Our clients design new Avid services

This week we added two new services and they were both suggested by clients. It’s nice to have a company where we can take these concepts and roll out the service in the same day.

SMALL BUSINESS STARTER PACK

For just $50 per month, a small or new business can get:

• main phone number
• a fax number and a standard fax line with 200 minutes of long distance
• incoming fax server
• use of an Automated Attendant that can route incoming calls to voicemail, email, cell phones or other existing lines
• a company unified messaging account with web-based control

This gives a business a professional presence and great communications functionality for very little money. And this solution can grow with the business into a full-fledged solution of almost any size.

VIRTUAL PHONE NUMBERS (referred to by AT&T as Telebranch service)

These numbers can be set up to forward to another line without the need to order an actual line. In the past, businesses have used them to set up a local number in another city that forwards to their office. But they can also be used to track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns by using different numbers associated with different ads or signs. From Avid, the service costs $45 for three months service or $225 for a whole year–way cheaper and better than from AT&T!

So if you have an idea, ask us. It might just pay off.

Finally! One mailbox for all my messages!

6 email accounts; one fax line; three voicemail accounts; five phone numbers, two computers and an iPhone–OK, my world might be a little more complex than average. But I bet nearly everyone struggles with messages (voicemail, email and fax) winding up in many places, forcing a frequent ritual of checking all these locations to ensure that important messages aren’t left languishing.

Or in my case, some of those locations were infrequently checked–and that’s not good!

But now, everything goes to the same spot. Yeah! Here’s what I did.

Step One: Consolidate email addresses

1. I forward all email addresses (one from Verio, two from Yahoo, two from .Mac, one from Google) to a single .Mac account. I use Apple’s Mail program on the two computers and the iPhone, and since it’s an IMAP account, all three devices stay in sync.

Step Two: Consolidate voicemail accounts

1. I rely primarily on Avid’s unified messaging service to accomplish this. I set up my main voicemail account on my office line.
2. Using Avid’s service, I can associate other phone lines with this main voicemail account by adding them as additional numbers. Under Settings (option 4 from the main menu in voicemail), go to Additional Numbers and add the full 10 digit number.
3. I called AT&T and had them shut off the voicemail account on my iPhone. Through a Google search, I found how to program the iPhone to forward to Avid’s voicemail system. It requires three forwarding types: (1) busy, (2) no answer,  and (3) unavailable. The codes to do this are specific to the cell phone provider, and don’t bother calling Customer Service–find it on the Internet, it’ll be much easier.
4. I set up all my other lines as additional lines in my Avid voicemail account. I can customize the greeting callers hear on each line, so the business and the personal lines get an appropriate greeting. When the messages are forwarded to my email account, header information identifies which line it came in on. The messages arrive in my email account as an audio file that I can listen to on either computer or on my iPhone. This is way more convenient than calling into the voicemail system, and it’s easier to store or forward messages.

Step Three: Add efax capability to my voicemail account.

1. Avid’s unified messaging service allows me to have a fax number that delivers faxes to my voicemail account, and from there, I can have them forwarded on to my email account.

There it is. It’s fairly simple to do and, if you’re an Avid customer, inexpensive (might require a $5 per month additional fee for the efax service).

So my iPhone becomes my primary location for checking messages of all types, and both computers also serve that function, too.

Advanced Voicemail Setup Guide

Tailor the way your voicemail account works for you. Many of these options streamline the use of the system.

Download advanced voicemail setup guide>>

Voicemail Guide for Aastra phones

This is a quick guide for using voicemail (unified messaging) for those who have any Aastra telephone set.

Download voicemail guide for any Aastra phone>>

Voicemail Guide for snom360

This is a quick guide for using voicemail (unified messaging) for those who have a snom 360 telephone set.

Voicemail guide for snom360 phones>>

KIPP Endeavor Academy

Avid is proud to help the KIPP Endeavor Academy in Kansas City meet its telecommunications requirements. I could cite many reasons why we are so excited about what KIPP is doing, but this short video says it far better than ever I could:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCj1TdAmlS8

Great Office Space Available

In the heart of the Crossroads in one of the best buildings in the area, Avid has available approximately 1,500 square feet of office space available for sublease. We’re growing rapidly, but won’t need this space for a while and so we’re offering a great deal on this space.

Here’s why it is ideal for early stage, high tech or creative businesses.

It’s flexible. We won’t require a long-term commitment.

It’s ready. Office furniture is in place. You can move in this afternoon.

It comes with all kinds of high-end services, including sophisticated phone services, very high-speed Internet, scanners, and printers.

You have use of conference rooms.

The space has the best views in the city–south through a huge window to Crown Center and a bank of windows to the north with great views of the new Performing Arts Center and Downtown. Your clients will be impressed and you will enjoy the working environment!

Contact Dave Scott at 816-994-7073 for information.

Trapped: A case study

We had a great opportunity to help a business save money and double their Internet speed today. But we won’t be lifting a finger to do this until 2011. Why?

Because they just signed a 3-year term agreement with another provider. So for the next three years, they will have the privilege of paying 25% more than they would have with Avid. And they will be limited to half a T-1 for data because their provider cannot dynamically allocate capacity between voice and data services, meaning that half of the T-1 is always in use for voice–even when nobody is on the phone.

The provider allows them out of the contract–only if they pay full price for all the remaining months. So they’re stuck. And that’s exactly the objective of the service provider!

This firm could have greatly benefited from Avid’s ability to integrate VoIP phones alongside an existing system–capping the firm’s investment in legacy technology and giving them the benefits of VoIP today. In this case, a principal’s second home could have an office phone functioning exactly like the office phone. But that benefit is three years away. Their current provider offers none of this.

Pay-as-you-go Internet

A couple of months ago I was in a hotel in Stavropol’, Russia and experienced “Pay-as-you-go Internet.” To those carriers who are rabid to introduce this to America (AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner Cable…you know the crowd), I say, “I think you have identified a tremendous opportunity–in Russia.”

There I was just happy to have broadband Internet at almost any price. The fact that I had to go to the hotel desk every few hours with my roubles in hand was but a minor inconvenience.

Here it will be a different story. Now I understand why the big guys want to do this. With the imminent arrival of IP-video, the cable industry’s only hope of preserving its revenue stream will be to choke the streaming of video, keeping this from demolishing their carefully architected video pricing tiers. And if voice traffic is allowed to flow unimpeded over the Internet, traditional phone companies will be in for a depressing series of earnings calls as well.

And of course, I’m conflicted. If they do this, Avid Communications will benefit. Everyone would switch to us because we wouldn’t charge this way. It doesn’t match the underlying costs of providing the service, and the rates they are charging (from $0.40 to $1 per gigabyte of data in a current AT&T plan), are somewhere between 10 times and 50 times too expensive. We could slash our marketing budget to zero and still be overwhelmed with business.

…so the more I think about it, I say to AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner, “Go for it, comrades!”

Multi-T1 Service at The Screenland Building

Located in the Crossroads District near Downtown KC, The Screenland Building is home to a unique movie theater, public event space, and an array of creative, information intensive businesses.

Avid brings high-bandwidth services into The Screenland and makes these services available to businesses both large and small. Avid’s Hosted PBX service provides clients the best in phone system features for far less than owning a system, and Avid can install this service at the Screenland in a couple of days.

The combined power of Avid’s Screenland clients means lower prices and higher bandwidth for all.

Matt Brewer at (816) 994-7035 can provide information about special deals available from Avid for tenants of The Screenland.