TMCnet Feature

Amid the fantastic technology on display, and aside from the great opportunities to hear and exchange ideas with subject matter experts and colleagues here at ITEXPO East 2012, you might wish to stop by and have a chat with Integral Choice in booth 329. Why? The answer is that in an era of constant, accelerating change, sometimes all of us in the industry tend to forget our minimize the importance of consultants in customer purchasing decisions. 

Reality is that with consultants deeply involved in pre and post-sale engagements, particularly as organizations of all sizes contemplate things like moving to the cloud, virtualization, putting in SIP trunking,  wireless LANS, mobility and social media, etc., attention should be paid.

Nick Seidell, president and CEO of Integral Choice, explained to TMCnet that having a partial to the customer trusted advisor and advocate  involved in evaluating and recommending the “the  right solutions for their telecommunication needs,” is the true value of having a consultant on your side. 

Saving money and growing smartly

Integral Choice provides capabilities in the following areas under their “Integral Approach” umbrella.

Bid Service – A reverse auction process to allow customer to obtain  the best replacement for existing or new services. There is NO FEE for this service which is geared towards smaller clients.

Consulting – Project and ongoing consulting solutions such as, phone systems, WAN, international access, Hosted IP based solutions, etc.

Contingency Audit and Management – Complete audit and assessment reports on all services, both in and out of contract. The audit includes inventory, best ways to reduce expense, enhance services, and —contract analysis. Seidell likes to point out that this process typically provides results ranging from 20 percent to 40 percent gross savings monthly, and that “Integral gets paid when the customer saves, which allows them the resources to invest in growth.”

Contingency audit and management  includes: 

• Full and detailed analysis of a company’s wire line, wireless Telecom expenditures and equipment.
• Proposed solutions from the best carriers available
• Implementation Management — once a solution is chosen Integral works directly with the carriers to ensure installations go smoothly and contract terms are lived up to.
• Billing Management — basically soup to nuts to make sure a customer gets not just what they need but what they paid for.

Seidell said that while we are all sensitive in tough economic times to the need to save money, the hard part for most companies is in first really knowing what they have (especially finding redundant or legacy capabilities that are no longer being used but are still being paid for), then finding a way to be more efficient, effective and capable of adopting to rapid and sometimes unpredictable change. 

“Only a thorough audit, can get customers to realize where they are and get them started on where they should be and their options for moving forward,” said Seidell.

He pointed to mobility as a perfect example of where Integral Choice  has been helping customers makes sense of a mind field of challenges. The complexity of plans organizations and their individual users are on, device management (including policy and rules enforcement) and the seemingly simple tasks of device sourcing and support for things like battery replacement and spare phones, are examples. 

And as the bring your own device (BYOD) to work trend explodes to where in some companies the average number of network connected devices per individual has gone from one to three in just the last year, keeping pace in an intelligent and cost effective manner can be daunting . Once a customer can see the view under the covers, “the savings can be substantial,” said Seidell.

The bottom line is the bottom line. As Seidell emphasized, “we have the expertise and resources to find hidden charges in customer bills even ones our customers’ accounting and IT departments can’t find. And, it is critical to point out again that we really do only get paid if we save our customers money.”

The track record of Integral Choice , founded in 2004, is impressive. Not only has it developed a growing customer base, but it also has built strong relationships with solutions providers and a variety of carriers. In fact, back in 2005 it was one of only 9 SBC National Dealers (Now AT&T (News - Alert)). Since then the company has been:  a top 5 National Consultant for Verizon, a Top Elite Partner for Paetec (meaning they are in the top 3 percent of over 600 other partners), a Top 5 Agent by the Telecom Association (News - Alert), and they were given the title of “Partner of the Year” by Lightyear.

Is there value in having an objective, trusted resource to ensure you are making solutions and services decisions that are best for you? The answer for much of the market, especially as their IT and communications environments converge and become more complex , is yes. Consultants are and will continue to play an important role in enterprise consideration of vendor offers. Stop by booth 329 at ITEXPO (News - Alert) East and talk to the folks at Integral Choice to get answers to questions you may have as to whether involving a consultant in your decision-making is right for you.