Published September 01, 2009 21:54
A year-and-a-half ago what was to become Cross Pointe Innovations was a project for a business class Mark Mason was taking while pursing his MBA. Now eight months old, the Papillion-based consulting firm launched an accessories line in April, opened a New York office in August and plans to open offices in Green Bay and Des Moines by the end of the year.
“That brings us a year ahead of schedule,” said Mason, the firm’s president. “Our growth plan over the next five years is to be up and running in 10 different markets throughout the U.S.”
Regardless of geography, customers are finding value in CPI’s consultative solutions. CPI’s four local employees help businesses find ways to save money on their wireless services.
“We did a survey with businesses and we identified that 80 percent of all businesses overspend a minimum of 20 percent month-over-month on their wireless communication service – their cell phones, data plans,” Mason said.
CPI identifies areas of overspending by working with clients’ existing vendors, and evaluating, auditing and recommending savings through those relationships, he said.
“We are not a company that goes in and says. ‘We can save you money by moving you from this vendor to that vendor,’” Mason said.
The money CPI’s solutions have saved businesses ranges from $40 a month to $3,500,” Mason said. In that range, he said, is a business with six phones – and another with more than 300 lines.
Besides cost savings, Mason said, CPI partners with businesses to help save them time and headaches.
“Carriers’ sales teams are not compensated to go out to the customer base and share with them savings; they are compensated to go out and generate new business and new revenue,” he said. “Third and fourth on the pecking order is the customer satisfaction score, customer retention, keeping the customers happy.
“The carriers want to show value to existing customer but they’re not set up to do that. The pressure is put on the salesperson to go out and get new business. So after the sale there is a gap that is created – the carrier sends the customer to online tools, to care centers, to care reps and the sales person steps out – that’s very frustrating for a business owner.”
Mason said CPI is like the “carrier police,” enforcing that the carrier’s promise is actually delivered to the customer – a win-win for business owner and carrier alike. “We’re just helping to make sure that the relationship is positive,” he said.
While earning his MBA, Mason worked at Verizon Wireless as a data solutions manager. Before that, he worked for Nextel partners – starting as a salesperson in 2001 and eventually working his way up to district general manager, overseeing sales and operations for Nextel in a four-state area.
“Working with basically three different carriers – Nextel, Sprint and Verizon – and the roles I was in, gave me a real strong understanding of the carriers’ perspective when it comes to attaining new business customers,” Mason said. “On the flipside, partnering with new business owners in developing sales teams, I also saw the customers’ perspective – what it was they were looking for from the carrier.”
Responding to customer wants was the foundation of the business and when customers wanted affordable accessories, CPI delivered by offering a virtual inventory in April – more than a year-and-a-half ahead of the company’s plans to roll out this offering. “Right now a lot of carriers give away free phones, but they make you buy the accessories, so the mark-up is ugly,” Mason said. “We partnered with a distributor to basically get these accessories at a greatly reduced cost to our customer base.”
With such an emphasis on saving, from dollars and cents to minutes spend on the phone trying to resolve and issue with the carrier, Mason said the economy has been more friend than foe. “Some of our family members laughed at us for wanting to start our own business during these economic times; they said, ‘Why would you want to leave corporate America now to start your own business?’ but the economy has actually been our friend because people are looking for ways to trim the fat off their expenses,” he said. “Unfortunately, a lot of people are now unemployed because that’s how companies have cut back – that’s the sad story. “A few businesses have brought in other types of consulting firms to evaluate payroll, shipping and transportation buy nobody has come in looking at what we’re looking at, from that perspective.”
The savings CPI finds in the telecommunications realm is more significant than hard numbers convey, Mason said. “The savings we can identify for a company can be the equivalent of a full-time employee over a period of time, or two or three part-time employees, so some people could keep their jobs,” he said.