‘LoudnClear’ is a brand created by IT support firm Ayone Computers as part of a strategic move to resell telecom services. LoudnClear uses multiple carriers, including Vibe Communications for internet and 2Talk and Voyager for phones.
“We were frustrated with the poor service our IT support customers were getting from large telcos,” says LoudnClear Managing Director Greg Barber, who founded Ayone Computers.
“We thought we could provide better IT support if we took control of telco services – and now we do. We can add new phone lines in five minutes. It’s made our IT support service offering more flexible and responsive. We’re attracting new customers and increasing their loyalty.”
Businesses once dealt with three companies for IT, phones and PABXs, he says, but now want a single point of contact for ‘all technical stuff’ including PCs, servers and phone systems.
“They want a single bill. They want one support call for anything that goes wrong,” Greg Barber says.
While its business strategy was on the money, LoudnClear found telecom billing hard work until it subscribed to Datagate. It now uses Datagate to bill internet services, phone lines and call minutes.
“Datagate has cut our billing time from over 12 hours per month to one hour,” Greg Barber says.
“We can get on with more useful stuff and we don’t have to double check everything. The ability to on-board and bill any number of customers gives us unlimited head room for growth. We were reaching our growth limit due to the length of time it was taking us to on-board and bill each customer.”
LoudnClear is using Datagate to make sure growth is profitable.
“Datagate cross checks what we sell against what we buy,” Greg Barber says.
“Datagate looks at each line and every minute, then ascribes it to the correct bill. If there’s no phone number to send it to, it reports it as an error. This is at the heart of our profit and loss. We buy lines and minutes and resell them – we need to make sure we’re reselling all we buy. We’ve previously tried to find this out manually, which has been difficult as we get 25 pages of bills from just one supplier.”
Datagate exports LoudnClear’s bills into its Xero accounting system. Invoices sent out of Datagate integrate with General Ledger. Greg Barber says he’s happy with the way Datagate works.
“During implementation Datagate worked with our suppliers to sort out the necessary data feeds. They know them and that made the implementation simpler for me. Our bills look professional and they are accurate. We’ve made our bills look similar to the large telcos so people find them familiar and easy to read.
“Datagate staff are friendly and responsive but we don’t need much support. Once Datagate’s up and running it’s pretty straightforward.”
