Tag Archives: GlobalPOPs

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on by
Reply

Hey everyone! We hope you’ve been having a great week. In today’s Just another Friday at ABG Capital, we’d like to spend some time with a few of our most recent hires. We asked them a few questions just so we had the chance to check in with them since they’ve been here a few months now. Justin Sparks and Rhonda Taylor-Boles were kind enough to take few minutes out of their busy days to answer these questions. Here’s what they had to say:

Justin - ABG Capital

Justin Sparks – GlobalPOPs Technical Services Representative

Q. What has been your favorite thing about working at ABG?
A. Before working for this company, I have had very few former coworkers I would have spent my free time with. However, the people here are more than coworkers, they are friends.

Q. What has been your favorite thing about your position at ABG?
A. Solving complex problems. I am challenged each day when I come in, and it keeps things from getting stale.

Q. What has been your proudest moment?
A. When I started, I was originally hired for EUS. After only 4 days, I was moved to Global Pops.

Q. What has surprised you the most about working at ABG?
A. Three words: Scotch Cart Friday.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

Rhonda - ABG Capital

Rhonda Taylor-Boles – Inspira Customer Service Representative

Q. What has been your favorite thing about working at ABG?
A. I think my favorite thing about working for ABG is being able to form ideas, solve problems, and the complete openness and honesty of not only Inspira, but the whole company.

Q. What has been your favorite thing about your position at ABG?
A. Getting to speak my favorite language every day, and being able to be my whacky self with no judgment.

Q. What has been your proudest moment?
A. Every day I get something accomplished is a proud moment. I think translating the forms that go out to people every day and having a banker tell me that they were well done and informative. That was a proud moment for me. Translating into another language is tricky and time-consuming. Hearing that someone who was not familiar with Inspira, or me take notice of the work I did was a proud moment.        

Q. What has surprised you the most about working at ABG?
A. Well, I think that everyone here is on the same page to make the company a better, and thrive more every day. You don’t see that much anymore. Everyone has the same goal.

Thanks for stopping by for another rendition of Just another Friday at ABG Capital!

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on by
Reply

ABG Capital would like to wish everyone a very happy Friday! Later today we’ll all be heading to Latitude 40 to do some bowling. Employees from VoIP Innovations, Inspira and GlobalPOPs will be joining us as well. Not to worry though, we’ll still have a few people in the office for each company who will be assisting customers on any and all support issues. We’ll be taking pictures and Vine videos the whole time so make sure to check our social media sites to see everything!

ABG Capital 2013 Bowling

Now let’s take a look back on our week… We featured an awesome blog post that highlighted some of the reasons why it’s important to understand that all employees are representatives of your brand. If a customer is on the phone with a Customer Service Rep and that Rep is rude or unknowledgeable, then that customer might consider taking their business elsewhere. On the other hand, if that employee is pleasant and well-versed in the company and its products, then the customer is at ease and is more likely to tell others about how awesome your company is. If ALL of your employees can’t sell your company to current or potential customers, then you might run into some problems down the line!

This week one of our newer employees, Yvonne Iwanejko, attended her Lunch with Leadership. This is something that ABG Capital does with every employees on their 30 day mark. Jeff and Jason Tapolci make it a priority to get to know their employees and this is a fantastic way to do it!

Post by ABG Capital.

If you check back into the ABG Capital blog next week, you’ll find a great article on business development; primarily how to make the large goals and numbers seem not so bad. If you’re worried that you might miss this post, you always have the option to subscribe! Once you do this, you’ll get an email from ABG Capital ONLY when a new blog post is published. It’s really a great way to keep up to date with our posts.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on by
Reply

Happy Friday! We’re hoping everyone had a fantastic week. We’ve been keeping busy here at ABG Capital with visitors and planning sessions and conferences all week. Let’s tell you a little more about all this.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, GlobalPOPs held their annual planning session in our new conference room and on Thursday and Friday VoIP Innovations held theirs.These sessions are designed to create a yearly and quarterly plan for the companies so they can stay ahead of their competition and continue pleasing their customers. Here are some pictures of the two planning sessions:

ABG Capital Annual Planning

The GlobalPOPs Team

ABG Capital Strategic Planning 2

The VoIP Innovations Team

On top of all the strategic planning that was going on this week, InspiraFS had a few visitors in the office this week too. They were just in time because our build-out project is almost complete! There are only a few small final touches that need to be finished up, include the wall designs that we have being printed right now. We’re looking forward to showing off the office in two weeks for the big unveiling at our Open House.

This week our HR Manager, Sharon Kolesar, spent a few days out of the office at the Pittsburgh Human Resources Associations (PHRA) 2013 Annual Conference and Exposition. This year was their 65th anniversary and they celebrated by hosting another fantastic HR convention. Some of the topics they covered were creating an inclusive culture, healthcare, decreasing stress, analytic tools that can help any HR professional, and even health and wellness topics.

