10 Ways To Save Your Clients Big Bucks

Looking for a surefire way to get customers to part with their hard-earned cash? Then take a lesson from these 10 solution providers that brought innovative cost-cutting technologies to the table that allowed their clients to save big.

VAR: Glen Conley, CEO, Metropark Communications



Headquarters: Chicago



Real-World Solution: Metropark delivered a unified communications solution to a 100-user medical equipment sales organization, replacing the old legacy TDM environment to enable integration between cell phones and the corporate PBX, ultimately enabling the sales force to work on the road without the need for a brick-and-mortar office space. The project made the sales teams' cell phones and native extensions work in tandem, eliminating the OPX and hard line costs.



Solution Set: Altigen Enterprise Telephony System with large built-in conferencing bridge, 3Com data infrastructure and Vegress Fax server.



Project Cost: $109,000



Cost-Savings: About $10,000 per month



Biggest Obstacle To The Sale: "Competition, and getting the total solution to fit in the budgeted numbers," Conley said.

VAR: Charlie Macli, executive vice president of sales and marketing, IVCi



Headquarters: Hauppauge, N.Y.



Real-World Solution: IVCi implemented a Polycom VCX 7000 videoconferencing system to help an expanding East Coast-based law firm cut travel to its West Coast offices.



Solution Set: Polycom VSX 7000 video conferencing system with content sharing capability, 42-inch plasma displays, flush-mounted ceiling speakers, wireless boundary microphones and a custom-designed Crestron GUI control panel.



Project Cost: $250,000



Cost-Savings: Cut travel costs by 25 percent in 18 months.



Biggest Obstacle To the Sale: The solution needed to be easy to operate so that anyone in the firm could use it. IVCi developed a custom GUI that offered three control levels: novice, advanced and administrator.

VAR: Carol Arenz, education territory account manager, Insight Public Sector



Headquarters: Tempe, Ariz.



Real-World Solution: Seminole County Schools in Florida was faced with relocating a computer lab with 30 PCs because the room was small and the heat generated by the PCs made students uncomfortable. By replacing the PCs with an NComputing thin-client solution, Insight Public Sector provided a solution that generated no heat, eliminating the need to move the lab and helping the customer save on air-conditioning costs and power consumption.



Solution Set: NComputing X300, Dell PCs, Acer monitors, Logitech keyboards and mice



Project Cost: $120,000 for installations in one computer lab and additional units in 11 other middle schools.



Cost-Savings: 50 percent of IT costs for an all-PC lab, plus savings of 70 percent on maintenance and 90 percent on energy.



Biggest Obstacle To The Sale: "The biggest obstacle to districtwide adoption was clarification of software licensing. Schools are very concerned about compliance and Seminole needed to have this clarified before moving beyond the initial lab solution," Arenz said.

VAR: Ben Pankonin, director of business development, Five Nines Technology Group



Headquarters: Lincoln, Neb.



Real-World Solution: Five Nines used technology from APC and Liebert as part of a project for a community bank with just over 100 employees that replaced aging servers with a virtualized solution and incorporated power-management technology to help cut energy costs.



Solution Set: APC Automated Transfer Switch, APC rack-mounted UPSes, Liebert, VMware, Dell PowerEdge Energy Smart servers and Dell Equalogic storage



Project Cost: Low six figures



Cost-Savings: A savings on power consumption by more than 50 percent, resulting in a complete ROI in less than one year.

VAR: Eric Berridge, co-founder and principal, Bluewolf



Headquarters: New York



Real-World Solution: Bluewolf used SaaS technology from Salesforce.com combined with Google Maps to build a sales lead qualification system for a major cable and telecommunications service company. The system helps sales reps determine what services are available in what geographies and not waste time with leads in areas where cable isn't available or the customer is too far from a service center.



Solution Set: Salesforce.com's Force.com development/deployment platform, Apex development language, Google Maps



Project Cost: Low six figures



Cost-Savings: Shortened cable company's sales cycle by 40 percent and improved sales-lead qualifications.





Biggest Obstacle To The Sale: Bluewolf was competing for the deal with an incumbent solution provider that already provided services to the customer. But Bluewolf leveraged its development capabilities to build a prototype in just 14 days while the competitor used older programming methods.

VAR: Jeronimo Romero, CTO, EUS Networks



Headquarters: New York



Real-World Solution: EUS networks closed a 1,000-port VoIP deal based on Digium's open-source Asterisk IP-PBX technology, coming in at one-sixth the cost of a comparable Cisco Systems solution.



