At a Time When You Are Getting Less for More, Get More for Less
It isn’t hyperbole when one says we are living in uncertain times. The cost of living is up, unemployment is down, and to say that businesses are having trouble filling the vacancies “The Great Transition” has left behind is an understatement.
In today’s economy, your hard-earned dollars are being stretched to the max, and many companies are searching for effective ways to maintain or grow their bottom lines. But the broadband and utility companies who are searching for the technology solutions that will provide the most value can take heart – there are still a few IT companies where the goal of service is more important than stock value.
NISC is one such company. A technology cooperative run by a set of guiding principles, we are owned and governed by the Members we serve. Because we live by our values, relationships are paramount – and our Members are never treated like numbers.
Highly integrated enterprise solutions allow different areas of your business to “talk” to each other in real time, significantly increasing efficiency – a benefit for both you and your customers. It connects your staff from the front door to the field – saving you and your customers time and money.
NISC is a national leader in the development and support of enterprise technology solutions that provide advanced, integrated IT solutions for billing, accounting, mapping and staking, HR-related tasks and applications that seamlessly connect you to your customers. These features increase end-consumer satisfaction and create efficiencies that Members say have cut employee time in half – something that is especially helpful for organizations running a lean staff. One of our Members, Fred Johnson, CEO of Farmers Telecommunications Cooperative in Alabama, said it well. “We don’t have time to piece together puzzles, so to have a software suite that fundamentally takes care of everything from the dollar that comes into the door to the dollar that’s expended out in the field allows us to concentrate on running the business and allows us to operate at a level of efficiency I don’t think we could completely appreciate unless we had to do without it for a day.” He said that the level of automation from the beginning of the process to the end of the process is “phenomenal” as are the efficiencies it’s brought to the organization.
NISC’s involvement with its Members goes far beyond the sale. Because Member satisfaction is at the heart of NISC, an Account Manager is assigned to each Member to develop and maintain professional relationships and ensure our Members always have a point of contact, as well as a voice at NISC. Our Account Managers conduct personal visits to connect Members with resources, provide recommendations and ensure NISC’s solutions stay aligned with our Members’ strategic business objectives. NISC also provides ongoing product training and software updates as well as effective IT support whenever a Member needs it. A recent Member survey showed nearly 98% of respondents were either satisfied or very satisfied with their Call Center Interactions.
Saying NISC is your technology partner isn’t just lip service. Members are involved in our organization in many ways. Our Board of Directors is made up of Members, making decisions that will ultimately impact their businesses. Member Advisory Committees bring suggestions from across the enterprise for enhancements and the development of new solutions to address future Member needs.
Value, whether in enterprise solutions, service, partnership, culture or shared values, isn’t just something NISC provides, it’s part of the cooperative’s DNA and has been for more than 50 years. It’s what guides us from the development of each line of code to each support call and everything in between.
Fred said it best when he recently said, “When it comes to software and information technology, it is always appropriate to evaluate the software you are considering, but evaluating the people who provide it is far more important. That philosophy has never once failed me. In our relationship with NISC, there have been some challenges, but show me a business relationship that doesn’t. In the years I’ve been an NISC partner, we’ve had a few rocky parts, but at the end of the day, the organization has never broken or failed to keep a promise it made to me, and there are not a lot of business partners that I can say that about. You can find a lot of people who will program and support your IT operations, but who those people are is far more important than what they do. This has been, without question, one of the best business relationships that I have ever been a part of.”
That is our goal for all our Members and we strive every day to provide not only the solutions they need, but a commitment to the relationships that set us apart.