BusinesSuites

When our company embarked on a significant technology plan seven years ago, we were struggling. We were losing money, struggling to integrate acquisitions in several markets across the country, our telephone and internet services to clients were subpar, and we had no central source of financial and reporting information to help us manage our disparate locations. We operate in a distributed environment (groups of three to five team members at 16 different locations), making collaboration a challenge.

People generally think that more technology means more complexity. Our goal is to use technology to simplify tasks and experiences for our clients and team members. We have gotten new ideas from the installation of large LCD televisions for presentations in windowed meeting rooms to replace projectors and screens. It has allowed us to diagnose problems which were affecting a number of clients. We integrated our systems with FedEx, so we can give each client a FedEx login tied to our master account. Clients can handle their own shipping on the FedEx website, and we will include the charges on their monthly invoice at our negotiated discounts. Early in 2009, we added a customer survey module to our enterprise software allowing us to deliver electronic move-in, move-out, and satisfaction surveys to clients. Most importantly, it allows us to internally track our progress in resolving issues. -We are in the testing phases of online account access for our clients. Most importantly, this system will allow clients to see meeting room availability in real time and schedule a meeting. With Microsoft remote desktop, we have central servers in a collocation facility and each team member accesses the system and system-wide files from anywhere at any time. We will soon be beta-testing a central voice over IP phone system which we will ultimately use for all sixteen locations (to replace premise based traditional phone systems), allowing us to provide better service (answer phones at any location) and allow our clients to take their phones with them when they outgrow our space and continue using our phone service and phone answering via their internet connections