Giving Thanks to a Business Tool: Skype

I work for the Strategic Consulting Services arm of OpenView Venture Partners. Today, I am writing to employees of expansion stage firms and start-ups, who have offices in multiple locations, or have employees travelling a lot who are looking for a great, yet economic way to communicate with each other. In this blog I will talk about such a business tool for communication: Skype. 

 

If I were to pick a business tool I am utterly thankful for this Thanksgiving, I‘d choose Skype. In the past month, because I have been working remotely, I use it every single day. I use it to make free PC-to-PC calls to scrum with my colleague every morning, to exchange files, to chat as a way of writing up call notes, and to attend conference calls and many other calls during the day with my office. Skype has been tremendously helpful in providing me with a good, reliable and also free way of communicating with my team on a day-to-day basis.

In the past, I used it to stay in touch with friends and family overseas, but lately I used it more for work and I discovered there’s more to Skype than just reaching someone a few hundred or thousands of miles away. It houses an infrastructure for a virtual collaboration within Skype that’s very easy to use.

For example, one of my friends works for a company that has a Skype business account, and uses SkypeOut, which allows them to call a phone (a cell phone or a landline) in the U.S. or Canada for only about $15/year for an unlimited number of calls. Overseas calls are currently 2.1 cents/minute, but PC-to-PC calls are free. My friend’s company buys SkypeOut and pays a single fee by having a single point of management and auditing, and allocates SkypeOut among employees. This way the Administrator can manage a number of users, refill their accounts automatically, add SkypeOut/SkypeIn to their account and manage Skype services among users.  

I am thinking of getting SkypeIn myself, so I can pay a small amount (as low as $6/month) to get an online number anyone can use to call me at local rates. So let’s say I am in Canada and I have a SkypeIn number based in the U.S. Any of my friends in the U.S. can call me on that number at his/her local rate from his/her landline or cell phone, and reach me any time, as long as I am logged into Skype. I am on Skype most of the day (from my computer or my cell phone), which means that my friends can reach me most of the time. If not, they can leave me a voicemail on that Skype number.

Skype has many more features that can be of great use to your start-up or expansion stage company. To know more, visit the Skype homepage: http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/home

Thank you once again, Skype!