An Atrion White Paper
The Top 10 Reasons to
Use a Telecom Agent
©2016 Atrion, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The Top 10
Reasons to Use a
Telecom Agent
For many business and IT leaders, dealing with telecom
carriers has long been a challenge. But today, with telecom
so interconnected with IT solution design, building the right
telecom infrastructure for specific business needs is even
more challenging. Ensuring that a telecom environment
supports larger IT goals and investments takes expertise
and time—two areas that create major hurdles for many
organizations.
And these IT-related difficulties are being piled on top of
traditional telecom carrier pains that still exist today. For
instance, business leaders may find themselves spending
hours trying to get a response or quote from a direct carrier
representative, or digging through mounds of paperwork to
determine if their monthly bills are accurate.
An experienced independent telecom agent can help
solve many of these pain points, by assisting with solution
procurement and design; carrier interactions; billing
verification and more. What follows are the 10 most
compelling reasons to leverage a telecom agent.
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Five Questions to Ask on Your Unified Communications Migration Journey
1
No Carrier Rep Turnover
Sales is known as a high turnover profession, and the
telecom industry is no exception. Many times your
carrier representative may change more than once in
a calendar year, meaning you have to repeatedly
educate a new contact about your account. By using
an independent telecom agent, however, you can be
sure that you keep the same point of contact for a long
period of time. That means that when a problem arises,
you can dial the same phone number you have been
calling for years and the person on the other end is
familiar with your business; carrier account details; and
telecom environment.
2
A Single Point of Contact
Regardless of whether you maintain a single- or multicarrier environment, with an agent you still have a single
point of contact for almost everything telecom-related.
During the pricing and evaluation process for new
carriers, it is typical to request at least three bids and
have several appointments with carriers. The number of
appointments you might schedule could easily surpass
a dozen or more before you can make an educated
purchasing decision. With an experienced, qualified
independent agent, you can save hours of valuable time
by simply scheduling a single appointment to determine
the best course of action for your organization.
3
Someone Who Understands Your
Company, How You Make
Decisions, and Why
An independent telecom agent acts as an extension of
your company once he or she understands your business
needs and preferences. Your agent will take the time to
get to know your organization’s business needs and
goals, how you make decisions and what you’re looking
for from a carrier solution. Perhaps most importantly,
your agent will understand how telecom supports your
current IT environment and what changes you may need
to make for projects on your roadmap. For instance, if
you are migrating applications to the cloud, a telecom
agent can help you avoid network and bandwidth
challenges, one of the Top 5 Software-as-a-Service
(SaaS) roadblocks according to a recent survey.
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5
Carrier Agnosticism
When you deal with sales representatives from
individual carriers, you are only going to be pitched on
that carrier’s offerings. But in many cases, that carrier
may not have the technology you need, or may only
be able to offer you part of a solution. Getting stuck
with a carrier that can’t meet your present and future
requirements can be crippling to any operation.
“If an organization does not consider a carrier’s
capabilities when designing an IT solution, it may miss
out on some features and functionality that could have
a positive impact on design,” explains Adam Sugarman,
Solution Area Manager, Telecom Services at Atrion. “For
instance, some carriers enable failover to a different
network, which improves disaster recovery and
increases reliability over those that do not.”
So before you begin designing a solution, you need
somebody who will honestly and reliably answer
questions like:
• Can the carrier port all of your numbers or
support virtual numbers?
• Will you be able to failover SIP to a public IP
address or other disaster recovery connection?
• What enterprise level SIP services/features does
the carrier offer?
• Are there benefits with SIP and our wireless
users?
The Whole Truth
When you use the services of an experienced, independent telecom agent, you tap into the wealth of knowledge and experience of someone who has been in the
field for many years. Your agent will typically have experience dealing with multiple carriers in your market,
including those without a direct sales force, and can tell
you how they actually perform. They will truthfully and
accurately answer important questions like:
• Which carrier has the most reliable network?
• Which has billing problems?
• Which may be having financial difficulties or other
problems that may impact service?
• Which can make the desired install date?
When you use an independent agent, you don’t have
to listen to each carrier downplay weaknesses and
deficiencies. You get to hear the truth.
