TIA Member Spotlight:

TIA welcomes one of its newest members, Quintrex Data Systems Corp.!

Quintrex Data Systems Corp. developed its first billing and rating software in 1979 for an independent telephone company. When deregulation occurred in the early 1980s, the U.S. independent telecommunications industry exploded with new ideas, technologies and growth. As only the best survive in such turmoil, the Quintrex billing system grew into the highly integrated and fully functional product it is today. Specializing in convergent billing for the Quad Play markets, Quintrex provides billing, customer care, marketing, plant and financial back office solutions for companies using the Quad Play throughout the United States and Canada. These companies have chosen the Quintrex system not only for its robust functionality, but also for its dedication to excellent customer support. .

Leland J. Smithson is the president, owner and founder of Quintrex Data Systems Corp. His diverse background has allowed him to become very well versed in the design and product delivery of various billing and information systems prior to the completion of Quintrex's billing, customer care, marketing, plant and financial solutions. For the past 28 years, Quintrex has been providing these solutions to telecommunications companies throughout the United States and Canada. Leland is known as a knowledgeable speaker on multiple topics throughout all levels of the telecommunications industry. He has consistently been asked to speak at state, national and international association tradeshows, including NTCA and OPASTCO, on topics such as integrated marketing, enhanced billing and customer relationship management.

Could you provide a description of the various solutions/management products you offer? 

The Toll Management System provides complete control over recording, receiving, rating, and billing customer’s toll records within this system. The Billing module generates and maintains comprehensive detailed records on each customer, including customer profiles, billing and payment history. It also supports data for multiple companies with multiple exchanges. This system is flexible and is capable of collecting and rating records from a wide variety of switches.

The Marketing Management System includes a suite of six modules that provide valuable marketing tools to help increase sales and market penetration. These solutions give customers continual and systematic exposure to new and existing products and services to maximize revenue. Market research and report tracking can be easily pulled together and utilized through current system data.

Specifically, Target Marketing allows a company to easily use its monthly statements and electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) program as part of its marketing campaigns in order to reach different segments of its customers. Individualized messages are included directly on the statement, as an insert or throughout the customers’ EBPP accounts. Suggestive Marketing gives CSRs a tool that allows a more proactive approach to increasing sales revenue and seamlessly suggest specific products or marketing opportunities that are directly related to each subscriber. Campaign Marketing provides the opportunity to target a group of customers with a promotion or marketing campaign. Through the creation of user-defined filters, a list of active subscribers can be generated based upon a set of criteria. From this list, labels, letters, e-mails or envelopes can be generated. The remaining modules combine to create a comprehensive approach to offering competitive promotions and bundles. Additionally, market research and report tracking can be easily pulled together and utilized through system data to provide a fully integrated marketing package.

The Subscriber Management System helps a company create higher customer satisfaction and improve its business relationships. This system is also comprised of multiple modules, including Service Order, Subscriber Inquiry, Switch Interface and many others focused on entering, storing and accessing customer and account information. The Service Order module can be fully customized through service codes, routing of internal information and screen sequences for specific types of service orders. Similar to Service Orders, the Subscriber Inquiry module conveniently displays all customer information by account, but does not allow changes to be made to that information. Another aspect of this system is its Switch Interface module, which allows for auto-provisioning and audit of the various telephone, Internet and cable TV devices.

The Plant Management System maintains accurate and detailed cable records for both inside and outside plant management. The system eliminates repetitious input of data and provides ease of record updates. With the Service Location feature, each address is given a unique location code for tracking purposes; this system provides the most accurate and current cable records possible. Additional modules available within this system are Trouble Reporting and both uni- and bi-directional interfaces with multiple outside plant mapping systems.

You were recently selected as a finalist for the 2007 Billing World & OSS Today Excellence Awards. Can you tell us how you were nominated and the success story behind the nomination?

Each year, Billing World and OSS Today takes nominations for their five excellence awards. Companies can either self-nominate or be nominated. Quintrex self-nominated based on the extreme success of the use of our Marketing Management System by one of our clients. From the more than 50 companies nominated, a committee narrowed the list to five category finalists. Quintrex was among the five finalists for Best Customer Success Story this past spring.

The following is a summary of the success story. In 2006, the business development department of DTC Communications, a cooperative located in Alexandria, Tenn., ran a marketing campaign called the “Why” campaign. This campaign focused on promoting the company’s bundled services to those who already had multiple services with DTC. Previously, the company had created only mass, untargeted campaigns to all DTC’s 20,000 customers, even though only half could take advantage of the promotion offered. With our new software solution, it was possible to target the campaign to the fewer than 10,000 customers that were eligible and better allocate her marketing funds.  

As the campaign progressed, the Quintrex Reason Code Analysis program was used to track all customers that added a particular service, including the bundles. Reason codes wereset up, by item or product code, so whenever a customer service representative entered a service order, they were required to fill out the reason a customer added or removed a service. During the “Why” campaign, additional reason codes were set up to indicate how customers had heard about the bundles, such as the Web site, billboards, the newspaper or through direct mail pieces. These reason codes then automatically populated for each customer in the campaign, updating the number sold and how the customer learned of the promotion. By doing this, it was possible to instantly analyze which of the marketing efforts were providing the biggest results. For example, if direct marketing pieces were reaching customers, but newspaper advertisements weren’t, marketing dollars could be refocused during the campaign to use the marketing budget more effectively.

When the “Why” campaign of September 2006, the goal of 2,000 bundles had been far surpassed by 163 percent and 3,266 bundles were sold. An additional surprise was that even after the campaign and advertising were done, the bundles continued to sell during October, November and December. More than 100 bundles were sold each month, again surpassing the goal of 93 bundles in each of those months. 

What value do you gain from your TIA membership? 

Through our TIA membership, we are not only afforded additional opportunities for networking and product exposure through the various conferences TIA hosts annually, but we are also able to keep abreast of what is happening in the industry. As a software provider, we need to be aware of all local, state and federal regulatory issues and be on top of industry demands. Our membership helps us maintain our industry involvement.

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