Cornerstone Billing, a leading provider of billing and payment processing services to the security industry, today announced an alliance program targeting a selected group of central stations.
The program allows participating central stations to offer their current or prospective dealers affordable subscriber billing services, powered by Cornerstone’s real-time billing system and software. For smaller dealers, central stations can also set up “private labeled” billing.
“Add-on services like this help us strengthen our existing dealer relationships, as well as attract new dealers,” says Jim Osborne, owner of American Response Center in Euclid, OH. “Our central station provides excellent monitoring, but our dealers often need other services that help them succeed,” Osborne commented. “Since dealers often look to us for advice, alliances with high-quality service providers like Cornerstone can help us address a range of business issues beyond monitoring.”
Scott MacDougal, president of Cornerstone, said more central stations are interested in alliances that help strengthen their role as a dealer’s trusted advisor. “Good central stations don’t want to cut price to retain dealers,” MacDougal said. “So offering a menu of other services and products increases their perceived value to the dealer,” he said. “That improves dealer retention, and gives salespeople more arrows in their quiver beyond monitoring.”
According to MacDougal, many central stations try to offer subscriber billing in some form. “Two of our new partners in this alliance program had done some billing in-house. They found that they couldn’t do it efficiently, and billing errors were causing friction with dealers,” MacDougal said. “Rather than risk losing monitoring business due to mistakes by a low-priority billing service, they turned to us.” He said several central stations have already signed on as alliance partners.
Cornerstone offers full-service billing, including industry-specialized software and payment processing services (paper check, credit card, and ACH debit). The company also offers more limited services, such as “print and mail” and data conversion to support software upgrades. For full-service customers, the company’s service includes a real-time, online system that gives the dealer complete, day-to-day control over their customer database.
“Our real-time system is very similar to dealer access systems offered by most central stations,” MacDougal said. “Our dealers can add and cancel accounts, post payments, create service invoices, and even run their service and installation departments using our system. By handling most of the routine invoicing and payment processing chores for them, we free up many hours of staff time each month. Our dealers tend to be very focused on getting the most out of their staff, and driving account growth.”
Get a Quote or for more information about Cornerstone’s services, contact the sales department at 224-577-1197