The last thing we need to mention is that it’s that time of the year when our Executive Team will be heading out of the office for the second Gazelles summit of the year. The first summit they attended this year was in Orlando and focused on growing leadership within the organization. This summit is in Las Vegas and will be centered around growing the entire organization. The members of the Executive Team who will be attending are Jeff Tapolci, Jason Tapolci, Ron Eggert, Dan Ravenstahl, Sebastian Kiely, Pete Littlejohn, Nick Medina and Corey Potts. We can’t wait to see what this summit has in store for everyone at ABG Capital!

We hope you have a great weekend. 🙂

ABG Capital Volunteers at the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies

Posted on by
Reply

Happy Monday! As you remember from our Just another Friday at ABG post last week, we mentioned that some people in the ABG Capital office were taking a half day to go do some volunteer work. That volunteer work took place at the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies where we were equipped with buckets of waters and sponges to clean thousands of headstones. Our mission was to help the cemetery prepare for their Memorial Day celebrations next weekend. We had a gorgeous sunny day on our side and we were able to get through all the headstones we needed to.

This is the second year ABG Capital has volunteered at the cemetery and we hope to do it again next year because it’s such a rewarding experience. We were even approached by some veterans who wanted to offer their thanks to US! If you’d like to see pictures from our day, please visit our Facebook page.

ABG Capital CEO and Veterans

Jeff Tapolci and Veterans

The National Cemetery of the Alleghenies is a national cemetery that serves as the final resting place for thousands of veterans and their families. The cemetery lies on 292 acres and is a beautiful place that is well taken care of by a staff of no more than 20. If you are interested in being a part of the volunteer program at the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies, please contact their office for more information.

ABG Capital 1st Quarter in Review

Posted on by
Reply

“With the close of the 1st quarter, all four of ABG Capital’s portfolio companies have contributed to another successful quarter that puts ABG Capital on its way to a record breaking year,” stated Jeff Tapolci, CEO of ABG Capital.

Scotch Friday Celebration

Scotch Friday Celebration

We’ve had so many exciting things happen during this year’s 1st quarter: business is booming, our companies are making huge names for themselves in their industries, we’re hiring great new people to our teams, and we’ve started expanding our office to keep up with the rapid growth. Overall, we couldn’t be happier with how we ended the 1st quarter and we’ve definitely set a great foundation for the 2nd quarter.

We’ll start by reviewing VoIP Innovations, our largest investment by far. They are a wholesale VoIP (voice over internet protocol) services provider who finished their best year ever in 2012 and they are positioned to have a stellar 2013.  This company’s revenue is up 27% from the 1st quarter in 2012 and they are positioned to have an overall better year in 2013 than they did in 2012. The company continues to enhance its current product offerings while constantly releasing new and updated features, functionalities, and products.

Its latest release is called Titanium Private Label platform (TPL).  TPL was designed as an option for VoIP resellers who do not have or want their own VoIP switch. When they purchase the TPL platform, those resellers can have the best of both worlds; the VoIP Innovations network and a VoIP solution without the need of a VoIP switch.  VoIP Innovations continues to create features, functionalities, and products to stay one step ahead of everyone else in the industry. They design their services based on what their customers want and what the market wants. Everything they do is designed to create a more user-friendly experience that keeps the customers coming back. As they continue to thrive in their industry, they are on their way to achieving their goal of being the industry’s largest wholesale provider of North American origination and termination.

“This company is where we are seeing tremendous growth,” said Tapolci.  “In an aggressive market such as telecommunications, VoIP Innovations has not only been able to contend with their competitors, but are among the leaders of their industry.”

GlobalPOPs, the industry’s largest aggregator of dial-up internet services, continues to actively acquire wholesale dial traffic, as well as end-users through its End User Services (EUS) nameplate. GlobalPOPs has just completed an expansion of their network to cover the vast majority of the Level 3 territory. In addition, EUS has rolled out new product lines centered on static IP addresses that has proven in the 1st quarter to be solving a problem in the market place. Though the world of dial-up internet service is consistently shrinking, GlobalPOPs and EUS are positioning themselves to be in the dial-up internet market for many more years.

We’ll start to bring this 1st quarter review to a close with Inspira, ABG Capital’s most recent venture. They have seen the biggest improvement out of all of the companies with a 40% increase in revenue from the 1st quarter in 2012.  They have added validity to their comprehensive IRA rollover and retirement plan termination services in the market. In addition, they have acquired Fortune 500 customers who are bringing in a steady flow of accounts on a weekly basis. Last year it was Inspira’s goal to focus on acquiring clients. This year, they are focusing on sales, sales, sales that will help them secure more clients.

Look out 2nd quarter, here we come!  “We’re extremely proud of where we are at this point in 2013, and we couldn’t have achieved this success without the astounding team we have in place,” said Tapolci. “It’s not every day that you can have profitable companies and keep the fun, family atmosphere that we have, especially to the point where you’re named one of the best places to work in the state. We’ve been blessed, that’s for sure.”

Now that 1st quarter has ended, we know that we can achieve even more triumphs by the end of the 2nd quarter. To give a better representation of how far we’ve already come from last year, take this into perspective; from our current standpoint, if we did nothing else for the rest of the year, we would close out 2013 in the same spot as we closed 2012. Remember, that’s if we did NOTHING. Obviously we’re not going to sit around and do nothing, so that means we’re expected to end 2013 with record breaking success.

