While many telecom master agencies are satisfied using only 25% of a popular back office automation software's capabilities, CPI Communication's Commissions & Process Manager Ronda Perry and her CPI executive team developed a special in-house expertise to unlock 99% of RPM's possibilities.
Because of CPI's unique and proven telecom industry back office automation expertise, CPI was invited to speak to industry peers at a national trade show in Washington D.C.
Read the brief case study below that showcases CPI's accomplishment and then scroll down below to view a video synapses of Ronda Perry's comments to her peers and partners at the trade show.
CPI Implements Back Office Automation
Challenge
Founded in 1997, CPI Communications is a leading authorized agent for dynamic telecommunications providers. As CPI grew their business they realized the complexities and the importance of managing data and paying accurate commissions to their partners. As is typical with other master agents, CPI needed to provide timely and accurate turn up's for their customers and payments to their reps and partners. A solution outside of simple excel spreadsheets was needed.
Solution
CPI hired a Process Pro to delve into these back office issues and come up with a solution. After much investigation into the processes and how different carriers handle orders and payout commissions, it was determined that AGENT, powered by RPM Software was the best solution. It was also clear that while AGENT specialized in handling all commission complexities there was more to the tool for handling other process in the company. In 2006 CPI implemented AGENT for tracking order information from contract signature to turn up and through to the commissioning life cycle.
Results
For the order process CPI built in their own custom fields that allowed them to create reports for tracking time lines and ensuring successful installations. They built in global tasks to remind support staff of critical steps and delivery dates. All of this allows their partners to track the order process and receive communications if additional information is required.
As for the commissions, business partners of CPI can view their commissions being paid and they can also view orders that have not yet been paid out. If there are any discrepancies, CPI's commissions manager can note the account and address the problem. Commissions are tracked to the penny and to the exact date expected.
CPI took AGENT a step further by creating a CRM function within the software to track prospects and opportunities. CPI's director of sales can view each rep or partner's funnel in order to offer assistance with promotions and expertise when needed. Included with this is a quoting tool where quotes are completed and housed for easy reference for all prospects. This tool within AGENT can track multiple quote details including quotes from multiple carriers for multiple products.
The success of AGENT is described by Ronda Perry, "From beginning to end, RPM has allowed CPI to track prospects, quotes, customers, orders, turn-ups, commissions and disputes with ease. No more searching for revenue or wondering if and when we will be paid. Our reps and partners have visibility to all information regarding their customers and orders (and the information is private from other reps and partners). The RPM Software team has always been there to help with set-up and up-grades. Their help desk is second to none with immediate responses to issues. CPI Communications plus RPM Software equals success!"
Future Plans
CPI will continue to expand their use of AGENT as new features and functionality are added. They will also be participating in a panel at the Channel Partners Show in Washington this fall on the topic of "Automating the Back Office". Here they can help others understand how they have been successful in their own process automation and how they concluded AGENT was the best software solution for their needs.
Trade Show Video Remarks by Ronda Perry
Click the video above to hear case study remarks by CPI's Ronda Perry and RPM's Jade Ohlhauser.
Audio Interview of Ronda Perry on CPI's Customization of "Agent by RPM"
To dig deeper into what CPI is bringing to the industry that is truly unique among telecom master agencies, I interviewed Ronda and recorded the interview for the benefit of TA's audience.
Click here to download the MP3 recording of the 12 minute interview.
Click the audio player below to listen to the interview now on your computer.
The transcript of the audio interview appears below.
Intro Dan Baldwin: Hello, this is Dan Baldwin and today I'm speaking with Ronda Perry, the processing commissions manager for CPI Communications, a successful master agency based in Iowa that focuses on serving the network service needs of equipment buyers and systems integrators. Ronda, thanks for talking to TA today.
Ronda Perry: Sure.
DB: One of the things that CPI is known for in addition to taking care of equipment integration with network services, is you guys are kind of the experts in the industry on RPM. For our audience that is not completely familiar with RPM can you share with us what it is and how it is that you came to become an RPM expert?
0:41 RP: RPM is a software solution that we initially brought in to track commissions and be able to report clear commission reports to our agent’s reps and sub-agents and partners, and it turned out that RPM was able to become a cradle to grave solution for our business so we have the ability of tracking information from the point of a prospect that a sales rep comes across all the way through to the end including renewal. So this would be prospecting.
We have the ability to automate and track quotes. When that quote turns into a customer we can track everything about the customer including their locations. Once it goes to an order we can track every aspect of that order in status from beginning to turn-up through commissioning.
1:39 Then also on the backend as far as customer service we are able to track our renewals, repair tickets and change orders for that customer, and this is all to have the ability to be viewed by our partners and our reps. Most of the feedback that we have gotten from people that may be already working with a partner is they receive a check on commissions and they really don't know what that commission check is for, what account it’s for, what month it's for, what did that customer actually bill. So they always have that question in the back of their mind are they really seeing their full commission?
With RPM they are able to go in and not only view what that customer billed to be sure they're getting the proper commission, but if they would like to they can also track that order from beginning to end to make sure that it's getting installed accurately and timely right at the first.
2:38 So we are finding that we are able to keep our customers because they are very happy with the amount of due diligence we're able to do and handhold these orders and installations because of the software that allows us to track everything along the way.
Another item that is very beneficial with RPM is our ability to get turn-ups done much quicker. A lot of times reps and agents talk about how long it takes them to get a commission check on a customer that they worked with. With RPM our support staff is continually given automated tasks for all their orders and nothing slips through the cracks.
They know on exactly what day they need to take that order to the next step so nothing is sitting and waiting or being stalled. So we're able to get things turned up much quicker which means that partner or agent or sub-agent gets their commission checks much quicker as well.
