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Louisville Tech Firm Profits by Connecting Clients´ Disparate Sites into One Network
Louisville, Ky (May 14, 2008) — When Louisville–based Smoothstone IP Communications makes its sales pitch, potential customers sometimes don´t quite believe it. Smoothstone´s “product” is to replace multipiece systems and vendors for telephone switching, call management, Internet connectivity, email and data networking with one system at less cost.
It´s based on voice–over–Internet–protocol (VoIP) technology, which Smoothstone uses to weave a network linking all a company–s employees in numerous locations into one system that functions as if everyone were in the same office.
The growing network of believers includes the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development. Earlier this year, it awarded Smoothstone a $500,000 grant in return for a commitment to create at least 20 new jobs paying $67,000 or more annually.
Christoper Assif, executive vice president at Smoothstone, said the enterprise expects to add 75 employees this year. That´s on top of the approximately 100 already aboard.
Smoothstone was born in Louisville in 2000 with its core managers as the owners. Key principals were Jeff Wellemeyer, who had previous entrepreneurial success in software and wireless networks, and Paul Borgman, whose commercial lending expertise was behind a series of business launches. In year three, the company used some outside money to expand.
Many other tech companies fizzled when the dotcom bubble burst, but Smoothstone found its sweet spot — providing networked communications for companies with 100 to 1,000 employees in multiple locations. Today, its customers are in 43 states, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom. All their systems are managed from a network operations center at Smoothstone headquarters.
Smoothstone installs its own routers and network control hardware and software, including Cisco telephone handsets to access all the services. It incorporates network backup and a suite of security components including spam filtering, virus and spyware protection, Web content monitoring and filtering, and secure remote access to network resources. A meeting center component allows video, audio and shared-screen conferencing at a click. The Intelligent CallControl Center system allows a customer to turn all its geographically dispersed employees into one call center. Companies unable to commit resources for a standalone call center can create one from the staff they do have by routing calls organization–wide.
Since all communications are digital, recording, recordkeeping and monitoring are simple matters for employees or management. And an individual can make any networked work station at any company site his or her current location.
While every operation is different, he said customers often see a 20 percent to 30 percent drop in communications services cost. One client in Louisville saved $400,000 over a four–year period and avoided $500,000 in capital expenses, Assif said.
Smoothstone has pretty well saturated its potential market in Kentucky since beginning business eight years ago. But its sights are set beyond nearby Indianapolis, St. Louis, Memphis and Nashville. Atlanta already has a Smoothstone regional office, there are a handful of employees in Dallas, and a southern California office is slated to open later this year.
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