Office Telephony solutions available in Kenya

Are you looking to add extensions for your office?

Are you looking for a PABX, IP Telephony solutions, IP Phones, VOIP solution across branches or simply want to mordanise the telephony in your office?

There are many option available in kenya today for all sizes of offices, Service providers and SME's.

Most common are the analog PABX especially Panasonic, Alcatel and Siemens PABX. These are very limited on the number of extensions and number of lines that the organisation can have.

The trend is now going towards advanced technologies and IP PBX's are replacing the analog PABX with speed. In between are the Hybrid PBX's that bridge the Migration path from analog to IP. Hybrid solutions are common especially with Panasonic, Alcatel, Siemens and ZYCOO. In Hybrid system, the PBX is IP but the office handsets/extensions

Complete IP Telephony systems have an IP PBX which is a software for call processing loaded on a hardware that has telephone interconnection interfaces. The hardware limits the size of organisation that will use a particular PBX at a time. This is determined by:
The number of incoming lines that you have or need
The type of incoming lines; Mobile, landline, ISDN or Telkom wireless
The number of extensions you need
Branches and inter-connection between branches (WAN or internet links)
Additional services that you need on you PBX like call detail recording, Voicemail, IVR, Call-fowarding and others

A technician ussually, will visit your site and give you a bill of materials as per your requirement.

IP Systems are cost saving in several ways. The most popular being costs saved for interbranch calls, with IP Telephony, branches can call each as extensions with no phone bills. Secondly, IP Telephony systems use the data network infrastructure. Therefore saving companies the need to have two seperate networks (data & Telephone)as done with analog and Hybrid systems. With IP Systems, you also have access to an array of IP Phones, most systems are open standard SIP and you can therefore use IP Phones from several manufacturers with no problems at all.

IP Systems also ease management and reduce staff costs as the IT personnel can manage the telephone system as well as the data system.

Companies investing in IP telephony find that even with a sizeable capital outlay, IP Telephony is cheaper in the long-run.

CAT 6 UTP cables for sale

Cat 6 UTP indoor cables, good quality 11,000 Kenya shillings only.

Available country wide in Kenya, Uganda, at the same rate.

Understanding the Sales Force: 5 Sales Management Best Practices

Understanding the Sales Force: 5 Sales Management Best Practices

Is your handbag making you Sick!

Handbag Hook are Available in Nairobi from 1000 shillings.

Women rarely go anywhere without a handbag, which means that if a woman enters a place full of germs, so does her bag. That could mean she ends up carrying microbes around all day long that could make her sick. Then taking those germs home, and exposing the whole family to potential illness.




Have you ever noticed ladies who sit their handbags on public restroom floors - then go directly to their dining tables and set their handbag on the table?
You may think twice about where you put your handbag.

Laboratory tests found Pseudomonas, Stafflococcus Aruis, Salmonella & E-Coli on women's purses. In one sampling, four or five purses tested positive for Salmonella.



Women carry handbags everywhere. From the office to public restrooms to the floor of their car. Most women won't be caught without their handbags, but did you ever stop to think about where your handbag goes during the day?

"I put my handbag in grocery shopping carts, on the floor of bathroom stalls while changing a nappy," says one woman "and of course in my home which should be clean."







Most women told us they didn't stop to think about what was on the bottom of their handbag. Most said at home they usually set their handbags on top of kitchen tables and counters where food is prepared.

Experts say you should think of your handbag the same way you would a pair of shoes...
"If you think about putting a pair of shoes onto your countertops, that's the same thing you're doing when you put your handbag on the countertops"

Your handbag has gone where individuals before you have sneezed, coughed, spat, urinated, emptied bowels, etc! Do you really want to bring that home with you?



After testing the average woman's handbag, it turns out handbags are so surprisingly dirty, even the microbiologist who tested them was shocked. Nearly all of the handbags tested were not only high in bacteria, but high in harmful kinds of bacteria.

Pseudomonas can cause eye infections, staphylococcus aurous can cause serious skin infections, and salmonella and e-coli found on the handbags could make people very sick. In one sampling, four of five handbags tested positive for salmonella, and that's not the worst of it. "There is fecal contamination on the handbags," says the microbiologist.








