Telecommunications - Teleconference - Australia

[Clint.Davis]

Hi,

I have an Australian Hosted Teleconference Service.

If someone would be kind enough to provide me with valuable and honest feedback.

Things you can review:
Main Website
Affiliate Program
Teleconference Service (Inc Control Panel)

Everything i have, i have made/customised myself.
So getting an outside opinion would be great.

Link is below:

[armenh]

The website looks good, but could you expand on what you are offering. Nowdays conference calls are so streamlined and simple that charging for it seems a joke, even at the corporate level. Also, many corporations have phone systems with multiple lines voiding the need for your service, whats your target audience? I might be wrong, but maybe elaborate a bit...

[Clint.Davis]

Thanks armenh,

Australia has no free Teleconference facilities. (Unlike the US where they are everywhere)
- And my prices are below the other providers with in Australia.
(There are around 5 other main stream providers that are my direct competition.)

I have also been looking at a way to be the first free teleconferencing provider in Australia, however the data rates in Australia for data center hosting are very expensive.
And such would need to off balance the costs with a 'pay for service' (The higher feature set).

I would need more active paying customers before i make that move, as some of my customers would switch across to the free service.


My target audience are company's that have offices/remote workers that are interstate (but not large enough to deploy their own teleconferencing solution) - around 20 seats.

Currently the majority of my customers are between that amount of seats and conferencing between 4 users up to 15 users. (Daily Or Weekly).

[armenh]

With the internet don't these companies realize they can just login create an account and host conferences over VOIP servers...(In no way am I degrading your business model)The use of land lines for conference calls especially in corporations is in decline, VOIP is the new thing. I am sure you can cut down costs yourself by using VOIP servers instead of land lines to host your calls, but than again VOIP is not as reliable and you need additional resources. I read that it can cost an upward of 10k to create a reliable VOIP hosting server.

[Clint.Davis]

Yeah, there are a few speed bumps that come into the mix when a customer goes to use that kind of solution.

As you already said for a company to deploy / host their own (standard or VoIP) conference server its more expensive and defiantly out of the reach of the less then 30 employee type company's.

Their current phone systems may even conference, but the service is limited.
(Limited lines / no recording options / etc)

So then Skype:
Then if a business goes to use Skype to conference, they then need to manage calling the people through Skype. there are no recording options through Skype (there is 3rd party software, but again another thing to manage) and Skype has a limit of the amount of people who can be added into a conference (9 people)

Webinars:
They could host webinars/VOIP conferences (however, that requires each user to have an internet connection & a good connection) - regional Australia does not have very good internet connections. (where as phone voice calls work fine) + its an extra layer of technical stuff to manage.

All in all, when it comes down to it. a customer uses our service for the ease that its so simple to just book and call the number.
(The end user gets sent an email with the phone number to call, and the time and date.)



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To have our service stand out, we are adding extra features such as having the conference call over telephones also able to be broadcast over the internet live.
(Some services have it one OR the other, and we plan to integrate both)

Be able to use skype to skype to dial into the conference. (Over VoIP)
And be able to use Google talk to call into the conference.

& adding a multiple number outbound dialer, so when the conference starts the conference service calls the end users and invites them into the conference.

[armenh]

Seems like you have done great market research and know where you are going. Did you write a business plan for this before starting? I guess Australia is a bit different from USA. Here, it seems like we are going more and more towards VoIP solutions but we are paying for reliability, but the good thing is there are ongoing advancements which make VoIP and internet telephony all more reliable. There is so many ways you can expand eventually offering softphones but analog sure is the most reliable hands down. Good Luck to You!!

[sukhjeet_vfusion]

I would agree with armenh on some points. VoIP is the future and with bandwidth speeds increasing around the world, analog is on the fast track on becoming extinct. Mp3, dvds, hdtv, voip, not sure when I used an analog signal except for real life face to face communications ... even then, some people are sounding more like robots Analog may be more reliable for now, just because the POTS infrastructure is there, but not for long. With analog TV signals ending at the beginning of next year in North America, how long do you think analog phone is going to last. I actually canceled my analog line and went VoIP at home with a mobile phone when I'm on the go ... business is going to realize the cost saving and eventually go all digital. Something to consider.

Sukhjeet Singh
co-founder of The v-Fusion Group
The v-Fusion Group

[Clint.Davis]

Sorry for delay in reply, been away from emails.

Did you write a business plan for this before starting?

Yes i did, and rewrote and revised it many times before starting the business.

Covering all the major points:

Prime Objectives
Growth inhibitors
The Problems
The Solution
Sales Process
Products & Price
Intellectual Property
Strategic Analysis
Market Research
Size of Market
Barriers to Entry
Competitive Advantage
Sustainable Competitive Advantage
Potential Competitors
Strategic Options Matrix
Production Strategic Plan
Milestone Summary
Challenges / Opportunities
Mission / Vision Statement
Organisational chart
KPI Methodology

There is so many ways you can expand eventually offering softphones

Yes, defiantly. The add-on/expansion possibilities are defiantly there.
Another one that we are working on is providing the add on service of transcription services for the conference. so you get your MP3 recording, and a text version.

sukhjeet_vfusion: business is going to realize the cost saving and eventually go all digital. Something to consider.

Yes for sure, we do actually have VoIP lines entering the server. from a VoIP provider thats 1 millisecond away from our equipment.

So we are ready for that kind of service when more and more people start using direct VoIP to VoIP phone connections.

The thing to note is that everyone of our current customers are not using VoIP as their internal phone system.

So we will be ready for it, but the need is defiantly not there just yet. (Small business still have the quality problem when going VoIP and have seen it many times where it has almost killed a business because of the quality issues that their customers have when calling them)