Jeremy Hughes, Business Development Manager at Network Medics, a full-service IT consulting firm for small and medium-sized businesses, shares his experience with OnSIP's agent program.
What is Network Medics?
We are an IT support company for the SMB Market, based out of Minneapolis. Currently, we have 9 employees at our office.
How did Network Medics get started? What was the overall goal behind creating Network Medics?
It started with 3 friends who didn't like what they were doing. A couple of them were in IT and didn't like the companies they were working with or the philosophies of those groups. So they created their own company and have continued to grow ever since.
The overall goal behind creating Network Medics was to have an ethical approach to IT support.
What are your future goals at Network Medics?
We would like to continue to grow the company, but grow it in the right way. By consultating and problem solving in an ethical fashion versus sales and contracts.
I would think there is no specific metric on where we want to be, what dollar amount and how many clients or anything like that; it's more about wanting to do a good job. We want to take care of our clients and continue to grow organically, preferably by word of mouth and for the right reasons. Not necessarily hiring a bunch of sales people to make a million calls and see how many contracts we can sign up.
To us it's not about about numbers, it's about the quality. We want to lead technology in a different direction. From there the numbers will follow.
At Network Medics we run our own private cloud. There is no middle man. We're actually one of two IT support companies in the Twin Cities out of hundreds that do this. There are other companies that run a private cloud but they're not focused on IT support. There are a lot of other IT support companies that are out there, but they don't do the cloud and when they do it is simply reselling another companies service. .
Similar to what you do with OnSIP, we do with servers here. Our customers' servers are on our infrastructure in our data center, instead of in their server closet. It's all cloud based; it's hosted, essentially.
In a way, Network Medics in relation to traditional IT firms is a lot like OnSIP versus traditional phone systems. We provide the next step in order to bridge the gap between technology and the end user.
When you were evaluating providers, what made you choose OnSIP?
To be honest, I wasn't specifically the one who chose OnSIP, but I have an idea of why we chose you guys.
OnSIP utilizes the most current and relevant technology out there. Our clients get a fully functioning PBX system, without needing to purchase a $10,000 - $30,000 onsite system. The features and benefits of this hosted system is substantial; it's a very solid value.
Because we're a networking and IT company, we understand this type of technology, which makes OnSIP very easy for us to use. We were able to quickly make it work for us.
How has providing OnSIP as a solution helped your clients that are using it?
In various situations OnSIP has been very beneficial. For example, one client hated their provider, but the company was invested in a ton of Polycom handsets. They were able to switch providers without having to buy all new phones, which made OnSIP a no brainer.
How has having OnSIP as a solution helped Network Medics?
Connectivity, efficiency, ease of use, and the tools. Tools like: VM to email, the 3 digit dialing to cellphones, and the forwarding of phones; the out of the office type of stuff where you can push your call.
OnSIP's biggest strength - no question about it whatsoever - is the web interface. It's very easy to use. Without really knowing what I was doing, I was able to use the system and put in a 25 user company in a matter of a few hours. Obviously, you need to have some pretty great tools to be able to that.
How would you describe a typical OnSIP deployment?
Like any new phone system and line porting it is hectic. You have to have all your ducks in a row and contingencies available. In addition, whenever adopting a new technology for the first time there is a bit of a learning curve, but it gets easier once you understand OnSIP and what it brings to the table.
OnSIP isn't a traditional PBX or a traditional dial tone provider, so there are areas that are not covered, that you would normally think were. The porting, for instance, was a challenge; we were unable to pick a specific date and time to port. I came from a company where we would do this every single day, so it was hard to get used to at first. But, I think that's the only part that was a real challenge, which OnSIP offered up a work arounds.
How do you see Network Medics and OnSIP working together in the future?
I predict an ongoing and growing relationship between us.
For Network Medics, it's pretty black and white, if a client is in need of something similar we're going to show them the pros and cons of OnSIP, and then we will work with OnSIP on the backend to execute a good deployment.
OnSIP offers a commendable VoIP reseller program, helping agents generate nearly $55,000 in revenue by adding just one 15-seat customer a month, for 18 months. The best part about our reseller program is that we give our resellers the freedom to choose the equipment they resell (SIP phones, routers) and set their own installation and start-up fees.
If you are an individual or organization providing IT services, then the OnSIP agent program is a great opportunity to enhance your offerings with a highly demanded technology service. For more information about our agent program, click here.