Leather or vinyl handbags tended to be cleaner than cloth handbags, and lifestyle seemed to play a role. People with kids tended to have dirtier handbags than those without, with one exception. The handbag of one single woman who frequented nightclubs had one of the worst contaminations of all. "Some type of feces, or possibly vomit" says the microbiologist.



The conclusion to this story is that your handbag won't kill you, but it does have the potential to make you & your family very sick.

Use a Handbag Hanger in cafe's, restaurants and bars.
Use Handbag Hangers to hang your handbag at home & in restrooms.
Don't put your handbag on your desk, a restaurant table, or on your kitchen countertop.


(Information is compiled from research and articles published in the USA)

Handbag Hook are Available in Nairobi from 1000 shillings.

Hydraform soil block house is now going up

As reported two weeks ago, Kenyans are now using stabilised soil blocks to build cheaper houses that use natural products. As seen on the photos here, their first house is underway and will be complete mid august.

Cost is mainly saved on wall cement. The blocks are interlocked and hence you dont use cement to join them. You also do not have to plaster the inner wall as these bricks are smooth and colourful. if you want to paint there is a special paint that you can use without plastering.

You save upto 40% of construction costs on materials. Labour is also saved as you take a shorter period to build.

In Kenya, the machines sold are mosty manual. You can get them from Makiga Engineering services likoni road telephone 550665. You can also check with Kickstart Kenya. However the Diesel Engine run machine from www.hydraform.com is much better than the manual ones and you can buy it from their factory straight from SA.

Here a group in Syokimau has the engine machine and is able to produce upto 1,500 blocks a day. They are ready to make blocks and sell for any size of a project. The project featured on my blog has blocks made by these guys. you can talk to the builder for more information on building costs...the builder is MaKiri builders.

Please join my blog as a member to follow discussions on this topic and many others that may interest you.

Seacom Nairobi Lauch

Those in Mombasa last weekend were able to experience the feel on Seacom cable speeds at their landing station.

It is now time for Nairobians to feel the same! Seacom will be launching in Nairobi on Monday, 3rd August 2009 at KICC.

Be there and experience it for yourself!

The virtual desktop; East Africa needs it

In our region, technology comes in very handy especially when it saves the little cash our economy holds. Virtual desktops and cloud computing are new related technologies that will help us save initial office automation costs, help us share available resources and enhance corporate security.

For colleges, schools, Cybercafes, BPO's and SME's it is now easier to acquire computing resources for our users. The technology saves space and initial capital at the same time. Traditionally every user required to have a CPU, monitor and other accessories, Today all a user needs is a monitor, mouse and keyboard. The CPU's are shared by up-to 30 users across a local area network. The CPU or server will require more computing power but the cost of this is much less than buying CPU's for each user. The space occupied by CPU's in cybers' will now not be needed and instead of buying computer tables for furniture all a cyber will need is a table for the monitors and keyboards.

You will also make savings on Microsoft and other software licences as CPU handling 30 users will have one licence instead of licencing each user.

However, more bandwidth is required for proper cloud computing especially in large corporate network when the user resources and transfered to a central point.

But either way, East Africans need to learn, use and gain from this new technology.

Construction in Kenya goes Green

The Construction industry in Kenya has finally gone green with the introduction of stabilized soil blocks building in Syokimau, Nairobi.

A group of young entreprenuers have acquired the latest machine from Hydaform SA and are now producing the stabilized soil blocks commercially. The machine makes 1,500 blocks everyday.

The first building project will take off this week and we will keep you updated on the progress. The house is a maisonette, on a 50*100 ft plot. Including a perimeter wall it is expected that 16,000 stabilized soil blocks will be used in this project. This technology is said lower the building costs by up to 40%.

Stabilized soil blocks interlock with each other removing the need to use cement on walls. which greatly reduces cost and promotes use of natural solutions in building.Depending on the colour of soil used, the final product can be in different colors creating a great aesthetic effect.