3:37 DB: Well I'm finding this all very interesting because as many in our audience know I am a sub-agent myself for a different master agent and my master agent uses RPM, and once a month the commissions manager sends out an e-mail and says, “Okay, the commissions are done. You can log into RPM to see what you're making.” I then log into RPM and all I really see is the amount of my commission check and next to nothing more
So I always thought that RPM was just a way to tell me how much I was getting paid commission which is certainly nice, but what I'm hearing from you is that's probably just the way RPM comes out of the box when at master agent subscribes to RPM but RPM does so much more but only if you're hooked up with master agent that really knows how to customize RPM.
Can you spend a little time and explain to our audience what sort of commitment and resource investment is required of a master agency and how one master agency using RPM certainly doesn't look like another master agency using RPM?
4:41 RP: Right, you’re exactly right. RPM coming out of the box is a great way to track commissions, but as you said unless you spend some time and effort in creating a process and expanding the boundaries of what RPM initially does that's all you're going to get.
With my background as a process pro, what we did at CPI starting back in 2006 is to map out processes for completing orders or quotes or renewal, or whatever we need to do for our customer and how are we going to build out the walls of RPM in order to track that information and make sure it gets done.
So since 2006 the first thing we did was roll out our order templates which was gathering all the information for the order system including statuses and then we built out our customer templates, then our prospects, and now we've added quotes. So we've taken every piece of the process along the way and delve into not only managing information in RPM but first of all taking a step back and creating a process in house in order to manage it.
5:50 The great thing about RPM is that if you can dream it up, you can create it. However, if you have a master agent that doesn't have a process background or they don't have the vision to see what is needed to move those walls out and capture everything to make you efficient then it's just going to be a commission tool.
Also we give all our staff agents full access to RPM and some of our competitors don't do that. Some master partners don't allow other people to go in and take a look at their own information, and with RPM, the way we have it built if you submit an order and it hasn’t even come yet in most cases you're not normally going to see anything from another partner until it pays.
You don't have any idea when it's going to pay, if they're having trouble with getting the order completed. With our access that we give our partners and sub-agents you can go in and see for yourself every single day what our staff is doing on every single order and every single customer you have.
So you’re going to know two months before you get that check what you are going to be getting a check on.
7:05 DB: And you'd be able to track problems if there are any in the provisioning. So what I hear you saying Ronda is that if a sub-agent or equipment VAR or systems integrator is searching for the right master agency and that master agency says, “Well, we use RPM,” then what the sub-agent needs to do is say, “Can you share with me all the different RPM modules that you have in place and that you share with the agent and can I have a tour of those different modules?”, because that's really what separates the RPM “wannabes” with the RPM experts, right?
RP: Absolutely. I mean we've got years into creating this to be what it is today so we've already done our due diligence. The best thing for people to do is to ask who they are working with. “Do I have an ability to view and track my orders, my customers, my prospects, my quotes, or just my commissions?” And that's going to tell you right there how far out they have utilized RPM.
8:07 The other thing that's going to be important is do they create reporting for you? RPM has a wonderful ability to report any type information that that sub-agent wants, and we can do that for them and send the reports to them or they can go in and very easily build these reports themselves in the RPM.
So if they’re curious as to what customers they have in a certain state with a certain product because there's a promo coming out and we want to do a move, you can pull up all that information in a matter of seconds. Or even just, “What prospects are using a current carrier or current product?”, because now we have something better coming along down the pipe and you want to let them know.
Within two minutes we can pull out for them all their prospects that fit that query.
8:57 DB: Great. Great. So now what I hear you saying is if a sub-agent can think of a report question like, “Where are my customers and prospects in relation to this upcoming promo?” Whatever question they can think of RPM can do.
And also, it sounds like this is a very powerful tool for those sub-agents that need something that can manage a complicated environment because many of the sub-agents are moving into multi-location customers that have locations over multiple LEC zones. I mean, anybody can manage a single location integrated T-1 customer on an Excel spreadsheet, but when you have multiple locations, multiple customers, multiple LEC zones, you really need something that can handle a complicated environment.
RP: Absolutely, and the way RPM is built and the way we’ve added on our extra templates it's very easy to sort out the information you're looking for. It's so easy to use, and the other item is that the agents or sub-agents and partners need to feel comfortable about is their information that they supply us into RPM is still their information.
No one else, none of our other partners or sub-agents can see that information. Our support staff can see it to work the orders, I see it to take care of the commissions, but otherwise their information is secure. They don't have to worry about what's happening with their revenue.
10:31 DB: Great. This is Dan Baldwin. We've been talking to Ronda Perry. She's the process and commissions manager for CPI Communications. Now Ronda my understanding is that CPI is so good at RPM that you were recently invited to speak at a national trade show where RPM and several other software vendors were on the panel.
RP: Yes, we were privileged to do that. I worked very closely with RPM with some of the ideas we've had for expanding its usage and they've been wonderful at working with me to make sure that what we're envisioning is going to be a reality within RPM. We've also worked with them with some of their upgrades and have given them some ideas of some extra perks that we'd like to see in the system, and it's all been very helpful. They have been a great company to work with.
11:24 DB: Great. This is Dan Baldwin. We've been talking again to Ronda Perry, and CPI Communications, for all the TA vendors and members, have thrown down gauntlet. They are basically saying to the audience that they are the best master agency when it comes to customizing RPM to do what systems integrators and equipment VARs need done to manage a multi-customer, multi-location, multi-carrier environment. Ronda, thanks for talking to TA today. Is there anything else you want to share in closing?
RP: No, I don't think so other than if anyone has any questions or would like to have a webinar tour of what we can do on RPM for them have them give me a call.
DB: That would be great. You have a great day. We look forward to talking to you again soon.
RP: Thank you
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