The Company
CR Wireless,
Inc., a wireless communications company headquartered
near Albany, NY, has discovered the formula
for success in its marketplace. Recently expanding
to eight locations, Frank Grant and his team continue
to plan and look ahead into the future. Specializing
in cellular and paging equipment sales and service
contracts for businesses and individuals, CR Wireless
is the highest volume private retailer of cell phones
and pagers in the New York Capital District. CR Wireless
is a Cingular Wireless dealer as well as a Verizon
Messaging agent.
Before EXEControl®
Prior
to purchasing EXEControl® Global Solution’s
retail software package, CR Wireless had been using
leading industry specific software to manage their
business. In specific, there were three programs
in use; POS software, contact management software
and
an off-the-shelf accounting program.
Individually the programs were serving their purpose,
however, it was clear the lack of integration and flexibility
would soon become a stumbling block hindering the ability
to manage growth and location expansion effectively.
Eventually Frank Grant, President of CR Wireless, knew
he had to find a better solution or say goodbye to
his growth plans.
While on a sales call at EXEControl®’s
corporate headquarters, Frank was introduced to the
EXEControl® Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
software with fully integrated point of sale (POS),
customer relationship management (CRM) and full accounting
capable of supporting an unlimited number of store
fronts.
Goals For EXEControl®
On
the surface it looked like a great match but Frank
and his team had a list of business objectives they
wanted to make sure were achieved. By achieving these
goals, the CR Wireless team could focus more on doing
those things that generated value for its customer
base and the company as a whole. The list of objectives
included:
- Improved inventory management. They needed
inventory controls ranging from knowing which serial
numbers were at which store to an automated centralized
inventory reordering system, and from real-time inventory
valuations by store to inventory transaction history.
-
Improved “cellular agent commission” management.
They wanted the ability to reconcile their cellular
agent commissions received, to what they were expecting
to receive. Increasing volumes made it increasingly
more difficult to verify their agent commissions
(earned from new activations and upgrades) were paid
accurately.
- Improved billing management. They wanted
a system that automatically setup the account billing
based on
the data captured during POS transaction entry. The manual
process of selling pager services, and then separately
having to remember to setup the account monthly service
billing, left too great of a margin for error.
- Improved
contact management. They wanted to ensure every customer
received a series of customer satisfaction
and renewal follow-up calls. Their steadily growing
customer base and redundant data entry into a separate
contact management package caused them to spend more
time setting up the calls, than actually making them.
- Improved reporting. They wanted a system that
made reporting timely, accurate, and with virtually
no
administrative overhead. Reports were manually created at the branch
level, faxed to headquarters and manually consolidated.
Their top management spent more time shuffling papers
and entering data into Excel, than analyzing performance
and reacting to information.
- Standardized data entry.
They needed an integrated solution. With three
separate systems, every transaction
had to be handled at least three times.
The bottom line was that current procedures and systems
made it difficult for CR Wireless to have a solid grip
on operations and profitability, and EXEControl® appeared
to be the solution.
After demos, meetings and tours of existing EXEControl® user
sites, the decision was made to install EXEControl®.
Company President Frank Grant said, “We’re
investing in state-of-the-art technology to help us
maintain leadership in the regional cellular and paging
industries. It will make us more efficient, more profitable,
and better able to serve our customers.”
Point of Sale
CR Wireless’s
business revolves around the sale of pagers, cellular
phones, and airtime contracts.
Capturing the correct information when you make a sale
is critical, not just for the immediate sale, but for
follow-on business. When you sell a pager, for example,
you want to record the frequency and cap code for the
pager, the serial number of the pager, and whether
it is going to be a monthly, quarterly, or annual billing
cycle. In addition, it is important that the person
handling the sale offers the customer appropriate options
such as extended warranty and voice mail and that the
billing for these items is handled properly.
EXEControl® streamlines the entire process
by integrating the capture of information at the point
of sale and storing all of it in a single unified database.
When a sale is made, the software asks the sales person
whether it is a pager or cell phone sale. Based on
the answer, the sales person is then interactively
prompted to enter the appropriate information for a
pager or cellular phone. The transaction cannot proceed
until the necessary information has been entered. Recurrent
billing for an airtime contract is set up rapidly from
the point of sale entry through a series of on-screen
choices. The sales clerk is also prompted to offer
appropriate accessories and options.
If the customer chooses to pay by credit card, the
card is verified automatically from the point of sale.
All eight stores verify credit cards using just a single
phone line.
When Cingular cell phone service is sold, the commission
Cingular owes CR Wireless is automatically calculated
and recognized as a receivable. The salesperson’s
commission is also automatically calculated. When agent
commissions are received, EXEControl® reconciles
the payments and validates their accuracy to make sure
that none are missed. When a pager contract is sold,
the revenue is recognized in a deferred method over
the life of the contract. The EXEControl® system
also offers the ability to distinguish between new
airtime sales and recurring billing on financial reports
Inventory
Strong
inventory management tools are essential for businesses
to reduce obsolescence and shrinkage; also
to maximize service, customer satisfaction, and asset
(cash) utilization.
CR Wireless has been given a new
level of control over its inventory through the EXEControl®
system,
including the ability to create new inventory items
quickly and easily, the printing of barcode labels,
the ability to create a pricing matrix structure
for easy pager pricing maintenance and the ability
to print
minimum/maximum reports of inventory for each store.
In addition, managers have the capability to identify
the value of the inventory at each store, to perform
inventory counts using system generated count tickets,
and to track loaners by transferring them to a separate
inventory location.
Purchasing of inventory has been improved with the
automatic creation of purchase orders when selected
products reach their prescribed minimum levels. When
invoices arrive, they are matched against purchase
orders to prevent duplicate payments and ensure quantity
accuracy.
Telemarketing and
contact management
A certain key to profitability
in the cellular communications and paging business
is customer retention for year
after year repeat business. To support this requirement,
the “telemarketing center” in EXEControl® generates
for each store a list of customers who must be called
the following day.
As the records are accessed, information about previous
calls can be viewed. As the customers are called, the
account status can be updated with call details and
the next call back date. In addition, managers can
easily print reports that show the percentage of follow-up
calls that are being made and how effective they are,
measured by the dollars of additional sales generated
per call. According to a cellular service industry
study, annual turnover is well in excess of 30% of
customers each year. CR Wireless admits its performance
is significantly better than the industry average.
The Bottom Line
A switch
in software was an absolute necessity to compete in
a vast and mature market such as cell phone
and pager sales. Since going live on the EXEControl® system
in early 2002, CR Wireless has recognized 60% growth
in store locations. The EXEControl® system has “greatly
improved our repeat business” and “eliminated
our reporting redundancy allowing us to focus on sales
and profits.” (Mike Gourlay: Partner CR Wireless,
Inc.)
In broad strokes, the EXEControl® system has
done three key things for CR Wireless:
First, EXEControl® provides control, integrating
the business systems of all the stores with corporate
headquarters. It also provides the capability for remote
training to ensure consistency of customer service.
Second, EXEControl® improves efficiency, streamlining
the entry of information, saving enormous amounts of
time, eliminating the redundancy of duplicate data
entry into multiple software packages, and slashing
the opportunities for data input errors. The software
also makes it easy to setup recurrent sales of airtime
services at the same time that phones and pagers are
sold.
Third, EXEControl® delivers information to support
rapid business decisions. Company managers can see
a snapshot of any store’s business, including
sales of products and services, inventory, and telemarketing
activity at any time of day or night.
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