Posted 3/29/10
By Dan Baldwin, TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155 email
I've known OF Granite for several years (I run into their channel chief Charlie Pagliazzo at every channel trade show) but I've only recently come to know ABOUT them. The reason I'd not considered them previously at any greater depth was I "already knew" about "POTs consolidators" and I was familiar with other companies that did that. What I now know is that Granite does more than POTs consolidation and in speaking with them they leave you with the impression that when it comes to POTs consolidation they're in a league of their own.
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Granite Solution Categories (as of 3/29/10)
TA has Granite in the following solution categories of the TA directory & blogs:
MLE POTs - This is TA's POTs consolidation category - distinguished from MLE IP - providers that take multi location businesses off POTs lines entirely in favor of VoIP.
Broadband VAR - This is a category for those service providers that help multi location businesses put together a nationwide broadband Internet network using the best broadband providers available for every location whether it's DSL, cable, Ethernet or fiber and no matter who the underlying service provider is - RBOC, CLEC or other.
Structured Cabling - This category is one of the most useful for any telecom agent or channel partner with multi location business customers because it eliminates one of the biggest threats - unknown techs on a customer's premise that the agent or partner does not control.
CLEC - While CLECs ("competitive local exchange carriers") are normally thought of as more regional type phone companies, there are still several "national CLECs" that exist like Granite (some of the last survivors of the old UNE-P days).
Phone Systems - Granite is a Avaya phone systems dealer. In addition, they're in this category because of their 8,000+ "feet on the street" techs can show up at any location in the country to fix or install any phone system the customer has or wants installed - including IP-PBXs or hosted IP desk phones.
Telecom Expense Management ("TEM") - This is probably what Granite does best from the multi location business customer's point of view - be the "help desk" that solves all the problems of not know "who's paying for what and why".
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Who's Vouching for Granite?
Every carrier in town says "we're the greatest", which is good, who wants to be a customer of a company that thinks "we're just average"? When TA takes on a new vendor member we want to know two things right up front, "Are you guys a bunch of crooks?" and "Who says you're great?"
Better Business Bureau Listing
Most people think of the BBB as the place that consumers go to check out businesses. Well I think that's mostly true but it's also a good place to start to check out a business.
If, like Granite, the business is "accredited" with the BBB it means the business really cares about their public image of superior customer service in that you need to jump through a lot of hoops to become accredited and you open yourself up to letting customers complain about you publicly. Granite's A+ rating with the BBB means Granite does not have a whole lot of unresolved, angry customers - a good thing!
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Granite Agent and Customer Testimonials
It's one thing to not have anyone complaining about you but quite another to have some of the biggest and the best telecom agents, channel partners and multi location businesses bragging about your great business solutions. Click here or the link above to read Granite's agent and customer testimonials.
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Does Granite's Size Matter?
Are you the best if you're the biggest? I suppose it depends. Google started small and then become big. Did they get better as they cot bigger? Hard to say but they certainly now have the resources do do whatever they want. Command of resources is important.
Access to resources solves problems. Lack of resources created problems. All things being equal I always go with the providers with the deepest bench - so lets look at the Granite bench.
- Over 650 employees
- Nearly $500 million in revenue
- Over 14,000 clients in over 250,000 locations
- 8,000 structured cabling "feet on the street" techs that help go "beyond the demarc"
- 140,000 square foot headquarters facility that's owned by Granite
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What Other Granite Features Can We Compare?
As far as other objective measures useful to compare Granite to others, here's what we've found:
- Long-term underlying carrier contracts ensuring price stability
- Debt free and profitable
- 99% retention rate
- Proprietary online inventory management platform
- No long-term contract or volume commitment needed on POTs accounts
Cut and paste the 11 bullet points above and email them to providers you're comparing to Granite and ask them, "How does your solution of company compare on these 10 points?"
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Who Owns Granite?
While business end-users rarely care who owns the telecom company they do business with, telecom agents and channel partners care quite a bit, especially since they need to trust that the owners of the company will pay them the commissions the agents and partner feel are due to them. To decide if they'll get paid, agents and partners usually want to know if the owners have run afoul of agents in the past. from what I can tell from researching Granite's tariffs & Granite's BBB accredited listing, Granite is owned by Robert T. Hale Jr. and his father Robert Hale Sr.
