Annese patiently works to expand in southern N.E.

It can be slow going trying to expand a company into new territory, as Annese & Associates Inc., a family-owned telecommunications company based in upstate New York can attest.
Annese, based in Herkimer, N.Y., has spent the past 18 months slowly making local contacts in an effort to expand into the Rhode Island and southern New England markets. The 41-year-old firm currently has eight offices in New York state, according to Kara Rudy, marketing manager for the privately held business.
The company currently has one employee stationed in Rhode Island and one in Connecticut with two others devoted to southern New England but based in Albany, N.Y. The company has approximately 100 employees and is a value-added reseller (VAR).
“The biggest problem [with expanding marketing territory], and I’m sure it is common with many businesses, is that Annese is built on relationships, word-of-mouth and name recognition,” Rudy said, “and the biggest difference is that people don’t know you and you don’t have a strong network yet.”
Rudy explained the company has been working to establish its presence in Rhode Island and nearby Massachusetts, based on a growth plan worked out with Cisco that showed this area is close enough to service from New York state and yet far enough to have potential customers never before exposed to Annese.
The firm’s focus covers education, health care, commercial, state and local government and in general terms it works with computers, telephones, video and audio equipment, including the well-known Cisco brand. Annese is certified as a woman-owned business in New York, New Jersey and Vermont.
“We’ve had various events, we go out and meet people, we’re networking and calling on people, looking for references, and we’ve started to connect the dots,” Rudy told Providence Business News. “Obviously there is competition and you do have to be able to differentiate yourself.” She cited as the company’s three strongest areas, its expertise, relationships and focus on innovation. The company’s goal is to have at least one sales account manager stationed in the region in 2012, either Rhode Island or Connecticut, Rudy said.
Shala Pelloni is Annese’s Rhode Island-based employee and she works remotely on administrative support rather than sales. Mahendra Jog is the service manager for the three states and is based in Connecticut. Rudy said the company currently is hiring account managers and engineers. “We’re always recruiting engineers,” she said.
Rudy declined to discuss the financial investment required to break new territory, noting that Annese is a private company, but she indicated that the expense can be considerable.
“We did do a lot of market research because this is a considerable investment,” she said. “We are assigning people there and paying for them.” The process is, she suggested, “almost like a startup. It’s like starting up a whole other company.”
One technique that Annese is using to capture the attention of southern New England businesses is to offer more webinars, Rudy said.
Jeff Swider, president of Vision Telecom Inc. in Providence, a telecommunications broker and consultant that does not sell equipment, said a company like Annese must engage in business-to-business networking and make a point of meeting business owners and business managers in the area, “the people who run the day-to-day operations,” to successfully break into the local market. “All of Rhode Island is one degree of separation,” he said, “so if you do a good job, you’ll get recognized by the decision-makers” who usually have a lot of colleagues, family and friends to whom they can refer a new business contact.
Rudy certainly hopes that is the case with Annese. She cited the following three programs as features that differentiate Annese from other telecommunications companies:
• “Annese Remote Managed Services” manages back-end infrastructure for customers to supplement a company’s existing staff and strengthen its internal IT team. As an example, she mentioned an office telephone problem that would be detected and repaired during off-hours so “when you arrive in the morning, you wouldn’t even know you had a problem.” The service includes off-site backup on a daily or weekly basis, software maintenance, security updates and network configuration changes
• “Unite” is an integrated “collaborative suite” launched in spring 2011 that pulls together a variety of the tools that Annese manages into a cloud-based service “easy to understand, easy to buy and easy to use,” the company said, as a way to bring people and teams together remotely. “Unite” can take the place of annual support contracts and/or costly technicians, the company noted.
• “Halo Energy Solutions” monitors networks 24/7 with an eye toward saving energy costs, automatically powering down devices when not in use, Rudy explained. Devices that “Halo” can work with include work stations, laptops, PCs, IP phones, projectors, white boards, video walls and displays, room lighting, building control systems, electrically operated blinds and shades, satellite receivers and CD/DVD players. •

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