Dial up savings: hidden assets abound in telephone system maintenance.

• Author: Young, Martha
• Position: Telizent Communications - Company overview

When was the last time anyone in your company took a close look at the phone system, its maintenance costs, and the value proposition of moving some or all of the company's employees to an Internet Protocol based system?

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When was the last time anyone took a serious look at the extensive value and reduced costs of moving from a traditional time division multiplexing voice system to a true multimedia communications platform?

Businesses of all sizes have a propensity to install a telephone system and then ignore it. If the desk phone rings, all is fine. If the voicemail system captures and stores messages, there are no concerns. What most companies don't realize is that the telephone system is a mother lode of a gold vein waiting to be mined when it comes to reducing business expenses.

If it has been more than a year since your phone system was installed, it is now out of warranty. It may be time to schedule a conversation with a third-party telephony monitoring and maintenance company such as Telizent Communications (www.telizent.com) of Greenwood Village.

Founded in 2002 by current president Charley Ellison, privately held Telizent provides monitoring, management and remote maintenance support for existing PBX systems. It also supports IP-based communication systems, allowing customers to migrate on a business-need, business-cycle basis without risking costly downtime due to interoperability issues.

Telizent's customers include Colorado household names such as Time Warner Cable, Ford Motor Credit, Comcast Cable, the state of Colorado and the city of Lakewood.

Out-of warranty telephony system monitoring and management services are a significant portion of revenue for traditional telephony vendors. The service contract is severely skewed in their favor and rarely negotiable. For example, if your telephony system has 200 ports installed but your firm reduces its work force 10 percent, only 180 of those ports would be in use. But the vendor-maintenance contract is for 200 ports, whether they are active or idle.

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"The vendor maintenance model has to change," says Matthew Brunk, president of Telecomworx, a third-party telephony services provider. "In the IP-based environment, voice isn't just an application, it's a service. But telephony manufacturers continue to focus on the hardware side of services. Their model has to change to reflect changes in the market."

Michael Bank, director, Global Solutions...