Apptix (News - Alert), a vendor of hosted Microsoft Exchange e-mail, Microsoft SharePoint, and VoIP services, has announced that E-Appraisal, a Las Vegas-based provider of residential and commercial appraisal services and products, has increased internal and client collaboration through the use of Apptix hosted communication.
Company officials say e-mail costs alone were reduced by nearly 90 percent.
"We are extremely pleased with the range of services we've received from Apptix and are happy we made the switch from our previous provider," said Greg Rodriguez, director of operations for E-Appraisal. "Apptix's hosted solutions are cost efficient and wonderful for the fast paced collaboration our office requires on a daily basis."
E-Appraisal is using Apptix Hosted Microsoft (News - Alert) Exchange with ActiveSync for mobile email on iPhone and Windows Mobile devices, SharePoint, and Microsoft Communicator for secure Instant Message with Presence capability, according to company officials, who say they've "experienced a variety of benefits since moving to a mainly hosted IT environment."
Some of those benefits include:
Increased internal collaboration and communication. Using Hosted SharePoint, the company has created a custom template for managing orders from origination to post-closing. The template outlines the tasks at each step and enables responsible parties to record status.
Reliability. E-Appraisal has enjoyed 100 percent uptime since switching to Apptix. A momentary issue with SharePoint Service was resolved within five minutes and included a follow-up call from customer service to confirm that the service was back up and running.
Cost savings. E-Appraisal's previous e-mail was charging per megabyte for storage. With the company having to send large appraisal files and retain client communication, the costs added up to be as high as $500 per month. Today, their total cost for SharePoint, IM, and email are under $60.
Mobile functionality. The hosted product allows the team to have the same e-mail functionality whether in the office or on their home computers. With Apptix Instant Messaging, E-Appraisal team members get IM alerts in their email inbox when they are away from their computer and can respond immediately via phone or email.
Service to customers. Industry regulations now require appraisers to disclose if they have provided a previous service on a specific property within the past three years. By organizing projects in SharePoint, they can now easily pull up records to determine if any disclosure is necessary.
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David's articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.Edited by Alice Straight