Telarus Unveils Order Status Tool To' Give Partners Their Time Back'

Master agent Telarus revealed its latest resource for its partners, a tool that takes the frustration out of waiting for order status information for partners, and in turn, their end customers.

The latest tool is called MoonRize, and it provides order status visibility for partners on data, voice and cloud orders they submit on behalf of their clients. Telarus' co-founders, Adam Edwards and Patrick Oborn, took to the stage to unveil MoonRize during its sixth annual partner summit on Wednesday morning.

The tool solves a problem that solution provider partners are all too familiar with: customers asking about the status of their order but partners not having the information readily available, Oborn told CRN.

[Related: Q&A: New Telarus Channel Manager Vows To Bring On More Partners, Evangelize SD-WAN And UCaaS]

"This technology isn't really about a thing. It's about giving partners their time back," Oborn said of MoonRize.

Oborn said that upon surveying its partner base, Sandy, Utah-based Telarus learned that agents spend about 30 percent of their time retrieving and relaying order status information to customers. Partners have to reach out to their master agent or the carrier directly to answer the question, which takes up more of their valuable time that could be spent on marketing efforts or prospecting.

"If we do 1,200 orders a month with [one carrier], and each order has 10 status points, that's 1.2 million order status requests," Oborn said. "We knew this would make our partners happy, their customers happy, and it would eliminate a third of their day that they can fill up with income-producing activities."

With MoonRize, partners will have more transparency into their orders and the suppliers they sourced the services from, which will give end customers more confidence in their partners, too, he said.

For its part, Telarus said it would "still be here to help" partners, but that partners will be able to consume order information on their own after more suppliers are added to MoonRize. Every day at midnight, the app will automatically pull the most recent order statuses from the carriers – the exact same status information a partner would receive if they got someone on the phone, Oborn said.

The first providers that are participating in the beta version of MoonRize are Comcast Business; ACC Business; a division of AT&T; and AireSpring. Telarus ranked its providers in terms of the amount of business that is done through partners with these suppliers, and that’s the order Telarus will use to manually enter the carriers into MoonRize.

Telarus estimates that MoonRize will provide daily reporting on more than 80 percent of all orders submitted to Telarus by the end of 2017, a lofty, but worthwhile goal, Oborn said.

MoonRize is available today as an app on iPhone and Android devices, and through Telarus' web-based partner portal, agent.telarus.com.

At the annual Partner Summit last year, Telarus revealed updates to its Web-based GeoQuote tool. The addition of PBX quoting capabilities lets partners price out multiple unified communications offerings for customers in less than a minute, according to the master agent.