Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
Small-business owners, especially those who need a new phone system, should take a look at technology that uses a single network for voice and data, believes Scott DeToffol of Enventis Telecom.
It’s known variously as IP telephony or Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP). But despite the awkward acronyms, the technology can be explained simply: It allows phone calls to be transmitted by computer networks. That means users don’t need one system for phone calls and another for computers, and they don’t need a PBX, or traditional telephone system.
Enventis Telecom of Plymouth is betting heavily that small businesses will want this, now that their big-company counterparts have been trying it out for a few years. Enventis is ramping up the sale of its two-year-old service, called Encompass and targeted for small to mid-sized companies.
With Encompass, Enventis is the single vendor for customers’ local and long distance telephone and fax service, as well as its Internet and e-mail service, DeToffol says. Enventis hosts the servers and provides support and maintenance. The cost is around $50 per user per month for a 30- to 50-person company. Phone handsets, a one-time installation fee, and per-minute long distance use are extra.
Rich Henderson, Enventis co-founder and president, says the Encompass line will be the most profitable of his firm’s three lines of business, the other two being telecom services and systems integration for large enterprises. After starting Enventis in 1999 as a re-seller of Cisco products, he and his partners sold it to Minnesota Power, now called Allete, of Duluth in 2001. Allete’s infrastructure allowed Enventis to roll out Encompass.
By the fourth quarter, Enventis plans to add hosted call centers and disaster recovery services to its Encompass offerings.
Henderson says competition looms, with MCI, Qwest, Onvoy and others developing something in the IP telephony arena. He figures advertising by big players will only help, because many customers are confused by or unaware of the technology.
Rich Henderson, Scott DeToffol, Enventis: rh********@******is.com; sd*******@******is.com; 763.577.3913; www.enventis.com.
