2. New Web site

One of the "Big Three Problems" assigned to me by my new boss, then the Vice President of Marketing at IPeria, a Voice-Over-IP telephony software start-up firm, was to build a completely new corporate Web site and to control the hosting and revisions internally. Up to that time, his two predecessors had spent pretty freely on Web design with an outside design firm -- a total of about $100,000 for a 25-page, noninteractive site! Unfortunately, the investment was nearly completely lost. Recent product developments at the firm, and the adoption of a brand-new corporate "look and feel" had outdated the site. Moreover, the design firm charged IPeria an amazing $500 monthly hosting fee, and $100 per hour for making revisions. It was a great opportunity for me to help the firm stem the flow of dollars -- and even more important, display its new look and growing technical strengths. I would build the new site, contract our own hosting, and bring all revision activity in house! But I had lots of other high-priority tasks at the firm to deal with, colorfully described by my boss as "the flames nearest the gasoline can." To keep everything moving forward, I hired a small but brilliant design firm to implement an entirely new, 3-frame site design on which my boss and I had collaborated. The total cost was $4,000. The site was delivered in about 2 weeks. I then secured a local Internet Service Provider (ISP) to host our new Web site on a secure Unix® server, provide traffic reports, and plenty of e-mail accounts, all for $50 per month. As webmaster and copywriter, I wrote all content, created illustrations and photos for the site using Adobe Illustrator® and Photoshop®, incorporated collateral materials I had built with QuarkXpress® and Adobe Acrobat®, coded and inserted the content into the pages, and uploaded the Web site to the new server with FTP Pro® and SecureFX®. RESULTS. I delivered the new Web site in about 6 weeks, at a total outside cost of only 2.5% of ALL design costs previously incurred! IPeria had a new, up-to-date Web site that incorporated the new look and feel and could post changes immediately with no outside costs. You can see the result by going to http://www.iperia.com. UNABASHED PLUG: A2B Advertising, a great advertising and design agency!

	*2. Build an intranet! -- the Boss* (again) "It was a straightforward research and organization job that paid a valuable dividend: I was learning the history of the company in detail."
My new boss also wanted me to build a no-frills company reference intranet site that I would post on a Web server residing inside our LAN firewall. This hosting arrangement would limit access by Sales personnel and those traveling in the field, but that problem was being addressed by the IT Manager, who was setting up a VPN (Virtual Private Network) that would enable dial-up access through a firewall tunnel. I sifted through hundreds of pertinent reports, engineering change orders, abandoned white paper drafts, and other files on our Sales and Marketing servers. It was a straightforward research and organization job that paid a valuable dividend: I was learning the history of the company in detail. In addition, I met with the senior executives to assess their information needs and to confirm the currency of key files. With their input, I established an architecture, and created a hard-working, easily updated site. RESULTS. See the IPeria intranet home page and first sub-pages. Click here.

	3. . "Make us a CD!"--The Sales Team "Explaining in detail how the software worked to hard-nosed, nontechnical executives in a few minutes was a world-class challenge."
Supporting the sales effort is a critical role for marketing. So, within a few days of joining the firm, I met with the Sales team and invited their wish lists. They asked for help explaining the features and benefits of our complex software product. Sales had a handle on pitching the broad, overall benefits of IPeria ActivEdge VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) messaging software. The product would enable callers to receive voicemail at a PC, send and receive e-mails from any telephone, set up a flexible auto-attendant, and integrate voicemail and e-mail into one mailbox accessed via a PC or a telephone. But explaining in detail how the software worked to hard-nosed, nontechnical executives in a few minutes was a world-class challenge. The Sales team didn't want to spend precious time on what they termed "gear head" minutia during presentations to key telco executives. They wanted me to put together a CD-ROM leave-behind that could help do the job for them. RESULTS. According to feedback from the field sales personnel, the custom CDs were very helpful in establishing credibility with customers. I DO know that I burned hundreds of them to fill requests! See the CD-ROM package by clicking here. A brief digression to put the sales challenge into real-world context.... These were the days just prior to the Enron accounting scandal. The fallout ultimately led to the discovery of accounting irregularities at WorldCom and Global Crossing, which were primary sales targets for IPeria in 1999, when I was hired. In addition, as did most companies at the time, IPeria invested credibility in the projections of industry analysts, some of which, as was unappreciated at the time, had hidden agendas that biased their reports and recommendations. Adding to the intrigue, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 -- the first major new telecommunications law since the 1930s -- promised a bounty of sales prospects within the telecommunications industry. The Federal Communications Commission stated that the primary goal of the Act is "... to let anyone enter any communications business -- to let any communications business compete in any market against any other." In response to the Act, a bumper crop of about 1,400 new CLECs (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers) sprouted overnight by signing contracts to lease lines from the bigger incumbent carriers. The CLECs became major sales targets for IPeria. The company's strategy was to establish a customer base of small-to-mid-size players in the CLEC segment, and to use the resulting validation to approach the huge RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies). In our blissful naiveté, we did not know that most of these CLECs would quickly fail. Or that the field sales team would eventually be laid off. End of digression.
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