“So what can you offer them instead? It’s not all doom and gloom. Businesses, although looking to cut back on large upfront CAPEX spending, will still want to save money on their telecom costs and add features that enrich their telephony applications.
This is where resellers can help businesses by providing them with a telecoms solution, which not only delivers rich functionality, but also saves money, while giving the VAR valuable extra sales margin, and the opportunity for ongoing revenues.
For businesses who have delayed or cancelled PBX purchases in order to cut expenditure, PBX-to-Skype gateways provide a cost-effective and easy-to-use solution which not only enhances the company’s telecoms functionality but also slashes its telephone bills.
These PBX agnostic application gateways bridge the gap between Skype and any analogue, digital or IP PBXs via FXO/FXS, T1/E1 or SIP interfaces. The gateways, which put Skype’s features at the disposal of all employees in an easy and manageable way, can be installed in under half a day, with zero changes to existing PBX equipment, phones, or PCs – and at a modest one-time cost, making them attractive to customers while giving a healthy margin to you.
By linking the office PBX to Skype, the gateways offer rich functions. Businesses with multiple locations — multi-national corporations, for instance — can put a VoSKY Exchange at each site, which not only saves on outgoing calls to customers and vendors, but also makes intra-office calls Skype-to-Skype, which are completely free-of-charge. The same holds for remote workers, who can use Skype to access office phone facilities at a fraction of the cost of alternative comms methods.”
David Tang adds,” With PBX-to-Skype gateways you can offer your customers a solution that extends the life of their existing phone system by adding innovative VoIP features and functionalities to boost employee productivity while saving the company money. The incremental investment in a PBX-to-Skype gateway will enable companies to reduce their inter-company communications costs by 100%, their international communications cost by 50% and deliver a rapid ROI – typically within six months.
A solution which promises to reduce costs whilst paying for itself within just months will not only benefit your customers but will also benefit you. Giving customers what they need will help offset your revenue declines.
What’s more, it can lead to an increase in service sales and SkypeOUT commissions, all totalling greater revenue. These sorts of purchases will also leave the door open for you to re-visit your customers with other products when the time is right. So why not help your customers find out how Skype means business? It’s a win for your customer and its business for you.
Keith Gardner, director for VAR Abbitek comments, “as the credit crunch starts to bite, customers have started to look at ways to save money. Expansion plans have been largely placed on hold and businesses have had to focus on asset sweating rather than renewal. We see this is as a traditional shift in buying habits during a recession and every business has to react swiftly to the new climate. In terms of buying patterns we have seen a decline in key system sales and growth in VoIP system and system add-on sales. Any scepticism over VoIP quality & reliability has been put aside in favour of potential costs savings offered by VoIP.
As a result, we have seen increased interest in Skype gateways from VoSKY, a fast to implement system add-on which provides instant savings and fast ROI. Abbitek have become a lead Vosky preferred partner in the UK by promoting the use of Skype to reduce call charges.
Typically if a company has a large amount of international call traffic either on-net or off-net, there are savings to be made. Often staff are already using Skype in an uncontrolled manner to make calls between colleagues and clients. Vosky provides a way to route this traffic in an organised planned fashion so that calls can be made and received on a PBX extension to and from anywhere. International companies can choose to route all or % of their inter–branch voice calls via Skype or just simply use the gateways to break out on Skype at either end. Deploying a Skype gateway can make some significant savings. One of our client’s within the first month of installation of a Vosky Skype gateway reduced monthly call charges between Argentina, London and Luxemburg by 90% from £2500.00 to £250.00.”