At Durrani, we’re always looking for ways to optimize production while lowering costs.  This helps any company by lowering the overhead of production and account management costs, and therefore keeping the costs down for clients.

One of the ways we’ve attempted to lower costs is experimenting with VOIP (Voice Over IP) technologies for communcations. One company offering these services and gaining popularity is Skype. Skype offers a wide range of services for personal and business use. If you’re familiar with AIM or other instant messaging systems, then just think of Skype as Voice instant messaging. A program runs on your computer, which allows you to send and receive calls from other Skype members… for free. The enhanced pay-for-use services also allow you to send and receive phone calls to and from regular land-lines and cell phones.

The Benefits

As a small business we were most interested in saving money and offering cool tools to our staff and sales people. To help organize your Skype users within your business, Skype offers a business control panel. This shows all of your users and allows a central place for allocating funds (called Skype Credits) to each person. So accounting and managers can add funds to an employees Skype account, which greatly reduces the paperwork and reimbursement issues usually surrounding the use of phones or cell phones and travel costs.

The other benefits of Skype include, free Skype to Skype calls, conference calls, chat, voicemail, personally assigned phone numbers (called Skype-In) and very cheap per-minuate rates, currently $0.021/ a minute!

There is an optional Skype toolbar for both Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer that highlights phone numbers on webpages giving you the ability to just "click-to-call" a number quickly through your computer (with an attached headset and/or speakers and microphone).

Now, another great idea, is to place your Skype call or "Skype-Me" information on your website so visitors to your site, who are also Skype members, can simply click to call you for free. A great solution for tech support and client communication or sales. Once again, this helps reduce high phone and communication costs. Companies with a high quantity of internal or employee to employee calls can significantly reduce their bills.

Of course Skpe requires a dedicated internet connection and a computer or WiFi enabled Phone (see below) to use VOIP.

Netgear SPH101 WiFi Phone

Skype also offers a selection of equipment, ranging from headsets to stand-alone handsets that connect directly to Skype without the use of a connected computer. We were sent a Netgear WiFi Phone through a PayPal.com contest that we entered and won. The cool benefit of the Netgear phone is that it does not need to be connected to a computer and will attach itself to any open unsecured WiFi hotspot (or a secure with the appropriate access credentials). The pro’s to having this WiFi Phone is that it is as compact as a cell phone and gives you the benefits of Skype without the need of a computer. The con is that it has a short battery life and some latency issues and often does not reflect the current online status of you or your contacts.

Skype is free for Skype-to-Skype calling. Give some of the other features a test-drive:

SkypeIn

SkypeOut

Skype Voicemail

Skype for Business

Also, if you need any creative print or web development/ design, give me a call at Skype ID:patrick.woot. If you don’t have Skype then just call us at 760.302.7776 or visit our contact page on our main Durran Design site.