www.hotoffice.com

HotOffice provides the most full-featured and easily customizable virtual offices.

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The Company: HotOffice Technologies, Inc. is a privately held company founded Feb. 1, 1995; Intel is an investor along with two venture capital firms; headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida.

The Product: Provides Web-based intranets, aka virtual offices, for small businesses on a per-user subscription basis; emphasis on collaboration, team communication, and document sharing for businesses with multiple offices, mobile workers, and telecommuters.

Accolades: PC Magazine Editor’s Choice (Feb. 10, 1998); PC Computing 4-star; Group Computing A rating; CTI Magazine’s Editor’s Choice Platinum Award, Small Business Computing and Communications 4 stars.

Co-Branding Partners (announcement date): GST Telecommunications (Jul 15, 1998); GTE (Jul 8, 1998); 3Com (Apr 23, 1998); Boca Research (Apr 20, 1998); Mindspring (ISP) (Feb 3, 1998).

Contact: Phone: 561-995-0005; Fax: 561-995-5990; Email: info@hotoffice.com

End-User Cost: $12.95 per month per user ($11.95 each for more than 20) includes 20 MB of storage per user with extra capacity available for $5 per month per 10 MB; additional usage fees for optional third-party services such as D & B reports.

Features:

•  Consolidated email: All email, including mail sent to any POP3 server, can be consolidated into one Web-based service accessible anywhere without being subject to advertising messages.
•  Web calendar: Emphasis on scheduling and prioritizing tasks.
•  Web links: Allows work groups to share bookmarks with each other.
•  Reminders: Send messages now or schedule for future delivery to yourself and/or select members of the work group.
•  Alert bar: Instant notification of new email, phone messages, bulletin board postings and documents.
•  Message of the day: Post daily or rotating messages for everyone to see when logging in. ð
•  Virtual phone message pad: Keep track of all phone messages in one location
•  Central document storage/access: Securely store company and/or personal files in a central location for remote access, revision control and keyword search and/or safe back up.
•  HotOffice viewer: Allows users to view documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics sent by others without installing additional software.
•  One-button publishing from Microsoft Office applications: Upload files to the HotOffice server directly from Word or Excel using a button added to the menu bar.
•  Threaded bulletin boards: Work groups can share ideas on private company bulletin boards
•  Online conference rooms : Private online meetings can be held in secure chat rooms.
•  Microsoft NetMeeting support: Users can make free long-distance calls over the Internet and participate in video conferencing and whiteboard sessions using Microsoft NetMeeting.
•  Different levels of access: The business owner controls which users have access to documents and bulletin boards.
•  Research desk: Search third party news and business information sources. Note: It’s pretty weak now but the company promises to beef up the selection shortly.
•  Package tracker: Jumping-off point to quickly check package status with major carriers.
•  Travel planner: Book tickets and make travel arrangements via ITN.
•  Credit check services: Check credit ratings of potential business partners or vendors through link to Dun & Bradstreet.
•  Productivity tips: New ideas are posted daily.
•  Free technical support: Includes your own HotOffice Personal Trainer, a real person that contacts you shortly after the beginning of your one-month free trial.

Benefits:

•  Save time with instant access to documents, calendar, and email anytime from anywhere.
•  Reduce unproductive time playing telephone tag and creating massive email threads by collaborating with team members in real time.
•  Save money compared to other intranet options.
•  Improve decision making with more efficient and thorough sharing of ideas and information with online bulletin boards, phone messages, email, and reminders.
•  Safeguard data with documents stored in a secure, encrypted off-site location away from the hazards of computer damage or theft.

How it works:

1. Business sets up a virtual office (first 30 days are free) establishing corporate ID, user IDs and passwords. Most functions can be operated with a simple version 3.0 browser or above (must support Java); but to take full advantage of document sharing and one-button publishing from Microsoft Office, a software application must be downloaded and installed on the user’s hard drive.

2. Business authorizes additional users giving them access to various levels of the virtual office. Additional users can be installed at any time and given different levels of access.

3. Business selects the tools it wishes to use, e.g. email and chat rooms.

4. Business customizes its office with links to other Webs, company information, and personalized greetings.

5. Business publishes (uploads) documents into the virtual office for sharing and collaboration.

Visto www.visto.com is marketing a similar concept dubbed Visto Briefcase. The idea is to have users to load all their personal information onto a Web site, aka a “virtual briefcase” so they needn’t lug a laptop when traveling. The company offers a free version and the $9.95/mo Briefcase Pro.

PlanetAll www.planetall.com is more consumer-oriented with calendars, reminders, and finding lost friends (through its extensive affinity group archives). It’s the best calendar and reminder service we’ve seen; but don’t take our word for it, ask Amazon.com who bought it for $93 million in stock August 4, 1998. If you are looking to build a consumer-orientated calendar/reminder service, study PlanetAll.

Reseller Opportunities: The standard deal for HotOffice partners, as listed on their Web, is a 10% revenue-sharing arrangement for referrals to HotOffice. Therefore, if you were to bring 1,000 users to HotOffice your share would be $1,300 per month, or about $15,000 per year; hardly worth the trouble.

Consider the 10% share merely the starting point in any licensing negotiation. As a start-up, HotOffice would benefit greatly by an endorsement from someone in the financial services industry, especially if you are a known financial brand.

Given the minimal incremental costs to add an additional user on the HotOffice server, we think you could cut a deal putting your clients onto the service for a fraction of the $12.95/mo retail cost. We’d start at $1/mo per user with a minimum commitment of one thousand users, plus your authorization for the company to use your name in its marketing.

Future Improvements: The major new enhancement on the boards for HotOffice is unified messaging services that will allow the virtual office to be used to collect voice, fax and email messages. Traveling execs could then dial into the virtual office to handle all their different messages. Emails and faxes are displayed online; voice messages are played through the computer’s sound card.

Earthlink www.earthlink.net/room/sample.html uses Netopia to create $30/yr consumer-oriented Internet rooms for its ISP customer. Seven different themes are available including two oriented towards businesses and five targeted to consumers including Dilbert and Peanuts shown above.

Virtual offices and/or simpler calendars could be used in different ways:

1. Resell to business clients on a revenue-sharing basis as outlined in Reseller Opportunities above, creating a small profit center, garnering a smidgen of publicity, and differentiating your small business services.

2. Give away to businesses and/or consumers providing better publicity and differentiation. But, depending on the licensing deal, it could be prohibitively expensive.

3. Bundle with other online banking services for a flat fee. This would help differentiate your online services and pay for the product.

Any of these three options could provide a lot of bang for the buck; delivering meaningful interactivity and product differentiation with a minimal investment.