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Joel Johnston

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Marketing Director, Washington Shared Parenting

46 points

Jan. 4, 2011

Joel Johnston and 6 other people answered this question

What is your prediction for small business in 2011?

The mindset of a downturn in the economy is being squeezed out of the small business sector. I predict cash flow will improve in 2011 as many of the failing businesses have exited, and new vibrant businesses are taking their place in the market.
Good ... more

Jan. 4, 2011

Joel Johnston recommends this answer by Todd Hodgen

What are the disadvantages of an automated attendance telephone system?

The author has asked about the disadvantages of an Auto Attendant. Quite simply the biggest disadvantage of an Auto Attendant is the lack of person interaction with a caller who is looking to do business with you based on a personal relationship, which in most ... more

Customer Service

Information Technology

Contact Centers

Nov. 26, 2010

Joel Johnston and 10 other people answered this question

Based on what you are asking for, an on site PBX, there are many to chose from that will give you years of reliable service at costs that are probably lower than you have specified.
Many have advised you on hosted plans, and have even ... more

Information Technology

Telecommunciations

Oct. 5, 2010

Joel Johnston and 7 other people answered this question

Can anyone recommend a fun team-building activity for a group of sales people?

Service to Humanity is the Best Work of Life! Find a good non-profit that is underserved. Spend a day painting their facilities, doing repair work, fix them a nice meal, yardwork, etc.
You will provide a great and necessary service, you will work as a ... more

Oct. 4, 2010

Joel Johnston recommends this answer by Todd Hodgen

What is a good reason to NOT implement an IP phone system?

If you have a good digital phone system that meets the needs of your company, and you would not get benefits from the new features of a VOIP system, there is no reason for you to change what is working for you.
Yes, you may ... more

Information Technology

IP Ohone System

Oct. 4, 2010

Joel Johnston recommends this answer by Todd Hodgen

What is a predictive dialer system and who uses it?

Predictive dialers are a uniquie product that is designed to dial large quantities of telephone numbers for telemarketing, collections, advertising, etc.
Essentially, it is a table of telephone numbers that the dialer dials at specified times in an attempt to reach a live body. Most ... more

Customer Service

Information Technology

Contact Center Technologies

Oct. 3, 2010

Joel Johnston answered this question

What is the difference between sip phones and IP enabled phones?

A SIP phone is IP enabled. Ip enabled phones have the ability to use the Internet Protocol between the end points and the host.
However, if you draw a comparison to cell phones, they come in several flavors. We had analog cell phones, we had ... more

Information Technology

Oct. 3, 2010

Joel Johnston recommends this answer by Todd Hodgen

Phone system upgrades: justifications and impediments?

We see it all the time in peoples personal lives - they want to sell their home, so they go and put fresh paint on it, remodel the kitchen and bath, clean up the landscaping, new carpet, etc. so they have house beautiful. Then they ... more

Information Technology

Communications Infrastructure

Cost Justification

Oct. 3, 2010

Joel Johnston recommends this answer by Todd Hodgen

What is your opinion on VoIP video phones?

Personally, I like video phones. And, you will begin to see more and more of them becoming available. For instance, many of the soft clients today have them integrated. So, you make a call over your companies SIP telephone network, with a much higher quality ... more

Information Technology

Oct. 3, 2010

Joel Johnston recommends this answer by Steve Hosmer

What can a good CRM system do for a business?

Hi Courtney,
What is most interesting about the first three answers is that they are all different and frequently discuss functionality. From these answers, then, we can see that CRM does different things for different companies and provides multiple functionalities in most implementations.
But enough ... more

Oct. 3, 2010

Joel Johnston and 2 other people answered this question

How does a SIP-PSTN gateway fit into a VoIP solution?

As a gateway, this device converts PSTN lines, to SIP lines. If you are receiving your trunks from your telco as a PRI, and your VOIP system doesn't have the ability to terminate the PRI directly, you would be required to have a gateway to ... more

Information Technology

SIP-PSTN Gateway

Oct. 3, 2010

Joel Johnston recommends this answer by Todd Hodgen

What are the advantages of an open source phone system?

An open source system can have great financial savings for a company that deployes one. As open source, the cost of software is low, and in most cases, they are feature rich. Licensing fees are either eliminated, or at a lower cost from a commercial ... more

Information Technology

Open Source Phone Systems

Oct. 3, 2010

Joel Johnston recommends this answer by Srikanth SESH

What are the benefits of cloud-based unified communications?

It takes the headache away in premise-based deployment, resulting in CAPEX.
However I believe the success of a cloud-based UC will be seen if the solution is a vanilla deployment. The more complex the UC deployment, I still tend to believe it's to be premise-based, ... more

Information Technology

Cloud-based Computing

Cloud-based Servers

Cloud-based Storage

Oct. 3, 2010

Joel Johnston recommends this answer by Todd Hodgen

What is a main factor for implementing unified communications?

Top factors are different for each company, and each industry a well. Take a company like Microsoft or Google, there is hardly a need for a telephone on the desktop, they don't use them, they use IM, they use Email, they use text messaging to ... more

Information Technology

Unified Communications

Unified Communications Implementation

Oct. 3, 2010

Joel Johnston recommends this answer by Todd Hodgen

When you buy unified communications from a vendor, what are you physically buying?

What you are typically buying is interoperability between different business applications that involve communications. I've answers this type of question about Unified Communications before, each business has a different perception of what it is, and each vendor has a different perspective of what it is ... more

Information Technology

Corporate Telephony

Oct. 3, 2010

Joel Johnston and 1 other person answered this question

Are Nortel and Avaya the same thing?

This depends on what products you are looking for. Nortel was a Public company that went into bankruptcy. The Enterprise division of Nortel, which manufactured the Meridian, Norstar, BCM, and numerous other products was purchased by Avaya. So, Nortel PBX products (and much more) are ... more

Information Technology

Oct. 3, 2010

Joel Johnston recommends this answer by Todd Hodgen

If you're considering Unified Communications, would you go with a premise-based solution or hosted?

I guess I'll be the odd man out on this topic. As a vendor of on premise equipment, much of my business is replacing hosted system after customers tire of the quality issues they have. You don't have too look to far to find someone ... more

Information Technology

Oct. 3, 2010

Joel Johnston recommends this answer by Philip Taylor

What is the downside to using facebook as your sole website?

Maybe I am not making myself clear about what is doing business and what is ROI so I will use an example of a real world situation and you can all decide for yourself.
At the end of the street there is a nightclub and the ... more

Oct. 3, 2010

Joel Johnston and 4 other people answered this question

What's a SIP Trunk?

Specifically, SIP is a signalling protocol. It does not compress calls. SIP does not fill your T-1 allowing you to get more utilization. SIP does not do quality of service.
However, as a Signalling protocol, it does negotiate the end to end signalling, which allows ... more

Information Technology

Oct. 3, 2010

Joel Johnston recommends this answer by Todd Hodgen

Can anyone recommend a good Telecomm consultancy?

Terry, A true Consultant will not be selling products. If you are intent on hiring a consultant, there are many national firm that only do Consulting.
Consulting sales is a different animal, and if a consultant is telling you about the products he/she has to ... more

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