Proximiti Communication's Smith Thinks Outside the Box

Anybody who has been in the Interconnect, consumer or small business VoIP, value-added reseller, incumbent or competitive local exchange businesses probably has given at least some thought to how gross revenue and profit margin can be maximized in a business that has almost-continual pressure on pricing and margins.

Everybody seems to agree that “moving up the value chain” is part of the answer and that simple voice and broadband access services alone will be a tough way to make a living.

So the issue is what service providers can do, and where such capabilities can be sourced.

Gregg Smith, Proximiti Communications CEO, thinks he has an answer for at least some providers of communications services to businesses. And that answer is changing the nature of the product sold to small businesses, for example.

“Communications-enabled business processes” is the near universal mantra these days in the unified communications business. But what does that mean, in a practical, feet-on-the-street sales context? Not much.

If one can say that the problem communication service providers try to solve is “expensive or ineffective communications,” then the problem Smith’s Proximiti Communications is trying to solve is the productivity of the work force in just a couple verticals such as legal, financial services and medical, for example.

Consider any business that has a “time and materials” revenue model, such as attorneys do. Lawyers use mobiles. But those phones aren’t typically tied to the time tracking systems lawyers use to bill clients.

So Proximiti built applications that automatically track time spent talking on a mobile phone, and interface directly to legal billing systems: not just one billing system, mind you, but all the popular billing systems legal professionals tend to use.

In one case, a firm picked up 40 additional billable hours a month simply by accurately tracking mobile phone time logged with clients, while lowering its administration costs.

But lawyers also use email, and the issue is how to track email activities, in addition to mobile calls. Proximiti created software called “workTRAKR” that uses plug-ins for Microsoft Outlook and over 250 desktop phone systems, says Smith.

The software provides a complete summary, at the end of every day, of billable hours spent working on specific client accounts using mobile phones and email.

In August, Proximiti will add a PC application that tracks use of Microsoft Word and other applications, again tracking usage and allowing charging of time based on that usage.

WorkTRAKR is integrated with LexisNexis, the legal database, as well.

In some other verticals, however, time tracking isn’t so crucial, because the business model is based on getting new accounts and maintaining existing accounts. Insurance is a prime example of that.

So the value there is managing labor costs and effort, rather than simply tracking time. But the same tools that capture time, application usage, location and message format also can be used to measure employee productivity, even when assigning time to specific accounts is not required.

For sales processes, workTRAKR can be used to collect and manage inbound calls from customers and prospects, as it integrates contact information with customer databases.

The software also can help service providers identify “problem accounts” or customers who are having unusual issues, as it correlates contact activity with customer databases.

Proximiti now is looking for partners, especially CLECs, who can license and sell the applications either as part of a communications bundle, or as a stand-alone application when a customer does not want to switch communications providers, or is under contract and cannot switch for some time.

What does that have to do with changing business models? Nothing, if you think you can keep selling voice circuits and broadband access forever, and make a decent living at it.

But the way Proximiti sees matters, the biggest problem for most smaller companies isn’t the size of their phone bill. It’s the size of their wage bill, and the productivity of the work force.

And the problem for sales forces is how hard it now is to find a qualified lead, or once those leads are found, to present a differentiated offer. The ability to track work, on desk and mobile phones, using email and productivity suites, and integrate communications events with other key business databases, is the differentiation.

“Pricing for communications is really competitive now,” says Smith. “You have to offer something different.”

More than that, “this way you can sell even to a customer who is on a new three-year services contract, and only wants the workTRAKR software,” he says.

The software is supported on a hosted basis, so there is no need for any customer to buy and manage a server. Mobiles download a client app from the Web. User training takes about 10 minutes,
Smith says. IP