Collanos Blog

beteo profits from combining Collanos Workplace and Collanos Phone with LumiPBX

From day one, the young and innovative consulting firm beteo AG has used an outsourced LumiPBX phone system developed by Translumina Networks. beteo has unparalleled expertise in the area of SAP Application Lifecycle Management and provides consulting services to international, large-scale companies that use SAP’s standard software. Specifically, beteo helps them to set up and design their SAP systems to ensure that when these are re-configured or applications need to be changed, the flexibility of the company and its IT system are not impaired in the short- or long-term.

All beteo employees use Collanos Phone, a software-only phone that is installed on a given computer. This soft-client is fully integrated in LumiPBX as well as in the Collanos teamwork network used intensively at beteo. As a result, beteo’s Collanos users can make calls to anywhere in the world at no charge. The only requirement for this phone service to function in the Collanos network is computer access to the Internet. Employees can thus be reached by phone anywhere on the planet at their own phone number or their Collanos name.

Calls made from Collanos Phone or Collanos Workplace to a public-switched telephone network are inexpensively routed through the LumiPBX switchboard. Dieter Steiger, founder and CEO of beteo, opted for this solution since Collanos Phone functions very similarly to a normal telephone and beteo’s projects require teams to have flexible and interlinked communications. As a result, beteo no longer had to consider buying a large number of phones, and employees who travel continuously from one customer to the next throughout Europe benefit from a tremendous level of flexibility.

According to Steiger, whose rapidly growing company already has more than 20 employees in Germany and Switzerland, LumiPBX is ideally suited for small and medium-sized companies. In his opinion, the system is easily managed and operated in businesses employing anywhere from 10 to 500 people. He believes that LumiPBX makes sense if a company needs a simple telephone switchboard, employees are to be reached via the company’s phone number, and answering machines or voice mail are to be used.

With a little bit of experience, getting new employees used to the system is straightforward, says Steiger. In contrast to the past when internal telephony was controlled from a complex switchboard and the assistance of an external expert was required, beteo employees are now independantly able to setup new hires or re-assigned personnel on the system. The company thereby gains a greater degree of autonomy and flexibility, lauds Steiger.

Steiger and his beteo employees don’t need a home-office connection either, since Collanos Phone or an IP phone provides them with all necessary functions wherever they are – even at home.

“Thanks to the LumiPBX-integrated Collanos Phone, we hardly use mobile phones any more for international calls. That lets us save so much money that even private calls are of no consequence,” he explains, adding, “If beteo employees make a habit of using the new platform for business and personal use, the company will definitely benefit from that.”

LumiPBX incorporates many more functions than beteo needs. beteo only uses automatic call forwarding for calls to the head office, which are then routed to the administrative department. Due to cost reasons, incoming calls are not automatically routed to mobile phones. One much-used feature is the ability to forward voice mails to employee e-mail addresses.

LumiPBX and Collanos Phone offer the advantage of using the public phone network worldwide at very low rates, while also enabling telephony to be easily integrated into beteo’s Collanos Collaboration network. “As a result, the already outstanding close collaboration with customers and project partners is now supplemented with voice services at no charge. We always wanted to have a low-cost call-out function for our teamwork environment. We finally have it and it is working out perfectly!” says Steiger pleased.

About the author:
Claudia Poggiolini is a freelance journalist and author working for corporate communications of Translumina Networks, a Collanos partner.

Translumina LumiPBX mit Collanos Phone und Collanos Workplace bei beteo

Die Consulting Firma beteo AG ist eine innovative, junge Firma, die seit ihrer Gründung eine outgesourcete  LumiPBX Telefonanlage von Translumina Networks verwendet. beteo verfügt über einmalige Expertise im Bereich SAP Application Lifecycle Management. Sie berät weltweit grosse Unternehmen, welche die Standardsoftware von SAP einsetzen. Es geht dabei darum, wie diese ihre SAP Systeme aufsetzen und gestalten, damit laufend vorzunehmende Anpassungen am Kunden-SAP-System die Flexiblität von Unternehmen und Informatiksystem kurz- wie langfristig möglichst nicht beeinträchtigen.

