We interviewed Larry Krakauer, the President of Projector PSA, to get his take on the OnSIP experience.
1. Tell us about Projector PSA – Please provide a brief history and introduction.
We founded Projector in 2003 to help billable professional services organizations keep their people more productively and profitably employed. Today, roughly 200 companies around the world use Projector to track time and expenses, invoice for services, plan projects, schedule employees, forecast revenue, profitability, and utilization, and monitor key performance indicators. Our customers typically operate in multiple countries and therefore require support for multiple currencies, 24x7 operation, and integrations with accounting, CRM, and other systems.
2. What do you do at Projector, and what role did you play in choosing a new phone system?
I am the president and one of the founders. I selected OnSIP in 2007, when, as a person in a really small company, I wore even more hats than I wear today.
3. How is Projector an integrated professional services automation solution that helps provides powerful tools to help you manage your projects, your resources, and your finances?
Our employees have significant experience managing professional services businesses. So we have a really good perspective as to what makes professional services organizations successful, and we apply that perspective to distinguish between product features that have real business impact versus features that sound nice. We also apply that perspective when helping our customers implement Projector. We also have the advantages of having our entire team in one location. That means that the sales team overhears support issues, the development team overhears sales and support issues, the support team can easily pull developers onto support calls, etc. It’s very easy to stay attuned to what our customers care about and to quickly get the right people for whatever opportunities and issues arise.
4. Tell us about your transition to VoIP. What were you looking for in a phone system?
We started the business in my living room, and started right away with VoIP (pre-OnSIP). We wanted employees to be able to make calls from my house without needing to run multiple copper lines, and we wanted them to be able to make calls from home (as we had to do when my dog had a close encounter with a skunk!)
5. How did you find OnSIP, and why did you choose us?
I found OnSIP by searching on-line, after we moved from my home to a real office. We had quality issues with our previous VoIP solution, and we didn’t like being tied to proprietary phones. We chose OnSIP because it made it possible for us to use both physical and soft phones from almost any location, gave us a professional presence, had very reasonable pricing for international calls, and allowed us to pay for telephone services in proportion to our usage, rather than based on the quantity of phones, the quantity of users, or the quantity of phone numbers.
6. How many phones does Projector have? Where are the phones located within the office?
We have about 30 phones. They are located in offices and conference rooms.
7. What models of phones did Projector choose and why?
We chose Polycom SoundPoint IP 335 and IP 330 phones, mostly based on confidence in the brand and popularity of the brand. We chose well, because we can now configure our phones via OnSIP’s management interface.
8. How much money has OnSIP saved Projector?
It saves us about $7K per year over systems that charge per line for unlimited “free” use.
9. What are your favorite OnSIP features?
My favorite feature is that it is reliable!