Greg O, Advertising Agency

Excellent Images, Inc. is a new, aggressive marketing company, specializing in creating marketing plans for start-up companies. The founders, Joe Smith and Jane Jones, are based in Denver.

Says Jane, “We have a small office in Denver, but we work with people all over the place - in and out of our office. Bruce, our photographer actually works out of his own studio across town. We also use three business specialists a lot - one here in Denver, one in Atlanta, and one in Los Angeles. We work mostly with high-tech and media buyers, so we’re always dealing with outside companies in Silicon Valley, Chicago and New York.

Joe handles the day-to-day office affairs, so he handled the set up of their Virtual Business Office. “All six of us have our own Universal Offices - me, Jane, Bruce our photographer, and Bill, Amanda and Wyatt, our contract specialists. Having all the calls come in through one switchboard even though we're spread all over the place is great. So are all the other features like conference calls on the fly and different message handling rules for different times and days.

"But the real blessing was what our Universal Office allowed us to do with our money. We're constantly paying out fees or expense money to our associates, both here and across the country. We used to mail checks, or in an emergency we'd have to do a wire transfer. The fees were mind-boggling, and I can tell you I was tired of being boggled!

"Then we found out about the GenieCards that we got with our Universal Offices. Now we can just send each associate their fee by making a simple phone call, or just going on line. It's one whopping heck of a lot easier than the old 'mail a check' business. And when we have to send money immediately for some emergency, we aren't getting bent over by the wire-service company.

"Between the communications features and the power of our GenieCards, the Universal Office was the right solution."