valley’s health. Among them are the hundreds of contract electronics manufacturers (CEMs) that build the parts inside PCs, networks, and printers. “You don’t hear about them because they don’t put their name on any labels,” says Doug Henton, cofounder and president of Collaborative Economics, in Palo Alto, Calif., an economic consulting company focused on community development. In a study a few years ago, Henton found, more than 500 companies of all sizes were doing contract electronics manufacturing in the region. “It’s one of the largest sectors we have here,” Henton says. A few of those manufacturers — Solectron Corp., for instance — are giants. But there are far more small companies in the contract industry than large ones. Pamela Gordon, president and founder of Technology Forecasters Inc., a high-tech market-research company in Alameda, Calif., says that only about 70 of the roughly 3,000 CEMs in the world have sales greater than $100 million. One that just crossed that line is Flash Electronics Inc., in Fremont, Calif. Last year it was 19th on the Inc. 500 list, with an eye-popping five-year growth rate of 5,050%. In 2000 Flash stayed on the fast track, as its revenues jumped from $37 million in 1999 to $125 million. The 2001 State of Small Business issue Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.