Small Biz Technology Advisor Blog

by Christopher Erckert
Small Business Technology Advisor

While attending this month’s local Huntington Township Chamber of Commerce membership breakfast I met one of our new members Matthew Maroney from Intelligent Office. Essentially, Intelligent Office offers two main services:

• Remote Receptionist: With The Remote Receptionist, your calls are answered in the name of your company or any other greeting you’d like. They screen each call according to your exact instructions. They then dial your extension (or any other number you’ve left with us), and announce the call to you.

• Virtual Office: Whether you’re just getting started or expanding your reach, you need an office solution that expands with your business. Tailored to meet variable needs, the Executive Office is also suited to offsite project teams, mobile consultants and those who need a professional and flexible business environment on a short or long-term basis.

Their closest office to Huntington, NY is their Melville location at: 445 Broad Hollow Rd. Ste.25, but the cool thing is, once you sign up as a client you can use any one of their 41+ locations in North America.

After the Huntington Chamber event I decided to investigate just how Intelligent Office could solved many small business’ growing pains. Here are my thoughts…

Everyone who has a home based business knows that as your business grows you begin to feel the pressure of not having a professional setting for meeting clients and conducting business. Sure, you can pay for remote reception services, have a well designed website with a bunch of corporate images on it, have meetings at Starbucks, or simply meet clients at their location, but there will always, always be a time when it would be so much easier to have a professional office where you controlled the setting.

When I say control, I mean control over distractions for both you and the client. Now there are many cases when you want to be in the client’s environment for a sale, but I look back at times in my career when if only that phone didn’t ring off the hook, or one of the clients employees didn’t interrupt us, the sales pitch could have gone so much smoother.

I’ve also personally found that bringing the client out of their environment and into a neutral setting simply allows them to have more perspective on their business. This really helps when you’re doing consultative selling and you need the client to be very introspective about their business and how it operates. Finally, lets not forget the dreaded PowerPoint presentation at a client site. With the wrong projector cables, general incompatibilities, no space to put stuff down, etc. it can be a real nightmare and it seems with Intelligent Office you literally neutralize the sales distractions.

I would also say another not so obvious plus, is having a place to get work done that is not Starbucks and not home. It’s the equivalent of the library except you can make phone calls, you get free WiFi Access, and the chairs are much more comfortable. There are numerous other benefits so I suggest you head over to their website @ www.iomelville.com

One shortcoming to a shared office suite environment is not being able to access all your stuff that you leave back at home. This includes both digital and paper files, business materials, and anything else you need to get the job done. The best way to solve this, is to digitize as much as you can and setup remote access to your home office. It’s not a costly endeavor and Evo Networks can help outfit you with everything you need to make it work, and to ensure a smooth transition to IO or any other shared suite service.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 9:05 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

by Christopher Erckert
Small Business Technology Advisor

While attending this month’s local Huntington Township Chamber of Commerce membership breakfast I met one of our new members Matthew Maroney from Intelligent Office. Essentially, Intelligent Office offers two main services:

• Remote Receptionist: With The Remote Receptionist, your calls are answered in the name of your company or any other greeting you’d like. They screen each call according to your exact instructions. They then dial your extension (or any other number you’ve left with us), and announce the call to you.

• Virtual Office: Whether you’re just getting started or expanding your reach, you need an office solution that expands with your business. Tailored to meet variable needs, the Executive Office is also suited to offsite project teams, mobile consultants and those who need a professional and flexible business environment on a short or long-term basis.

Their closest office to Huntington, NY is their Melville location at: 445 Broad Hollow Rd. Ste.25, but the cool thing is, once you sign up as a client you can use any one of their 41+ locations in North America.

After the Huntington Chamber event I decided to investigate just how Intelligent Office could solved many small business’ growing pains. Here are my thoughts…

Everyone who has a home based business knows that as your business grows you begin to feel the pressure of not having a professional setting for meeting clients and conducting business. Sure, you can pay for remote reception services, have a well designed website with a bunch of corporate images on it, have meetings at Starbucks, or simply meet clients at their location, but there will always, always be a time when it would be so much easier to have a professional office where you controlled the setting.

When I say control, I mean control over distractions for both you and the client. Now there are many cases when you want to be in the client’s environment for a sale, but I look back at times in my career when if only that phone didn’t ring off the hook, or one of the clients employees didn’t interrupt us, the sales pitch could have gone so much smoother.

I’ve also personally found that bringing the client out of their environment and into a neutral setting simply allows them to have more perspective on their business. This really helps when you’re doing consultative selling and you need the client to be very introspective about their business and how it operates. Finally, lets not forget the dreaded PowerPoint presentation at a client site. With the wrong projector cables, general incompatibilities, no space to put stuff down, etc. it can be a real nightmare and it seems with Intelligent Office you literally neutralize the sales distractions.

I would also say another not so obvious plus, is having a place to get work done that is not Starbucks and not home. It’s the equivalent of the library except you can make phone calls, you get free WiFi Access, and the chairs are much more comfortable. There are numerous other benefits so I suggest you head over to their website @ www.iomelville.com

One shortcoming to a shared office suite environment is not being able to access all your stuff that you leave back at home. This includes both digital and paper files, business materials, and anything else you need to get the job done. The best way to solve this, is to digitize as much as you can and setup remote access to your home office. It’s not a costly endeavor and Evo Networks can help outfit you with everything you need to make it work, and to ensure a smooth transition to IO or any other shared suite service.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 9:05 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.