Better, Faster, Simpler: Dash Helps Organizations Be More Efficient

Strategic Solutions Series

Better, Faster, Simpler: Dash Helps Organizations Be More Efficient

By Paula Bernier, Executive Editor, TMC  |  May 05, 2017

Business is moving fast. Competition is intense.

We’re all trying to do more – more quickly – with less.

That means organizations need solutions that are easy to use. They want to work with suppliers that are responsive to their needs. And they like to know what to expect in terms of pricing and reliability.

VirtualPBX addresses all of the above with Dash.

This award-winning business communications solution just celebrated its first birthday. And TMC (News - Alert) has celebrated Dash and Dash Unlimited by presenting VirtualPBX with the 2016 Unified Communications Product of the Year and TMC Labs Innovation Awards.

Dash is the hosted PBX (News - Alert) service VirtualPBX introduced last February. It is a metered service that starts customers out with a bank of minutes each month. A few months later the company expanded on that with Dash Unlimited, which provides users the same capabilities but via an unlimited minutes pricing model.

Both offerings deliver inbound and outbound voice, analytics, auto attendant, call forwarding, call recording, conferencing, outbound fax, reporting, ring groups, and more. Users can connect with Dash via their IP phones, mobile phones, or softphones.

VirtualPBX built Dash from the ground up. It’s an entirely new product with all new code. In creating Dash, VirtualPBX put to use its two decades of expertise in automatic call distribution, virtual contact centers, and queuing.

When VirtualPBX got its start in 1997, it catered to small businesses that wanted a toll-free auto attendant in the cloud. Over time, it expanded its product line and broadened its reach.

Today it serves customers of all sizes. But VirtualPBX’s sweet spot is in deployments with one to 1,000 seats.

The company began building Dash about three years ago in an effort to deliver a more intuitive user experience, explains VirtualPBX President and CEO Paul Hammond. Based on the FreeSWITCH open source telephony platform, Dash is also very easy to customize. That enables VirtualPBX to more quickly add new features and integrate with third-party solutions.

The Dash user interface is clean, clear, and customizable. The entire end user and administrator experience is managed through the cloud. A Dash portal enables users to buy the service, add new users, manage use, purchase new lines, and more. And there is no software to install unless a business elects to employ softphones or upcoming WebRTC capabilities.

Although Dash is easy to use, VirtualPBX offers customers one-on-one training over the phone following the first seven to 10 days of onboarding. The company also provides free, unlimited phone support to Dash customers on an ongoing basis, at all hours, and every day of the year.

 “That’s not something every competitor does,” says Hammond.

Dash pricing typically starts at $16 a month for single users, and $35 for single users on Dash Unlimited. But it can be as low as $20 a month for organizations that purchase Dash in volume.

VirtualPBX continues to sell its earlier Office Plans. But Dash is where the action is.

“Dash is far and away the most popular product we have,” says Hammond, “and it’s where we see our growth as a company.”

This year alone VirtualPBX expects to introduce the following Dash enhancements:

  • ACD queues;
  • APIs, so developers can build on the platform;
  • deep CRM integrations;
  • a full call center;
  • sophisticated reporting analytics;
  • text messaging; and
  • a WebRTC extension for Chrome, which will enable Dash users to make calls directly from the browser.

VirtualPBX recently began sharing its product roadmap with its customers. And many new Dash features are driven by the company’s conversations with its customers.

 “My goal is to constantly be current with our customer needs and make sure our product roadmap meets customer requirements,” Hammond says.

That aligns with one of VirtualPBX’s key business tenets: customer intimacy. Product excellence and operational efficiency are the company’s other two key tenets.

Innovation, ease of use, and affordability are all key to the VirtualPBX strategy. But the most important thing, Hammond notes, is to keep business customers’ phone systems up and running.

VirtualPBX has the back-end infrastructure and processes in place to deliver that reliability, he says. The company also provides professional services, and services like PBX Parachute and VoIP Clear Fix, to ensure business continuity.

PBX Parachute is a service for customers with premises-based PBX solutions. It provides an image of their PBX in the cloud. So if the customer’s PBX solution is not working for any reason, communications are supported by PBX Parachute in the cloud. As for Clear Fix, it’s a separate offering that places a device at the customer premises to connect with the VirtualPBX data center via a secure VPN tunnel that safeguards customer voice traffic from surges in bandwidth usage and ISP issues. VoIP Clear Fix is a provider agnostic service that is also offered to hosted PBX users who do not rely on services from VirtualPBX  

The company’s professional services organization, meanwhile, helps customers design, build, deploy, and tweak networks so they are ideally set up to support VoIP and other business requirements. And VirtualPBX resells IP phones and other services and solutions.

With all the new Dash capabilities and other VirtualPBX initiatives in the pipeline, 2017 is shaping up to be a productive year for VirtualPBX and its customers.

For more information about VirtualPBX and Dash, visit www.virtualpbx.com.




Edited by Alicia Young

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