Alle Mitarbeitenden von beteo benutzen Collanos Phone, ein Telefon, das als Software auf dem Computer installiert ist. Dieser Soft-Client ist vollumfänglich sowohl in die bei beteo intensiv eingesetzte Collanos-Teamwork-Netzwerk wie auch in LumitPBX integriert. Telefonieren zwischen Collanos-Nutzern ist dadurch für beteo überall auf der Welt kostenlos. Die einzige Voraussetzung für das Funktionieren der Telefone im Collanos-Netzwerk ist der Zugriff des Computers aufs Internet. Damit ist der Mitarbeitende überall auf der Welt unter seiner eigenen Telefonnummer oder seinem Collanos-Namen per Telefon erreichbar.
Bei einem Anruf von Collanos Phone oder Collanos Workplace  ins öffentliche Telefonnetz wird der Anruf kostengünstig über die zentrale LumiPBX abgewickelt.
Da sich Collanos Phone  in seinen Funktionen nicht von einem normalen Telefon unterscheidet und für die Projektteams von beteo eine flexible und vernetzte Arbeitsweise unerlässlich ist, hat sich Dieter Steiger, Gründer und CEO von beteo, für diese Lösung entschieden. Somit fiel der Kauf von Telefonapparaten für beteo weg und die Mitarbeitenden, die permanent bei Kunden in ganz Europa unterwegs sind, geniessen grösste Flexibiliät.

Gemäss Dieter Steiger, dessen stark wachsendes Unternehmen bereits über 20 Mitarbeitende in Deutschland und der Schweiz beschäftigt, eignet sich LumiPBX ganz speziell für mittelgrosse und kleinere Unternehmen. Bei einer Grösse von 10-500 Mitarbeitenden erachtet Dieter Steiger das System für absolut überschaubar und einfach zu handhaben. LumiPBX hält er für sinnvoll, sobald ein Unternehmen eine einfache Telefonzentrale benötigt, die Mitarbeitenden über die Firmennummer erreichbar sein und Telefonbeantworterfunktionen oder Voice-Mail genutzt werden sollen.

Mit ein bisschen Erfahrung sei die Einbindung neuer Mitarbeitenden ins System einfach, meint Dieter Steiger. Deshalb nehmen die beteo-Mitarbeitenden bei einer Neuanstellung oder einem Mitarbeiterwechsel die Einbindung der Personen ins System gleich selber vor. Im Gegensatz zu früher, als die interne Telefonie noch von einer komplexen Zentrale aus gesteuert wurde, sei man nun nicht mehr auf einen externen Fachmann angewiesen. Dadurch gewinne das Unternehmen an Autonomie und Flexibilität, lobt Dieter Steiger.

Einen Home-Office-Anschluss benötigen Dieter Steiger und beteo-Mitarbeitende nicht, da sie mittels Collanos Phone oder eines IP-Telefons alle benötigten Funktionen überall, also auch zuhause, bequem nutzen können.
„Dank dem in LumiPBX integrierten Collanos Phone benutzen wir international kaum mehr Mobiltelefone und sparen dadurch so viele Kosten, dass selbst Privatgespräche überhaupt nicht ins Gewicht fallen“, erklärt er. „Machen sich die beteo-Mitarbeitenden das Nutzen der neuen Plattform geschäftlich und privat zu Gewohnheit, können wir als Firma unter dem Strich nur gewinnen.“

LumiPBX deckt insgesamt viel mehr Funktionen ab, als beteo braucht.
Die Möglichkeit, Gespräche automatisch weiterzuleiten nutzt beteo nur im Fall von Anrufen zur Zentrale, welche zur Administration weitergeleitet werden. Eingehende Gespräche werden aus Kostengründen nicht automatisch an Mobiltelefone weitergeleitet. Gerne genutzt wird hingegen das Weiterleiten von Voice-Mails auf die Emails der Mitarbeitenden.

