Friday, August 22, 2008

Cisco and Peace Talks

Peace Talks was a Cisco technology award package winner in 2006.

For a small business like ours, it’s all about leveraging our time and technology. Our Cisco phones and technology help us to do that all day long, every day.

The IP Phones Cisco installed for us can be customized in an incredible number of ways.

Just one example: We use an auto-attendant which clients may access after hours, like many businesses do. But with our Cisco phones, we also programmed a second auto-attendant for mediators to use. Since most of our mediators are independent contractors, jugging a variety of projects, having one phone number and voicemail that they can give to their personal clients and access without interrupting Peace Talks personnel is a huge value add for them. We can provide that at no cost at all. That tiny feature, which barely scrapes the surface of the features the phone can offer, is incredibly valuable for our practice.

My favorite application is that we can expand the system using either software phones installed on laptops and connected to the internet, or additional handsets in remote locations. For example, our Cisco technology package includes a handset for me at home, so if I’m working from my home office, the phone rings just as it would if I was at Headquarters….and callers are unaware that I am not at my Peace Talks desk. When I place outgoing calls, recipients’ caller ID shows the Peace Talks number, so I don’t have to worry about client calls on my home or cell phone at 3 am. With my IP Communicator software, I use my computer exactly as I do my phone at the office. When I make calls from a hotel room at a conference halfway across the country, it rings to clients as coming from Headquarters and my voicemail is accessible in the same way as it is from my office phone.

And, I must say, we love our Cisco partners, Creative Business Concepts, Inc. (in particular, Jim Froggatt) have been terrific. They’ve really listened to our needs. They came ready to not only install and program the phones, but to switch gears as we discovered additional possibilities for applications and programming. Jim, especially, is a huge asset. He was a technology trainer with the US Army, so he knows how to teach technology applications without going over our heads.

We’re not quite there yet, but Cisco’s [very amazing] videoconferencing technology will be key for us in expanding to a national (and international) practice. The videoconferencing is so realistic that it looks and sounds like you’re actually in the room with folks who are half a world away. As it’s installed in business centers and business hotels, and later adapted for small business use, it’s a technology we’ll be able to use to do mediations. The 3 large screen TV’s gave us so much real time detail that I was able to read micro-expressions on people’s faces. Before, when I thought of videoconferencing, I imagined pixellated web cams with sound that didn’t sync with the jerky movements on the screen. Now, it’s 99% as good as being in the same room with someone. Unbelievable!

Thanks, Cisco!

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Thursday, August 14, 2008

The Power of Networking

I just attended the Women's Leadership Exchange, www.womensleadershipexchange.com, in Long Beach. It was a long day--I left home at 6:30 am and got home at 10:00 pm.

My business coach, Dennis McCue, www.dynamicfirm.com, says I go to too many meetings and seminars. I appreciate his concern, but he's never been to a WLE, NAWBO, www.nawbola.org, or Make Mine a Million $ Business, www.makemineamillion.org, event.

It's at these events that I get my inspiration and new ideas. So many small business owners toil alone, or nearly so, and it's at these seminars and events that we meet kindred spirits who are going through the same issues we are. So yes, it's about learning, and yes, it's about networking, but it's also about reaching out, sharing ideas, and reinvigorating ourselves for the endurance race of building a small (soon to be large) business.