MasterStream Blog

Master agents are consistently looking for ways to optimize their sales processes—in part by handling lead-to-cash workflow processes in as few systems as possible. The majority of master agents organize their processes around a powerful customer relationship management (CRM) software that is complemented by an integration with their billing system. Among the many complex services that businesses integrate is quoting. 

These days, to stay competitive in the telecom sphere, sellers and buyers need to make fast, accurate decisions around the type of available connectivity, managed services, cloud services, and voice services.

But it isn’t just about how fast you respond—you also need to deliver consistent and superior customer service through all channels to gain loyal customers. To do this, your process can’t be one that is long, complicated, and disconnected. Instead, your process needs to be fully automated on a single platform.

A configure, price, quote (CPQ) solution allows sellers and buyers to quickly and accurately generate complex sales quotes to ensure they are receiving the best connectivity for their situation. To learn how a quoting CPQ can drive sales, increase revenue, and reduce friction, read on.

As the telecom space becomes increasingly more competitive, the tools used in the industry have become increasingly specialized and customized. A one-size-fits-all approach to finding the right connectivity is no longer feasible.

For businesses in the telecom industry, manual research to find serviceability was once the only solution. However, with the advancement of technology, this is no longer necessary. Instead, telecom businesses can now use data-driven processes and automated research tools.

Research tools have also paved the way to finding serviceability beyond the use of fiber maps, which at one point were the only way to find service. However, this solution was only semi-automated and still required telecom professionals to rely on manual research by tracing routes on a fiber map.

Luckily, new advanced tools provide robust, immediate information on fiber assets. Here’s how technology allows for a more immediate, automated approach.

In the worst of times, telecom customers have been forced to find connectivity options at addresses where no telecom service has been connected in the past—meaning there’s always a small risk that their preferred service option will face an obstacle to installation.

In the best of times, customers have an abundance of choices that include telecom connectivity through existing infrastructure, as well as the ability to connect to service options by installing new infrastructure or connecting to wireless service.

These two scenarios illustrate one of the basic differences between on-net and off-net connectivity. On-net service, which refers to a carrier that owns network facilities at a specific location, is already connected at that location. By contrast, off-net connectivity refers to a solution provider that has connected to the location by purchasing use of the local network facility through a supplier relationship. As a result, off-net connectivity can involve more unknown and hard-to-identify variables that may affect not only connectivity, but also service quality at an address.

Although the worst-case scenario with off-net connection options may be scary to some customers, the good news is that strong telecom research automation can help you better understand these connectivity options before customers commit to a service option. As a result, telecom businesses can thoroughly evaluate connectivity and score service package options to avoid worst-case scenarios and give customers the type of telecom service they’re seeking at their locations.

Here are some key differences to emphasize as your customers weigh their options between on-net and off-net telecom connections.

The growing pains brought on by digital transformation aren't endured just for the sake of putting businesses through unprecedented challenges. While the transition to these new solutions is often a gradual and sometimes difficult process, the end result of digital transformation provides benefits made possible only through modern solutions to long-standing configure, price, quote (CPQ) telecom problems.

This transformation is alleviating multiple pain points and limitations that have plagued telecom providers for years—and which have only gotten worse as telecom infrastructure has grown more complex. To keep pace with both the expectations of customers and the task of managing complexity around CPQ telecom services, new technologies are taking an algorithmic and rules-based approach that is necessary to build a sustainable telecom business model.

Here are four CPQ telecom technologies solving these pressing industry challenges.

No matter where or how it’s used, sales automation is always hailed for one big reason: When it’s working on your behalf, you can count on it making your life easier.

Make no mistake—when software tools offer automated sales solutions to power your business operations, even the most reluctant adopters of this technology will eventually concede that access to automation tools helps them do their job better, and often with less stress involved. But that’s far from the extent of automation’s benefits, and those benefits play a direct role in maximizing ROI for your business.

For telecom sales channels and departments, automation offers some important material gains that improve on-the-job performance and raise the ceiling for revenue generation from these activities. Here are some of the biggest impacts automation can make on your business model.

The old way of researching bandwidth solutions is labor-intensive. Between tracking down location data and inputting data points, telecom businesses lose a lot of time to a research process that—despite its tedious process—doesn’t always deliver the most reliable results.

Manual research isn't just costly and threatened by manual input errors. They also restrict your company’s ability to scale its service to a larger customer base. And, as the demand grows more complex, involving larger sets of location data that both complicates data acquisition and input variables, the research demands of location and bandwidth solutions only continue to grow.

New research tools are desperately needed to help telecom businesses keep pace with the modern world. Fortunately, automated tools and customized dashboards are making it easier than ever to bring this digital transformation to your own bandwidth research process.

Through improved infrastructure and expanded serviceability, the telecom industry is itself an engine of digital transformation, supporting innovation across all industries. But the benefits of this digital transformation can also be applied to the software used in the telecom industry.

Modern software solutions open new doors and unlock new potential for telecom businesses still stuck in the traditional ways of doing business. As adoption of these innovative solutions gains steam throughout the telecom industry, it will create a wider gap between the haves and have-nots among carriers, service providers and resellers of telecom services.

Here’s a look at how digital transformation is creating new opportunities through telecom software.

For telecom agents, the task of adopting digital transformation in their sales process can also bump up against the complications of making wholesale changes to their sales infrastructure.