Solution Set: Switchvox IP-PBX and Asterisk Business Edition



Project Cost: $250,000



Cost-Savings: Savings of $1.25 million over competitors' proprietary offerings.



Biggest Obstacle To The Sale: "There is lots of fear, uncertainty and doubt around Digium's products that has been generated by competitors. But Digium has brought on top executives to make sure quality is where it needs to be," Romero said. "And they've also made a huge effort to communicate with the channel, which includes regular meetings with executives."

VAR: Kevin Smith, senior vice president, One Source Document Solutions



Headquarters: Greensboro, N.C.



Real-World Solution: One Source used Laserfiche technology to help Iredell Memorial Hospital in Statesville, N.C., cut down on monthly write-offs from misplaced records. The solution also helped cut accounts receivable turnaround time by an average of three days.



Solution Set: Laserfiche document management suite, Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF, 3M's SoftMed Digital Dictation System Interface, Keane InSight Healthcare Information System (leveraging IBM AS/400 platform)



Project Cost: $75,000



Cost-Savings: $40,000 per month in write-offs.



Biggest Obstacle To The Sale: "Early in the process, people will push back on budget and sometimes there will be push back based on concern for user adoption. But the last couple of years with the document management industry, there's not nearly as much push back. You have to be able to demonstrate ROI certainly under a year with something like this, and you can," Smith said.

VAR: B.J. Farmer, CEO, CITOC



Headquarters: Houston



Real-World Solution: PFM, a property services company for the oil and gas industry, outsourced its network management to Citoc. With the company's data located in a data center, Citoc set up a companywide VoIP solution that provides customer access to the network, a solution which provides significant cost savings compared to internal network management. Citoc has one employee handling 600 PFML employees, a ratio that saves the customer about $1 million every year, according to Citoc.





Solution Set: Zenith Infotech, ConnectWise, hosted Microsoft Outlook via a proprietary service called Constant Office. The data center systems are all virtualized running on Dell servers with an EqualLogic SAN using VMware ESX protected by redundant SonicWall firewalls.



IT Spend: Not Available



Cost-Savings: PFM saves about $1 million per year, or about 80 percent of the cost compared to using internal resources to manage its network.



Biggest Obstacle In Making The Sale: "They were initially very hesitant to outsource the IT because they felt like they would lose control and security," Farmer said.

VAR: Peak Uptime



Headquarters: Tulsa, Okla.



Real-World Solution: When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans three years ago, it caused massive damage to the city and its businesses. One of them, Adams and Reese LLP, a 300-person law firm, lost power for 13 days and telecom for 22 days. It vowed, "never again." By January of 2006, it had contracted with Peak Uptime, which promised to help build a disaster-recovery site within 3 months. It did, helping Adams and Reese skirt the disaster caused when Hurricane Gustav hit New Orleans in 2007.



Solution Set: VMware ESX server virtualization software, NetApp iSCSI storage appliances, HP servers and C-class blade servers, HP embedded IP switches.



Project Cost: Roughly $1.2 million to build and migrate the new data center.



Cost-Savings: When Hurricane Gustav hit New Orleans in 2007, the Adams and Reese network remained intact, avoiding what could have been a three-day outage.





Biggest Obstacle To The Sale: The customer had an established process for evaluating potential business partners, and solid references was a big part of the sales process. Peak Uptime had to spend the time to provide Adams and Reese with references in the legal vertical that could show the capability of its services delivery.

VAR: Bob Schwartz, president, Robert Mark Technologies



Headquarters: Cottage Grove, Minn.



Real-World Solution: A banking customer purchased workload automation software, but needed help in seeing where it could be leveraged. The solution provider saw many places it could be used, but focused initially on automating the runbook of an application used to transfer money from place to place.





Solution Set: CA AutoSys Workload Automation



Project Cost: $130,000 to implement the software.



Cost-Savings: Immediate annual savings of $240,000, which was the cost of two contractors who monitored the application 24/7. Once the customer saw how well it worked, it then started implementing the technology for other applications.





Biggest Obstacle To The Sale: The main issue was helping the customer understand that there is a problem to be solved. This is especially true when the pitch requires telling the customer that what they have been doing all along is wrong, or that this will cut costs but eliminate personnel. Schwartz said he deals with customers at the CIO level where it is easier to talk candidly.