Click this link to read the article "Hale of a Company" published in 2000 by Telephony Magazine which profile the Hale's founding of telecom reseller Network Plus back in 1990. This link describes how Hale Sr. was a founding board member of the old Telecom Resellers Association back in 1992.
This information tells me that these two guys are "old school" who remember what it was like to take business from "Ma Bell" the old fashioned way. As someone who got into the dial tone sales game myself back in 1990, I like that these kinds of guys are still around who remember the old days.
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Does the Channel Chief Have Pull?
This question is hotly debated around agent channels. The debate centers around the issue of "channel chiefs" saying what they need to in order to make their quota but they don't have any pull at the end of the day because they're not owners. More than one agent's commission "trail of tears" leads back to the claim, "the channel manager said 'not to worry about that quota'".
Granite's channel chief is Charlie Pagliazzo. A review of Charlie's LinkedIn page show's that he's been with Granite for over six years and spent over nine years before that at Network Plus where Granite's owners came from. Short of marrying the owner's daughter, channel chiefs rarely get tighter than this.
The one unknown is how Granite's alternate channel fares politically against Granite's direct channel. If and when "push comes to shove" the channel chief needs to go fight the direct side for a disputed deal from time to time. This issue is not unique to Granite by any means. My research does not give me any indication to how Granite resolves such matters. My guess is they are like most providers with both an alternate and direct channel: "Ink wins!"
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Any Reason Not to do Business With Granite?
In doing this report on Granite I've looked looked for reasons not to do business with Granite. In searching the Internet it's much easier to find negative posts than positive post. The only thing that I could find was five posts on Granite's BBB listing that had been resolved and one employee who likes the pay but wants more training.
When you have 14,000 customers and over 600 employees having only 6 mediocre complaints on the web over a 36-month span is pretty remarkable. I think some of the best loved companies in America have worse ratios than that. I have also not received any verified complaints from Granite agents about not getting paid.
The best reason not to bring Granite in on a customer deal is if you don't think Granite will beat any of the other providers bidding on the deal. So really, as an agent, you have to ask yourself this, "Would I rather represent Granite or compete against Granite?"
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What About Price and Commission?
While the price the customer pays is certainly important, the commission the agent gets is somewhat less so. The POTs consolidation game is fairly labor intensive - for the carrier. While the agent certainly does a lot of work bringing prospects to the table, after the deal is done, agents don't have a ton of leverage. In the big picture of things, there aren't that many POTs consolidation carriers and there aren't an unlimited number of businesses with hundreds of locations that need to be consolidated across multiple phone company boundaries. It's pretty safe to say that every decent POTs consolidation prospect has been called on by the direct side of one or more of the POTs consolidators.
The best way to judge if the price and commission of Granite, or any POT consolidation carrier will last is to check the length of the underlying carrier contracts. If you review Granite's website here, you can read multiple press releases about long term contracts that have been signed by Granite with their underlying carriers. The stability of these contracts, more than owner whim, largely dictates how long price and commission will remain stable.
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Should Granite Be Accessed Through a Master Agent?
Like many similar providers that bring a lot of labor to their solutions, Granite does not access the market primarily through large master agents. This may be because masters require extra points and the extra points may not be there to pay the agent what they want and give the customer a screaming rate. This is especially true when the carrier has a direct sales side that can bring a deal in without having to pay the "forever residual".
If you think you're only going to be bringing in one or two multi location POTs deal every so often, you absolutely want Granite to refer you to one of their top existing agents to funnel the deal through. I've not heard of any Granite agents complaining about getting cut off, but to hope to get paid forever from any provider after bringing in only one or two deals and nothing more is a bad gamble no matter what provider you're bringing the deal to.
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Bottom Line...
If you're reading this it's most likely because you're considering doing business with Granite as a telecom agent, channel partner or end-user customer. If you're considering Granite then you can't be 100% happy with your current solution provider. I've been in your position many times since I got into the telecom business in 1990.
The bottom line with Granite is I can't find a reason not to do business with Granite but I can find a number of reasons to do business with them including:
- No contracts for POTs accounts
- Massive scale
- Lots of verified agent references plus a BBB accredited rating of "A+ "
- Been around a long time
- Nationwide techs to do onsite premises work
I'm sure here's lots of other reasons to do business with Granite but these five are good enough for me and my customers.
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What's Your Bottom Line on Granite?
Got an opinion on Granite you want to share with TA's 3,800 members?
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