TeleBright Packages TEM for Agents

TeleBright Corp. (Booth 608) this week at Channel Partners launched an agent program for and related packages of its telecom expense management software.

The companys Web-based application enables lifecycle management of services including voice, data and wireless.

TeleBright populates that application by first building an inventory of all client locations, their cost structures and telecom assets (including both internal and external equipment and services), so it can do things like amortize a switch across all the departments that use it, manage contracts and maintenance agreements with telecom service suppliers, check that financial information relating to communications costs is consistent between different data, and the like.

Agents we see as a great channel for us because all the carriers are focused on large corporate customers, but theres still a need for telecom expense management in the midmarket, which is where agents have a presence, said Dan Hannah, TeleBrights director of sales and marketing, adding that telecom expenses are now the fourth or fifth highest expense most organizations face. So agents can now offer telecom expense management in a Web-based application environment, and its quick to market for them because we do all the software for them.

There are three options for agents that want to supply the TeleBright software to business clients to help manage their voice, data and wireless communications, Hannah said. TeleBright offers big agents who want to own the client and manage its entire infrastructure the ability to license its software on a per-seat basis. Medium agents can elect to either license on a per-seat basis or to work directly with TeleBright. And smaller agents can create a referral relationship with TeleBright, said Hannah, who declined to provide commission details.

Hannah said licensing costs typically are figured as a percentage of the customer spend, but since some agents may deal only with one or two users and those users may not want to log on to the applications, TeleBright sells seat licensing, which could be one seat to 100 seats.

Also, he added, agents may have lots of clients they want to sell telecom expense management to, but some of those customers may want to log in themselves and some may not. So TeleBright offers agents a super user license that allows them to select from the license which clients they want to manage and which clients can access their data (and only their data) themselves.