When Small Biz Gets Big

Founded in 2001, Engage brings small businesses a variety of technology solutions, including CRM, ERP, virtual call centers, collaboration and e-commerce. Today, Engage is evolving.

“We grew out of a traditional systems integration or VAR model, and we are now more of a managed services provider,” said Todd Sharp, director at Atlanta-based Engage. “We’ve taken the traditional VAR model and expanded it dramatically.”

With 30 employees and more than 10,000 products in its warehouse, hospitality industry wholesaler Springfield is the typical Engage customer.

When it came time to upgrade its Great Plains ERP software to accommodate remote offices and include more customer information, Springfield called Engage.

Now, the solution provider functions as an IT advisor, as well as managing the wholesaler’s IT functions.

“We basically act as their IT department. We provide CIO services. We provide network technicians. We manage, extend and customize their software. Integrate payment gateways for credit-card transactions. Essentially when they go into meetings with other companies, [we] act as the IT team on their behalf,” Sharp said.

Michael Flanter, president of Springfield, also based in Atlanta, said that enlisting Engage to run his company’s networks has helped the company run more smoothly. Engage also evaluated the solution provider’s infrastructure and software and helped get the systems in sync, he said.

“What we were doing was dealing with a variety of other software vendors. It was always a challenge trying to get things to work and to get all the different pieces to play nicely. It seems like everybody you talked with, their software was phenomenal and terrific and you got it installed and it didn’t work with the other components we had,” he said. “Since they’ve become involved, we’ve had virtually no downtime with our basic system.”

Engage also helped Springfield upgrade its telecommunications network. “They had a 10-year-old PBX that was not meeting their needs. Beholden to a single local vendor, every time they needed to add something, [they were charged] an exorbitant fee to get that change made,” Sharp said. “[Springfield needed] something easier to manage.”

Engage brought in Siemens HiPath OpenScape and its own hosted-PBX service.

“We were the first hosting provider in North America to deliver Seimens HiPath OpenScape in hosted model. Although the solution provides a lot of benefit to our customers, it is somewhat complex, and it can be costly for a small to medium-[size] business to get into it,” Sharp said.

However, selling HiPath OpenScape as a hosted solution has opened the product up to the small-business market.

“As a small business, they derive a lot of their value to customers and vendors by being nimble,” Sharp said. “Small companies have business velocity. They can change at a moment’s notice. With the old telephony system, they were unable to change to meet market changes quickly.”

“[HiPath] OpenScape allows them to have a Web portal that integrates with their databases. A user can have a home office, cell and desk phone all registered to them. The system also integrates with Microsoft Exchange,” Sharp said.

If a user’s calendar says they’re busy, the system knows to re-route the call. The system also gives presence information, allowing users to see who is online and whether they are available by phone or by mobile phone, he said.

So far, Springfield is a happy customer of both the hosted HiPath OpenScape and managed network services.

“It’s worked out very nicely. That alone allows my son and me—we own the company—to concentrate on what we know how to do rather than worrying about network software and all that nonsense,” Flanter said.

He said he also is pleased with Engage’s level of support.

“Either Todd and/or a variety of his people are on-site almost every day in one fashion or another. They are there pretty much immediately [available] for any small crises we may have,” Flanter said.

The small-business market is a good fit for hosted services as well as for Engage. Whereas enterprise companies must lumber through meetings, consulting fees and analysis before a new technology is adopted, the speed at which small businesses can move makes them more appealing customers, Sharp said.

“They tend to move more quickly toward making decisions. When they have a need, you’re not necessarily drawn out with 12 months of evaluation before a decisions is made,” he said. “We are also a smaller firm, and we find that our business velocity is increased by doing business with customers who need high degrees of business velocity. Also, quite frankly, it’s a very profitable business,” Sharp said.

Repurposing technology and methodology from one project and customer to the next also allows Engage to achieve profit, Sharp said.

“What we have done is we have identified what those core components are for small and medium-[size] businesses, although we’re delivering them big-company functionality, we’re doing it at a price and a time line that meet the small organization’s needs,” Sharp said.

In the future, Flanter said Engage will continue to serve as Springfield’s IT decision maker, helping the small business keep its eye on its own profitability and not its technology infrastructure.

“What we’re doing is relying on them to try and deliver whatever is the most cutting-edge technology that’s available and affordable for us,” said Flanter. “I don’t know what’s coming down the pike, but that’s why we pay them.”