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PCN - Private Corporate Network Economy (part 2)
Beating reduced tariff systems Navatec.Com's Private Corporate Network service, available for any registered user of Navatec Voyager, offers a significant cost saving for companies of any size. Two recent studies 1 have assessed the potential savings offered by Navatec Voyager for companies in comparison with regular telephone services and reduced tariff services. This article discusses reduced tariff services. Reduced tarifff services for telephone charges fall into three charge bands (there are variations) of service known as N1, N2 and N3 which charge 2 cents, 4 cents or 6 cents per minute. Competing with these are three VoIP bands known as V1, V2 and V3 which charge out at a rate of $5, $10 or $15/month irrespective of the time talked. It is estimated that on average, light users of telephony in business might speak for some 20-30 minutes each day, an average user for some 30-45 minutes each day and heavy users for 45 to 90 minutes each day. Heavy users include people who manage brokerages, agricultural commodity trading and produce sales. In many businesses managers are required to gather end-of-day status of a range of items including cash flow, orders received, inventory and the prices at which items were traded. This information is vital to optmise delivery to better sales zones, sustain flow of goods and therefore corporate cash flow. At this end of the market VoIP V3 is already cheaper that the lowest service band N1. For example for someone using telephony for more than 90 minutes/day, the VoIP monthly charge of $15 is considerably less than the reduced telephony charge of $40/month. Within a large trading company managing overseas agents or panelists, then savings become very significant. A complement of managers and traders of 250 can save some $6,250/month. When it comes to large organizations, development banks and international and government administrations savings become large. But isnt VoIP free? VoIP in fact is not free, operators cross-subsidise their "free" VoIP services from income-earning services. But this means those paying fees are paying perhaps more than they should in order to subsidise the "free service". Skype, for example, charge in excess of 35 cents/minute for some long distance locations when low cost telecom services are charging 9 cents/minute for the same locations. Navatec does not apply the cross-subsidy model but applies strict return on investment on their outlays on VoIP technology. This means working to minimize operational costs through optimized server and other hardware usage and making efficient use of international networks by applying bandwidth reducing technologies and techniques. Navatec have started out marketing their VoIP service within band V3 ($15/month/user) but have pulled other cost-cutting services into the VoIP packages. Customers therefore start out with a quantifiable saving in telephony but also from the other applications. Navatec provide customers with a cost-benefit breakdown to demonstrate how much a customer will save by taking up each additional service. Designing systems to lever the VoIP advantage Navatec is emerging as a leader in maximizing the business impacts of VoIP. This is based on an applied development program based at Seel-Telesis®, which is analysing where and how VoIP brings benefits. This involves the work flow analysis of different business processes to identify the most appropriate systems for communication. For example, data processes communicate across broad band straight to caches and processors and many people make use of emails. However, there is a surprising range of situations where use of voice communications can be more important than others, in association with other tasks (see box). Besides work flow issues there are important ergonomic questions in maximising user convenience so as to minimise operational costs. A large range of situations have been identified where VoIP is superior to standard telephones and mobiles both in terms of being the most convenient and appropriate communications medium to support certain tasks as well as representing the most cost-effective solution. The practical outcome is that well-selected VoIP integrated business applications can lever costs down several magintudes more than VoIP alone. Many people have tried to use the available Voip services, such as Skype, to complement their business activities with very mixed results. On the other hand Navatec have designed-in relevant business functionality resulting in a very smooth operation through the Navatec Voyager client interface. This creates a completely seamless operation between voice, text, document flow supporting business transactions and database management. For example finishing a VoIP conversation the parties may each require to complete some administrative document. This might be an agreement based on what was just discussed, a order or acceptance of a proposal. The Navatec document flow management system enables the participants to confirm agreement with any document content while talking. This means the administrative tasks are completed by the end of the conversation. This is a major advance over traditional practice of completing administrative issues post-conversation and often having to reconfirm what was agreed on specific points of detail. By using this process is a regular part of business, the VoIP/document flow management combination can cut down the time to agree on the content of complex document by a factor of 5. By way of example, the AgriComex the agricultural commodity exchange has a trading floor and an integrated document flow manageemnt system which handles produce requests, offers and acceptances. These documents can be transferred using Navatec instant data during a conversation. By the time a conversation ends deals can be closed and with all administrative details and documentation taken care of, as agreed between the parties. BarCodeVoIP An interesting facility being introduced to the Navatec document flow system is the provision of online bar code drivers. If a document is bar coded (this is a systems standard option activated with a toggle switch) then subsequently, if indeed something needs to be discussed, the bar code can be scanned into a BCVoIP dialogue and the other party will be called automatically. Even although the bar code on the documents "at each end" is the same, the Navatec system can identify who is scanning in the bar code so calls the other party. "Communicating through Seel-Telesis®-PCN", Seel-Telesis®, January 2006; "Talking your way to business performance", H. W. McNeill, Seel-Telesis® VoIP Workshop, December, 2005; "PCN, The Internal Vision - the Advantages of Private Corporate Networks", Navatec, February 2006. |