LumiPBX und Collanos Phone bringen nicht nur den Vorteil, das öffentliche Telefonnetz weltweit zu sehr günstigen Tarifen zu nutzen, sondern ermöglichen auch die einfache Integration der Telefonie ins  Collanos Collaboration Netzwerk von beteo. So wird diese ausgezeichnete Möglichkeit zur Zusammenarbeit mit unseren Projektpartnern und Kunden nun kostenlos um Sprach-Services ergänzt. „Diese günstige call-out-Funktion für unsere Teamworkumgebung haben wir uns immer gewünscht und nun endlich bekommen. Das ist wirklich hervorragend!“, freut sich Dieter Steiger.

Über die Autorin:
Claudia Poggiolini arbeitet als freischaffende Publizistin im Bereich Unternehmskommunikation von Translumina Networks.

Jenni Kommunikation commits to climate project by donating a percentage of their travel costs to myclimate.org’s climate protection projects. In addition Jenni Kommunikation is leveraging collaboration tools to cut down on travel costs and increase productivity.

Zurich, April 2, 2007. As of April 1, 2007, Zurich based PR agency Jenni Kommunikation started investing in myclimate’s climate protection project. Each time an employee of Jenni Kommunikation travels on business purposes by car or airplane, Jenni Kommunikation donates a sum of the travel costs to myclimate.org. In addition to the donation, Jenni Kommunikation is also using collaboration tools like Collanos Workplace or Netviewer to reduce travel frequency, while still holding productive meetings.

Since its launch on April 1, 1996, Jenni Kommunikation has consulted companies in various industries: IT and telecommunications, travel and tourism, and start-ups. In order to provide a high degree of customer support, and agility in reacting to market influences, Jenni Kommunikation has to constantly be in contact with their clients.

“Thanks to the adoption of collaboration solutions like Collanos Workplace and Netviewer, we can work in real-time with our clients without needing to travel to work with them. We can be just as efficient virtually using Collanos Workplace to share documents and Netviewer to work on documents in real-time. We have also been able to cut down on car and airplane travel, which helps reduce CO2 emissions,” said Urs Jenni, owner of the agency. In addition we actively contribute to conserve an intact environment by compensating for our remaining car or airplane business travel by buying certificates from myclimate. I am of the firm opinion that companies in our communication’s industry have the responsibility not only to communicate about role models but to live them actively.”

René Estermann, CEO of myclimate, is pleased by this decision of Jenni Kommunikation: “It is key for our cause that small enterprises also set an example and demonstrate their sense of responsibility.”

Myclimate, the Zurich based non-profit foundation, is one of the leading providers of voluntary compensation measures. The compensation of the emissions is achieved through projects protecting the climate in less developed countries. Emissions are reduced by replacing fossil energy sources with renewable energies and are implemented with more energy efficient technologies. In addition to the reduction of greenhouse gas, myclimate’s climate protection projects achieve a demonstrable positive lasting contribution to development.

More information:

Jenni Kommunikation
Urs Jenni
Sudstrasse 85/PF
CH – 8034 Zurich
http://www.jeko.com

http://www.jeko.com

http://www.myclimate.org

About Jenni Kommunikation

Zurich based Jenni Kommunikation founded in 1996 by Urs Jenni is specialized on Media and Blogger Relations in consumer and corporate PR. Well known companies in technology, telecommunications and consumer Electronics trust in the expertise and the business network of the agency. Main pillars in addition are Swiss start-ups. Jenni Kommunikation covers all Swiss language areas and can build on a broad international network of partner agencies.

Team: PURE SWISS Inc. – San Francisco, CA, USA (HQ).

Members: Managing partners Alex Fries, Jim Heim and Michael Toedtli. Worldwide team located in California, Mexico, India and China.

Team Context: Consumer Goods

Team Background: PURE SWISS is a manufacturer and distributor of bottled Swiss mineral water. The company was founded in September 2006 with the goal to provide a new brand of top quality, unique, and fresh mineral water straight from Switzerland’s alpine highlands. PURE SWISS has uniquely positioned itself as the primary distributor of Swiss mineral water to consumers around the world, whose demand for mineral water continues to boom with some countries annual demand increasing by as much as 10% annually.

