Era focused on building better communications

While the importance of keeping up to speed with the latest technological advancements is paramount, communications provider Era Communications believes a strong, personal focus and relationship with suppliers and its clients has been integral to the family business's growth and success.

The company, established in 1994 by ex-Telstra worker Terry Filpo and his wife, Lucy, provides communication systems to a wide range of companies, from small operations to larger operations across several sites.

Project manager and son to Terry, Mark Filpo, said the close relationship established with suppliers had allowed the company to provide a more personalised service to its clients.

"The relationship is very important between distributors, suppliers and the producers of the hardware," Mark said.

'He's [Terry] always looking for the best possible solution to offer [to clients], so he's always had a strong relationship with the dealers themselves.

"So if he's got a specific application that a customer is asking for, or a feature that's not necessarily standard, he's always going back to the actual people that make the systems and asking 'do you provide this or can you offer a solution'."

The personal nature of how the company does business seems to stem from its roots, with Era Communications a real family affair.

Along with Terry as managing director and Lucy managing the accounts, sons Mark and Carl, daughter Rosa and niece Francesca all work out of the same offices, either directly for the company or for other companies that provide additional services such as IT to Era's clientele.

"You have your occasional difference of opinion like you would in any business but we all do really get along," Mark said.

"To spend every day with your family and then to come home and plan to do things on the weekend is a testament to how we were brought up. We are very well placed in the market due to the fact that we offer a broad range of services all 'under the one roof'.

"My son Carl's business, C&M Computer Solutions, offers complete IT solutions to its customers and my daughter Rosa provides a vast selection of headsets that go hand-in-hand with our phone systems," Terry said.

"All of us operate from the same office, allowing unique access to each other's knowledge base."

Terry, who had 20 years' experience with Telstra before starting the business, believes extensive research and monitoring of new technologies is imperative to Era's success.

"Being a technology driven industry, it is important for us to continually research and keep a close watch on emerging technologies. As new products and services emerge, we endeavor to be in a position to deliver these solutions to our end users," he said.

"So while the core solutions are still relevant and fully supported, we are also evolving alongside the industry to provide all of the exciting new technologies that our customers can take full advantage of."

Advancements such as VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol), which allows phone calls to be made over the internet, is growing in Australia, with customers able to save considerable amounts of money in communications.

"The main advantage (of VoIP) is linking your data communications. If you're a multi-site operation, where you have sites all around Perth or even multinational, you can link these phone systems so you can make calls between sites with no charge at all,' Mark said.

'The big ones we set up are at mine sites. If you've got a mine site with a head office in Perth and communications on remote locations we can link them up together and you're not paying the call rates because it's all through the internet. That side of it is very appealing to a lot of organisations."