Small and medium size businesses can now make use of a new online tool that will help them both boost business efficiency and opportunity and create the means to save money immediately.

On Instant - www.on-instant.com  - is an easy to use and simple to deploy Internet service that delivers numerous feature-rich professional business tools at a very low cost. Initially available as a free trial and then marketed for as little as £4 per user per month, companies using On Instant can both increase their efficiency and save money through a single source of Voice over IP (Internet telephony), collaborative services, business networking opportunities, automated CRM systems and news sources.

Registering to On Instant takes as little as 5 minutes. A small to medium sized company can be operational within minutes across multiple sites and a multi-national organisation with thousands of users can have the system operational and be saving money in a matter of hours.

One of the most immediate benefits of using On Instant comes from its Voice over IP (VoIP) capability. This gives users the ability to make high-sound-quality telephone calls over the Internet, providing instantaneous and significant cost savings by eradicating the traditional phone bill. In addition, with On Instant’s VoIP service, voicemails can be sent over the Web in a single click of the mouse, reducing the need to send emails and improving personal communication.

Founded by chief executive Nick Ogden, the serial entrepreneur and father of WorldPay, the Internet payment system (which was acquired by Royal Bank of Scotland Group in 2002), On Instant can be accessed from anywhere in the world using Internet access – be it from the office, at home, in a hotel room, at a Wi-Fi hotspot, or using a GPRS or 3G mobile network.

“While there are a number of disparate online services delivering a range of solutions to many business problems, none of them provide a single, one-stop service for small to medium size organisations,” said Nick Ogden. “I realised that business networks, CRM systems, search tools, directories and VoIP are all crucial tools for modern businesses, but for your average SME, installing all of them is either a complete headache or far too expensive – or both. On Instant has been launched to overcome this problem. We are confident too that the service will more than pay for itself based on savings from Internet telephony alone.”

Ogden continued, “On Instant is the result of my team’s many man years of working together identifying real business needs and answering them with successful Internet ventures. As such, we have a deep understanding of the online business model and know that On Instant will address the needs of companies worldwide in a highly relevant and immediate way.”

By logging on to www.on-instant.com , any business can have a month’s free trial of the service. At the end of this period, a single low monthly or quarterly subscription charge is incurred, with absolutely no additional costs. For the first user and company registration the cost of the service is £15 per month, and this goes down as the number of users increases. A 100-user licence pack costs £850 per month, and at 500 users, the cost per month is £4 per user.

On Instant has also been made available to 6,700 Chambers of Commerce in 206 countries.

For daily use of the On Instant communications network, users simply need a PC or laptop with either a headset and microphone or internal speakers and microphone, or a USB phone. On Instant requires a PC or laptop to be running the Windows 2000 or XP operating systems.

The consumer version of On Instant, called On4, will be launching in Q3 2004.

For further information about On Instant, please visit www.on-instant.com


See the latest On Instant coverage in the Guardian

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