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on by
Reply

Welcome back, it’s good to see that everyone has survived another work week 🙂 It seems as though everyone at ABG Capital has had a pretty good week and we even have some congratulations to give out today!

First off, we have officially migrated off of our old email systems and are now up and running with the new system. With that migration, we also got a new portal site for our employees. It’s a great way to share information and keep everyone up-to-date. **If you are an employee who is still having trouble with this migration, please send an email to Steve or Jacob at the Help Desk and they’ll address your issue.**

Denise Breide, Employee of the Month

Denise Breide, Employee of the Month

We want to give a shout out to our Employee of the Month, Denise Breide and our Spotlight of the of the Month, Natalie DeCario. Denise works for VoIP Innovations as the Project Provisioning Specialist and Natalie is the Communications Specialist for ABG Capital. Congratulations to you both!

Since it’s the start of the month, we want to share all our April birthdays and anniversaries with you. Dustin Campbell, a VoIP innovations Technical Services Coordinator, will celebrate his birthday on April 10.  Dan Ravenstahl, President of GlobalPOPs and End User Services, will celebrate his on April 18 and Heather Halpern, a Provisioning Coordinator for VoIP Innovations, will celebrate hers on April 29th. Help us wish these folks a happy birthday!

As for our Anniversaries this month, we want to congratulate Mark Fleckenstein, the Marketing Director at InspiraFS, for making it to 3 years at ABG Capital. We also have two employees who will be receiving their 5 Year Service Awards! Congratulations to Nathan Rupp, the Platform Manager for Inspira, and Jerry Eddy, the Director of Development and IT Services for ABG Capital, for making it to 5 years!

KICKBALL2-1529373In other news, next Friday we’re going to be playing some kickball! The teams are made and everyone is ready for the game. Those who can make it to the game will be leaving the office around 1 and we’ll be able to play until 5. As we mentioned when we went bowling, there will still be members of our support staff who stay in the office and continue to solve any customer issues.

To wrap this post up, let’s talk about some upcoming events. As you know, our Friday lunches are a big part of life at ABG Capital. In May, everyone is looking forward having a Cinco de Mayo Pot Luck Luncheon  Also in May, we will be taking employees to volunteer at the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies to clean off headstones. There will be more information to come!

If you’re going to be in the Pittsburgh area this weekend, make sure you go outside and enjoy the nice weather we’re supposed to have. Have a great weekend everyone!

Our Office Build-Out

Posted on by
1

under_construction_animation_3Construction at ABG Capital is well under way and we’re excited to share some more great updates with you! When we wrote about The Start of Our Expansion a few weeks ago, we were talking about the contract we signed in September for about 2,700 square feet of new space. That meant bringing our office to 12,000 square feet.

Well, we’ve just upgraded from that. On March 29, we signed a new contract that added 2,900 square feet to our layout. That means that we’ll have about 15,000 square feet! That’s a huge amount of space from what we had with our very first lease back in 2007 that only totaled about 9,400 square feet.

The need for this expansion is due to the rapid (and we mean RAPID) growth of Inspira and VoIP Innovations; we have to meet the demands of our work flow! The original plan included a multi-purpose room big enough for about 50 people, some new offices, a call center for Inspira, and a gala kitchen. The amendments to the contract added even more to this.

There will now be a climate controlled call center that will house the Network Operations Center (NOC) for VoIP Innovations and GlobalPOPs as well as the call centers for Inspira, VoIP Innovations, and GlobalPOPs. We are also adding an even larger and more functional kitchen, a small conference room, and a few more offices.

These are exciting times for everyone at ABG Capital and we can’t wait to share more updates with you as this process continues.

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on by
1

Welcome back to our blog, it’s time for Just another Friday at ABG Capital!  We want to start off by recognizing some more new employees who joined us this week. We’d like for you to welcome Collin Ballantine and Kathy Scheidlmeier to the ABG family. They will both be working as Customer Service Representatives for Inspira. If you want to get to know them better, check out their blog post from earlier this week.

Today was the ABG Capital Month/Quarter End Meeting where we discussed what has been going on in each of our companies. At ABG Capital we talked about how much growth we’ve been seeing throughout the organization, the new training our managers have been receiving, the build-out and all of the fun and exciting things that are coming with that expansion. We also had the chance to recognize our Employee of the Month for February which is Sara Warhold, our Office Administrator. Here’s just one of the comments made about her:

“I voted for Sara as she has been a huge asset to helping out Erica and myself. Since she started, we were able to move some tasks that I was doing, over to her and she has handled those like a ROCK STAR. She was able to adapt to a new situation and she welcomed the extra tasks given to her with open arms.”

During this meeting we also got to hear how great of a job all of our Portfolio Companies have been doing. Inspira has been exploding with new accounts and relationships, GlobalPOPs is expecting to see more and more growth in the coming quarters, and VoIP Innovations is moving and developing way faster than expected.

Easter 2As we wrap this post up for the day, we want to say have a great weekend and a Happy Easter!