Team Challenge: PURE SWISS struggled to find adequate collaboration tools that would support its geographically dispersed team members and outsourcing partners. Team members and partners were based out of remote locations around the world, utilized different operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and Mac, and lacked the IT resources that are so readily available at larger companies.

In addition, the company is highly dependent on designers, marketers and other external partners who need to complete critical and time sensitive tasks. Sharing files, assigning and executing tasks, discussing documents, and sharing information among PURE SWISS team members and partners needs to be easy, efficient, and quick. Available collaboration solutions required unwarranted administration overhead, were difficult to use, and imposed additional costs, luxuries the company could not afford.

As the company continued to grow, correspondences and file sharing swelled creating content chaos due to members’ dependency on email and online collaboration systems such as Yahoo! Groups. Email systems were not properly designed to facilitate team collaboration. Yahoo! groups did not properly support the needs of a collaborative business environment and required team members to always be online to access and add content. Additional applications, such as wiki’s, did not meet PURE SWISS’ requirements as Managing Partner, Alex Fries was quoted:

Emailing documents back and forward between the team got out of control. We were recommended to use a Wiki but it was too complicated for some of our members. It would be much easier if we had a “virtual, central” drive that we could share documents with our entire worldwide team.

PURE SWISS needed a cross-platform, easy to use, shared environment that they could easily deploy without having complex and costly installations and maintenance. Each internal and external member had to be able to get onboard immediately without the need to buy new computers or to have advanced technical skills.

Solution: The company initially knew what it didn’t want but it was only when they came across Collanos Workplace, which was recommended to them by a venture capitalist, that they realized what they really needed.

Collanos’ free, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) solution immediately addressed many of their concerns. Mac and Linux users on their team are able to share Collanos workspaces just as easy as Windows users. No training is necessary and the lack of excessive features in the application allows members to quickly master the fundamental functions they need, namely, managing the frequent changes to documents.

In addition, PURE SWISS is able to easily accommodate their partners without requiring IT support or the purchase of a server or hosted environment. Partners simply have to install Collanos and then be invited to a team workspace, where PURE SWISS members are already collaborating. Documents, discussions, tasks, and information are all stored on each team members’ computers, making the teams’ data secure, backed-up and always available.

Above all, PURE SWISS members no longer struggle to keep track and organize their teams’ content. Collanos has become the standard collaboration application across the company. Team documents are organized in Collanos and everyone knows where to find the latest document or where to go to prepare for a certain project or meeting.

Results: Ever since adopting Collanos Workplace, PURE SWISS members estimate that they have become 30% more efficient in their communications and projects that require the exchange and collaboration on documents. About 75% of a PURE SWISS team member’s time is spent on joint projects, therefore, Collanos has had a huge impact on the way PURE SWISS and its partners collaborate. PURE SWISS was able to reduce email exchanges significantly and Collanos has allowed members to rapidly access all team correspondences and files without losing any critical data. Also, the company originally planned to license another P2P solution, but with Collanos, they were able to avoid these costs, get users onboard much faster, and share workspaces also with their Mac and Linux-based members, as Alex Fries highlighted:

We originally planned to license Groove Networks ™; however, with Collanos Workplace’s more simplified functionality, we were able to ramp up the team much faster and didn’t have to leave out our Mac and Linux users. On top of that, we didn’t have to spend a dime since Collanos is free.

By increasing the company’s efficiency and lowering operational costs, PURE SWISS is able to shift more resources into expanding its presence in global markets and supplying customers with its natural Swiss mineral water.

Collanos Team Spotlight Series, a new Collanos community initiative, highlights each time a new team, who they are and why they have chosen Collanos Workplace as their team collaboration of choice.

If you are interested in having your team take part in this program please contact us.

Company: jc ebell research - Bern, Switzerland (HQ)

Members: Jackie Ebell – Founder & principal knowledge worker, Chris Ebell – Co-Founder & principal knowledge worker, Sigi Hauert – Partner & language specialist, plus other partners in a growing global network.