Top 5 SaaS Roadblocks:
1. NETWORK LIMITS
2. SOLID SECURITY
3. INTEGRATION INEFFICIENCIES
4. DEALING WITH DATA
5. STARTING FROM SCRATCH
SolutionsReview.com
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THE TOP 10 REASONS TO USE A TELECOM AGENT
THE TOP 10 REASONS TO USE A TELECOM AGENT
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Agents are Invested in Your
Long-term Success
Unfortunately, once a carrier sales representative gets
you to sign a deal, there is no motivation, despite the
direct representative’s best intentions, for them to speak
to you again. On the flip side, because independent
telecom agents are commission based, earning a small
percentage of the monthly telecom bills, their entire
motivation is to build a book of business of happy customers that don’t have to repeatedly find a new representative. In so doing, the agent has every motivation
to assist you in addressing and solving any service issues
that you may ever have.
7
Monthly Savings and
Billing Clarity
There’s a reason that MarketsandMarkets predicts that
the telecom billing and revenue management market
will be worth $11.78 Billion by 2019; one of the biggest
pain points for organizations is that they are often
paying for telecom services they don’t need and may
not even know about. Independent telecom agents
regularly uncover significant “fluff” on bills during the
auditing process. One of the reasons this happens is
that direct carrier representatives have a quota to make,
and they will often focus on presenting you with options
that are good for them, but not necessarily best for your
business. Additionally, over time your billing structure
can get complex as you make changes to your telecom
infrastructure, and you may simply not be able to stay
on top of it.
Alternatively, top agents, almost without exception, do
not carry quotas with any carriers. Because they do
not carry quotas, you will not find them pushing you
towards a solution that doesn’t feel right just to meet
their numbers. They are also accessible to thoroughly
audit your billing rate structure, both during an initial
assessment and as time progresses.
$11.78
BILLION
Estimated Telecom Billing and Revenue
Management Market Worth by 2019
MarketsandMarkets.com
$11.78
BILLION
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Knowledge of Extra Incentives
and Promotions
Because telecom agents work with multiple carriers,
they have visibility into numerous incentives and special
promotions from all these various vendors. At any given time, these offers can be applied to any solutions
purchases and can have a significant impact on your
bottom line. In contrast, when you work with a direct
carrier agent, you only have access to deals and promotions from that specific carrier.
9
Equal Pricing
The exact same standard pricing is used in both the agent
and direct sales channels. Agents do not charge extra,
despite all of the industry knowledge and experience
they offer. Additionally, for large projects, special pricing
is available to both agent and direct channels at the
same rates. It’s a model that helps the customer and
agent win, and ensures that all potential clients are
treated equally.
q
Understanding of NextGeneration Technology
Independent telecom agents will typically be better
versed than direct representatives in technologies like
MPLS, VoIP, cloud solutions, call center applications,
Unified Communications and SIP, since they need to
understand multiple carriers’ offerings and have attended their trainings. No carrier can be the master of all
technologies and master of all niches.
So it follows that it is nearly impossible for a direct
representative to have the same breadth and width of
exposure to the IT initiatives on your roadmap. Moving
successfully to newer technologies can save a company money and increase productivity—it may in fact be
the difference between growth and stagnation. Put
simply, independent agents are in a better position to
help you make decisions about the telecom solutions
that support your IT needs.
“Telecom figures heavily into so many areas of IT today,”
says Darryl Senese, VP of Telecom Services at Atrion.
“Telecom and technological innovation continue to
intersect to the point where today, much of what is
happening in IT is inextricably linked with carrier and
telecom services.”
Estimated Telecom Billing and Revenue
Management Market Worth by 2019
MarketsandMarkets.com
Leverage a True Partner
When you are weighing using an independent telecom agent against a direct carrier representative, perhaps the
most important thing to keep in mind is that instead of simply “dealing with” your team, the telecom agent becomes part of your team. This agent is personally invested in seeing you succeed, so he or she will take the time
to understand your business needs, rather than simply trying to close deals. The agent can help you cut costs;
enable you to save time by taking over many of your carrier interactions; and set you up for IT success by ensuring
your telecom environment support all of your technology initiatives.
THE TOP 10 REASONS TO USE A TELECOM AGENT
©2016 Atrion, Inc. All rights reserved. | atrion.com
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