Photos and more information will be coming up soon!! meanwhile you can check out the link below for more information on this technology.



Link

Starting a business in East Africa

As in all parts of the world the business idea, plan and win strategy are the first and most important parts of starting a business. Any entrepreneur planning to turn their ideas into commercial productivity will need to register the business in the geographical regions they plan to operate. East African countries are working on common platform of operation with a single currency. However this is not yet ready and each country has its own policy's, legislature and procedures of business registration. We will therefore look at the processes involved for each.

Rwanda has the shortest and easiest business registration process. With the recently launched One-Stop business registration center, it will take 24 hours to complete the whole registration process provided all documents are in order. Plans are underway to create an online service that will reduce the time taken to 12 hours and the system is expected to be operational by December this year. The center incorporates functions of the Registrar, Rwanda Revenue Authority and the Social Security Fund of Rwanda in one center and introduces a payment office in the registrar's general office. Company law no longer requires notarization of documents and publication into the official gazette. Only standard articles of Association are required and a flat fee of FRW. 25,000 is charged.

Other East African countries (except Burundi) have similar procedures for registration that flow as follows with a few specific items to each countries listed further below.

In Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, you can register a business name (liability lies with the business name owner/s, this can be sole proprietorship, partnership or name owned by a company) or a register as company which is a legal entity on itself.

To register a business name one will require to: Do a name search at the registrar's office. When a name is approved, the statement of particulars form is completed and partneship documents are signed, legal fees may apply here. A certificate of registration is then issued. A business name can later be converted into a company as well

To register a company, you start with a name search, once the name is approved and reserved, then stamp the memorandum and Articles of association and nominal capital documents, this costs 1% of the nominal capital plus stamp duty. Then you register with the Tax Department for tax, here you get a PIN/TIN/TIP number depending on country, then register for VAT and other taxes like PAYE, this is free and takes a day. To trade, you will also need to apply for a business permit from the City/town council you are trading on, NHIF and NSSF as well. You will need to make a company seal after the certificate of incorporation is issued.

Matters of cost and other items are specific to country as below.

Kenya

Business name: total cost ksh.900+
Company:Totals cost (appx)
Number of Days taken 30
Number of procedures 11

Uganda
In Uganda the tax department URA will need to inspect the business premise before registration as well as all other procedures above.
Total Cost (appx) USH. 463,000-471,000
Number of days it takes 24
Number of procedures involved 11

Check, doing business in Uganda on the link below

Link


Tanzania
In Tanzania the land or town officer will need to inspect the business premise before registration, you also have to register for workmen compensation at the National inspection corporation or take an alternative insurance policy as well as all other procedures above.

Total Cost(appx) TZsh. 206,200
Number of days it takes 34
Number of procedures involved 18


Burundi

Registering a company in Burundi is much different fro the countries above, the process below is followed. It will take you a minimum of 43days to go through the 11 process and cost you approximately BIF.252,900.

1.Notarize Articles of association and signing of the Notary to be published in the
official journal.
2. Deposit required minimum capital
3. Publication in the legal journal
4. Extraction of criminal records for the first two directors
5. Registration with commercial registry, tax department, local authority, ministry
of trade & industry, ministry of labour department of inspection and the National
institute of social security.
6. Finally one will get a company seal.

Figures given above are based on approximation and most data according to 2008 figures though little has changed since then.

ISP's find creative ways to survive

GSM and traditional telephone service providers in East Africa are now turning to Data services to grow revenues. Convergence of Voice and data is also contributing to the turn of events, there is no longer a line between data and voice in communication and sooner there will be no line with video and mobility of them all.

Traditional ISP's in this region will then turn to offering managed services by running applications on infrastructure already built by the main Telecommunication service providers. They will lease infastructure for and use it to reach business and individual subscribers with innovative and valuable solutions. These solutions will be based on convergence of voice, video, data and mobility, ease of collaboration in business, virtualisation, operation efficiency, business cost management and dealing with increased content.