Team Context: Consulting

Team Background: jc ebell research specializes in helping European Union and Swiss corporations, governments, legal institutions, and programs write, translate, enhance, research, and edit their mission-critical documents to get the desired impact.  The company specializes in many different areas, some of which include: bio-safety, security, technology, science, and digital content.  Leveraging jc ebell research’s services, organizations can increase their chances of receiving grants, having their policies accepted, meeting their deadlines, and influencing decisions.

Team Challenge: Teams at jc ebell research need to be able to share, discuss, translate and edit time-sensitive, confidential, and complex documents with internal and external members across the globe.  Most of the teams’ work is done remotely while team members travel to customer sites in China, Korea, South East Asia, and Europe.   Being online all the time is not always possible for team members so documents, discussions, notes, and messages need to be available both online and offline.

In the past the company tried using Google writely, .mac internet drive, and email.  They struggled with writely’s and .mac’s constraint to be always online when working on documents.  Email provided offline access, but was not the ideal collaboration tool since countless emails were constantly being exchanged and finding the latest document version, team members’ comments, and supplementary documents was always a challenge.  Additionally, being spread out across three different collaboration systems while trying to complete a document, made things even harder to manage.

jc ebell research decided to find a single collaboration tool that could keep the entire team well-organized, support Windows and Mac environments, allow offline access to project content and, was affordable. In addition, the tool had to support customer participation, ensure confidentiality of information and content security, and did not require additional costs as storage requirements increased.

Solution: Jc ebell research found out about Collanos through the web and since then they stopped looking for other solutions.  Collanos allows teams at jc ebell research to create a workspace and store all the project’s notes, discussions, documents, tasks, and members in one location that is accessible also offline.  Changes and additions made to a workspace would transparently get synchronized among team members.  Working in the workspace was very easy to do and no longer required the use of multiple collaboration applications.

A member of the jc ebell research team shared this experience with the Collanos team:

While working on a project I was traveling from Zurich, Switzerland to Singapore in an internet enabled Singapore Airlines flight. Jackie a member of my team was in Adelboden, Switzerland working from a ski resort, while Sigi, another member, was in Brussels, Belgium.  We all had our Collanos Workplace open and were collaborating on a customer project that was eventually completed somewhere over India.  Collanos supports our non-conventional business setup and makes us more productive and profitable, while having fun.

With Collanos software it is possible for us to integrate our clients in an open environment if they wish. They have immediate access to the status of their documents in the process and they can give guidance at any time. It’s completely transparent. It’s the concept of open innovation. 

Results: Collanos enabled jc ebell research to consolidate their collaboration tools into one system while allowing them to have the offline access and flexibility they needed to work as a remote team.  The jc ebell research team is a perfect example of how Collanos can help consulting teams become more efficient without requiring them to change the way they work or spending a lot of money on collaboration tools.  In the end, efficiency and reduced costs increase a company’s bottom line and these are the results jc ebell research saw with Collanos or in their words:

Since using Collanos we’ve been able to reduce the overhead load per work-unit by at least 20-25% which translates into a significant productivity gain.

Collanos Team Spotlight Series, a new Collanos community initiative, highlights each time a new team; who they are and why they have chosen Collanos Workplace as their team collaboration of choice.

If you are interested in having your team take part in this program please contact us.

Collanos Workplace users are a diverse group of individuals and businesses, representing a wide-range of industries, organizations and nationalities.

Each team using our application finds their unique and creative way to use Collanos Workplace to serve their team-specific collaboration needs.

Even we at Collanos were taken by surprise on how students, marketers, designers, researchers, faculty, priests, volunteers, etc. have adopted our solutions in such original ways. The one thing all these users share in common is the need for a simple, secure and powerful team collaboration solution – like no other.

Collanos Team Spotlight, a new Collanos community initiative, will highlight each time a new team; who they are and why they have chosen Collanos Workplace as their team collaboration of choice.

If you are interested in having your team take part in this program please contact gil.heiman AT collanos Dotcom.

Coming Soon: Team Spotlight Series #1- jc ebell research