Virginia IT Company Improves Billing Accuracy by 95%

Amy Rutt was tired of slogging her way through Microsoft’s complicated billing and licensing models. So when she found out that SherWeb could simplify the process, she made the switch.

It was a wise move. Since joining SherWeb’s Partners First program 2 years ago, Ciracom Cloud has improved its billing accuracy by an impressive 95%. Ciracom, a Virginia-based IT company, sells a number of Microsoft products, including Exchange and Office 365.

Rutt is the company’s founder and president. She said Ciracom had been selling Hosted Exchange for about 11 years when she got a call from one of SherWeb’s Account Managers. She said the information he provided seemed like a good solution to the billing problems she was having with Exchange.

“With hosted Exchange, you’re using a very different licensing model, rather antiquated. It’s actually a billing in arrears and so you’re always behind on getting your revenue from your customers. In fact, we were fronting our customers; their cash flow.“

Recouping Costs is Difficult

Since Microsoft operates on an annual billing system, resellers must estimate the number of product licenses they’ll need over the next 12 months and pay Microsoft the required amount. The challenge for resellers is to recoup the money they’ve invested in Microsoft licenses from their clients. Rutt said because SherWeb bills its clients in real time, she no longer has this problem. Nor does she have to spend countless hours explaining to her clients how the system works.

“Let’s say I want to take a customer from (Office 365) Business Essentials to Business Premium. You can now do that within a matter of a few minutes. It’s really taken the hassle out of license management for us. Our lines of business and our process fees are more profitable because of that. With hosted Microsoft Exchange, we spent a ton of time explaining the billing to people. Because of SherWeb, our billing accuracy for managing Microsoft licenses has improved by about 95%.“

Traditional Distributors Just as Tough

Rutt said she had similar problems trying to get license quotes from a number of traditional distributors she dealt with because they also had to go through Microsoft channels.

“When you needed to size up the opportunity and get the licenses, it would take a lot of effort to get the quote because those folks (the distributors) are going to put those license requests through Microsoft and that always gets clogged. And once we got those licenses, it could take between 8 and 24 hours to make them active. And we just couldn’t wait that long.“

Couldn’t Hit Microsoft’s Radar

Trying to get migration support from Microsoft was also difficult. Rutt said because many of Ciracom’s clients had less than 500 employees, the company wasn’t buying enough product licenses to attract Microsoft’s attention.

“We had to figure out migration on our own. We tried, but we just couldn’t hit Microsoft’s radar. Sherweb has made that migration easier for us and quicker. We work with your team and get scheduled and we’re kept in the loop the entire time. As far as the project management and the level of effort and status goes, it’s very seamless for us.“

Rutt said everyone at SherWeb has worked very hard to make the partnership a success. The result? Ciracom’s staff has more time to help its clients.

“Our goal is to maximize investment in our team and I think that SherWeb’s technology has saved us a great deal of time so our customer gets a much more robust project management experience.“

Want to learn more about selling Office 365 with SherWeb? Watch this video to find out how you can go to market in less than 10 minutes!