Why have solution providers shied away from selling wireless?

COONS: Wireless sounds interesting because everyone needs it, and why would a partner ever leave anything on the table? But then you go to sell it, and all of a sudden there are hundreds of plans that you need to understand. Wireline is a lot easier from that perspective. Then you start selling wireless – let's say 50 cell phone lines and each phone is going to pay out a $150 activation. But let's say a few of those phones have issues, and you're scrambling because the customer really expects you to manage this. You're supposed to look at bills and manage those too, and all of a sudden that activation price for each phone -- which is a one-time payment -- is going to run out pretty fast. You're in the negative, so partners have been thinking 'No way, not ever again,' and that’s the pain point – it's never really worked.

There's a lack of expertise. Partners have to stay on top of the plans, and the shear amount of support required sometimes is eroded by the one-time revenue commission model.

How does TerraNova help solution providers sell and manage wireless for their end customers?

COONS: I built a business around creating residual revenue around wireless by providing management services. I tell the partner; “Let us do the heavy lifting. I don’t expect you to know all the plans. I have a whole team of auditors that stay on top of those plans. Just get me into the account so I can ask the right questions.”

We would do optimization and auditing, but partners can access the management portal. We load the data, crunch the numbers, and pump that back to the users. We can email [the end customer] event summaries so you can see all direct reports and how they did on their bills, what it cost, how much data or minutes they used, and so forth. Typically carriers don't give you that visibility, but the solution provider and customer can have that visibility and see expenses.

If I go into an account and a customer is with AT&T today, we can find ways to save them money, and they don’t have to do a migration to another carrier unless they want to. I show them what happens if I optimize their AT&T wireless plan, and I've given the sales partners a way to make money by just managing [the plans] without forcing them to make a migration. Partners also still have opportunity to add new lines to add new residuals.

TerraNova has relationships with the four major domestic carriers and then we can pull a lot of the larger international [carriers] right into our software natively and manage those too, like Vodaphone and Rogers Wireless.