NECSI Board Meeting Minutes – Tuesday, October 17, 2006

 

Called to Order: 1:06 p.m. (PDT) 4:06 p.m. (EDT)

 

Present: Barry Simons, Bob Pentico, Maureen Gaynor, Drew Regan, Tim Lenox, Dave Heuman, Suzanne Sherrod (taking minutes of meeting on behalf of Ms. Gaynor).  Seated with the Board was Steve Autor.

Absent: Garry Laxdal, Kevin Brennan

 

Mr. Simons has been in discussions with NEC’s Frank Viola who has advised that NEC would very much appreciate it if the NECSI Board would agree to change meeting so that all executive can attend.

 

Motion by Ms. Gaynor to change date of October 26 NEC meeting in Dallas to a date in November.

Seconded by Ms. Sherrod. Motion Passed.

 

Discussion of best dates

 

Motion by Mr. Pentico to travel Nov. 28, meet with NEC 29 and 30 and return Nov. 30. Seconded by Ms. Gaynor. Motion passed.

 

ALERT TO MEMBERS TO CHANGE THEIR TICKET: Reschedule and submit change charges to Garry Laxdal. Stand by for Barry to confirm November 29, 30 meeting dates with Frank Viola Tuesday evening and email everyone on Wednesday (October 17th)

 

 

Mr. Simons related his discussion with NEC regarding what they need to do at this meeting (technical)

 

Mr. Simons requested that NEC’s Jay Krauser or someone “wow” the Board with an NEC demo (desk top application).

 

NECSI Action Item:

NECSI will respond with a 30-45 minute demo of an Inter-tel or AltiGen application to demonstrate what competition can do. Demo a feature and provide MSRP cost. Ms. Sherrod to demo an AltiGen application. Mr. Simons to demo Inter-tel application.

 

Discussion ensued regarding promises as yet unmet by NEC and issues as yet unaddressed.

 

Ms. Gaynor recalled the January 2005 powerpoint in which NECSI provided side-by-side features to NEC that haven’t as yet been addressed.



Action Item:

NECSI Board will force feed back to NEC what was promised and as yet undelivered. Call for a volunteer to compile an “unmet promises” and unaddressed issues list and circulate to the Board. Ms. Gaynor volunteered.

 

Survey or no survey?

Unanimous agreement to launch a survey.

Agree to redoing the 5 questions with the scale response answers instead of “yes” or “no”.

 

Action Item:

Board Members will review Steve’s latest survey post and submit to him any changes, suggestions, or corrections.

*Prize draw eligibility will require the dealer to submit their name and contact information.

 

Survey launch is top priority. As soon as we have everyone’s approval, we will broadcast to the Membership.

 

NECSI request for sales engineers to help Board members with information to NEC – there were 5 to 6 names submitted; over 50% from Board member companies. How do we increase the participation from the Membership? The idea was put forward by Mr. Pentico to phone dealers and directly request the contact information for their sales engineer(s); *alternatively in order to be eligible for the prize draw, survey respondents will be required to submit name and contact information. This will give us a database for Product Committees to work from.

 

Requests to NEC - Marketing

 

What is the consolidation plan from IPK II to NEAX 2400?

 

What is the product development roadmap—and how is it being streamlined? Are we to expect major changes in R&D groups?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bundles:

 

IP “try before you buy” is risky and in practice has not worked out with NEC packaging. How can we help NEC help us sell more NEC solutions?

 

It was determined that NECSI should give NEC a detailed wish list—this is what we need to increase sales.

 

Action Item:

Call for NECSI Board Member to lead creating the bundles we want and then present these to NEC. Mr. Pentico will compile suggestions from Board Members.

 

 

Training & Certification

 

Training issues that are as yet unaddressed: IPKII requires a “foundation up” retraining thereby unavoidable “ramp up” time for dealers. Overall, the array of NEC solutions and multiple technology advances increase certifications required and are creating issues that may ultimately result in a crisis with respect to finding, maintaining sales force.

 

Mr. Simons indicates that the IPX Connect program is very good for giving sales people a good broad stroke of layered switching, Ethernet , etc. Ms. Gaynor noted that the basic telephony module was considered elementary and not a good use of time by her sales staff.

 

Next Conference Call –  Tuesday, October 31, 2006 at 1 p.m. PST; 4 p.m. EST