Some of the services ISP's will offer are as below

Hosting of PABX's, even small and micro-businesses will now be able to enjoy functionality of a telephone exchange system even without owning one at their premise.
Content Management; ISP's will push or pull on demand video, data or voice content across organisations or to consumers for marketing purposes, e-learning, corporate communication, PR messages e.t.c This will be a great advertising, internal communication and PR tool.
Tele and/or video conferencing services may as well be hosted by an ISP and offered on demand when an organisation needs to communicate over distance for reasonable rates
VOIP services are already being installed in most ISP's and even major SP'sin the region.

More services to enterprises like network management (fault, change and configuration), security management, outsourced customer care, hosted CRM and DR outsourcing solutions will be popular sooner.

To the consumer Smartphones able to access networks through WIFI and GSM at the same time will come into play, these phones bring out convergence and TV will be integrated.

Kenya and Uganda will lead the way in acquiring these new technologies with Tanzania and Rwanda following. Burundi will finally join the bandwagon.

The Latest on East Africa's Telecommunication space

Certainly telecommunication is an area that has grown significantly in the last few years in East Africa and is still ranked as one of the highest growth area.

Currently all East African countries are preparing for the entry of high bandwidth on fibre connected to the Global communication networks. Most telecommunication service providers are and have invested heavily on infrastructure to make use of the anticipated bandwidth increase. With most communication regulators in the region issuing unified communication licences more and more GSM and fixed telephony providers are moving to converged offerings with data, voice and video both fixed (triple play) and mobile (quad play).

The operators are now offering Internet services traditionally offered by the stand alone ISP's, as well as GSM, CDMA and other voice solutions. Sooner they will be offering VOIP solutions and content on demand solutions like video on demand.

What does this mean to corporates and to the individual users? This issue will look at 5 things that will definitely change on corporate interactions.

To corporates, this means

1. cheaper telephony for businesses across the globe, branches and to customers, VOIP will especially make a lot of business sense. As long as there is a reliable Internet connection on either ends of the call, a call can be made via the Internet at the cost of the Internet connectivity only which is expected to be much lower on commissioning of the three fibre solutions.

2. Easier resource management and time optimization. Because of the ability to use tele and video conferences, meetings across business functions, branches, global offices, to partners will be possibly done with everyone at their own location/office. This saves time of travel and will keep people focused on their core business. Live messaging solutions will also increase sales force communications with clients without having to keep travelling.

3. Corporate communication and employee learning programs will be made easy with streaming video and voice recording on demand. Solutions like Webex (by Cisco) will enable management of information across the corporate, to partners and to customers as well. Recorded messages can be accessed by stakeholders including consumers.

click below to see more on webex

Link  ,   

4. For East African companies, we expect that social media will start affecting business directly. The positive part being that there will be a lot of data gathered on customer objective views easily and cheaply, more marketing and sales avenues will also open up and we can now access and acquire mind share more easily. On the down side, it will be time for PR execs to put on their gumboots and head to the field as there will be a lot of publicity both negative and positive online and they will need to be there listening and driving the discussion before any damage is done.

5. The best and most important thing that will happen to East African businesses is availability of data for business. There is not much online about the region and when most of us are working on the Macro environment we rely on offline sources. A lot more content will be loaded online with the availability of bandwidth and

On the next issue we will discuss the effects of bandwidth on you as a person.

For information on the current intenet penetration and mobile phone subscription for each east African Countries please see the links below;

Tanzania

    ">Link 

Kenya

    ">Link 

Uganda

   ">Link 

We need to move our Businesses to The Next level

East African Businessmen are still operating at home or country of set-up. Like our South African counterparts, we need to move to the next level moving out of our comfortable home and discover new markets in other countries.

Several authentic Kenyan companies have started going regional and this is a great move. However, these are mainly large banking and manufacturing organisations and they are only in the region. It is time for Kenyans, Ugandans, Tanzanian's & Rwandese businesses to get out there and vend their services both to each other and to the rest of the world.

We are in position to export services to other countries especially after connectivity to higher bandwidths on the commisioning of the Fibre optics projects. But we need business acumen and brave decision making at stategic levels in order to acheve this. This being the maiden post of this blog it will be very nice to know what your opinion is on this.

The question is, are we ready?