Most telecom businesses understand the value of implementing a quoting tool that streamlines or eliminates time-consuming manual processes, while also offering features that improve both the speed and quality of configured quotes being delivered to current and prospective customers.
If you’re in the market for a quoting tool that can modernize your quoting process, your business might be considering in-house development of a proprietary solution. While this may offer some attractive advantages on the service, it can also create limitations that you aren’t as likely to face with an outsourced quoting tool.
Here are some of the ways an outsourced telecom quoting tool can out-perform any potential in-house alternative.
Enjoy improved ease of use through a simple, user-friendly interface.
A simple, intuitive user interface is important to facilitating fast adoption of new quoting tools. New users can get up to speed faster, and individual tasks and processes can be executed with greater efficiency.
Outsourced solutions are designed to serve a large base of users, which means their design is likely to serve these needs, offering an easy transition for your telecom business. One key benefit of leading platforms is that they can be customized to serve your company’s specific needs.
Leverage sophisticated technology to enable greater automation.
Telecom quoting tools are just like any other tool: The best ones are often the product of deep, specialized knowledge that guides the development process for that solution.
While your business may use quoting tools on a regular basis, and your in-house experts may understand the pain points created by the current quoting status quo, the software-based methods of building effective solutions may not be quite as evident. This can result in in-house development projects that, while well-intentioned, fail to deliver the efficiency, value, and flexibility your telecom business needs.
Integrate tools with a broad range of software and systems.
When tools are developed in-house, they’re more likely to have limitations that inhibit the quoting tool’s value and performance. This could include more limited integration options, reduced access to sophisticated cloud-based features, and limitations in scaling the deployment of software across sales teams, agents, and other parties using the software.
An outsourced telecom quoting tool is going to inherently offer easier scalability options. The vendor is also incentivized to support a wide range of integrations, which allows your business to maintain more agility than when developing an in-house solution that may pose more limitations for your business. When you build your own solution, your IT group is tasked with developing and maintaining all of these integrations on their own—which leads to additional costs and time commitments down the road. Instead of focusing on your telecom services, you’ll constantly be juggling software development needs.
Enjoy fast time to market, with no in-house development required.
Creating an in-house telecom quoting tool may sound nice in theory, but it’s also time-consuming and expensive. The cost and resource commitment of building one of these solutions, not to mention the long timelines required to build a custom solution, is a significant resource investment for your company.
In-house development also puts you at the mercy of IT development timelines, and places you in competition with other internal projects. This ultimately leads to a slower time to market, which cuts into the potential value of creating your own solution.
Even if your in-house quoting tool is able to achieve gains in efficiency or performance—which is no guarantee—it can take months and years before these return on investment (ROI) gains account for the up-front investment required for this type of project. Meanwhile, the resource commitment required for in-house app development takes those resources away from other projects that might offer more long-term value to your business.
This constraint will continue to be problematic when it comes to installing updates or new features to your tool—all of which require additional time, resources, and prioritization.
Address compliance needs with reliable security.
Quoting tools developed in-house can be challenging and risky when it comes to ensuring security and adhering to stringent compliance protocols. Security can also become a factor in limiting your distribution capabilities: How can you extend quoting services to the outside world when your home-grown solution is stuck behind your firewall?
With an outsourced quoting solution, these worries disappear. Your business can bank on the security of this technology while maximizing your reach to potential customers.
Effectively serve your agent channel.
To generate quotes for your agent channel, you will likely need to generate thousands of login credentials for your partners—which can be costly, due to the punitive pricing structures enforced by both home-grown and third-party solutions alike. The right outsourced partner can—and should—offer a pricing structure that supports the creation of these login credentials to fully service your entire agent channel.
Call in technical support when you hit a roadblock.
One of the greatest benefits of outsourced quoting tools comes when you run into trouble. By licensing a solution from a third-party vendor, you can reach out to their technical support whenever you experience problems with the tool’s performance.
An outsourced quoting tool also benefits from regular updating and maintenance from the vendor, which reduces maintenance demands for your business and mitigates instances of software glitches or downtime. Plus, you get access to external IT professionals who understand the complexities specific to telecom and the agent channel—and those professionals can guide you across roadblocks that might otherwise keep your business stuck.
Equip your telecom business with the best possible tools.
Speed, efficiency, performance, and value: These are all important considerations when choosing the software to support your telecom business. When it comes to installing a quoting tool, your business should prioritize the solution that gives you the highest ceiling across these different units of measurement. A well-designed third-party quoting tool can drive efficiency in both sales acceleration and reduced labor expense.
Find out how MasterStream ERP can solve your company’s quoting needs by scheduling a demo today.
