CRN Exclusive: Intelisys To Right Commissions Errors For Partners Through New Precision Payment Program

Intelisys is making sure partners get paid.

The Petaluma, Calif.-based master agent on Wednesday unveiled its Precision Payment Program, an initiative focused on uncovering mistakes that carriers and vendors make when paying out partners on their monthly commission statements.

Payment mistakes are an unfortunate, yet all too often occurrence for the channel. In fact, Intelisys has uncovered several egregious commission errors worth north of $100,000 this year alone, Brian Leonard, director of marketing for Intelisys, told CRN.

[Related: CRN Exclusive: Intelisys Nabs Former Cloud Provider Exec As New Southwest Region Channel Manager]

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"There's a lot of inefficiencies between suppliers and partners in this industry. If there wasn't, [master agents] wouldn't be here," he said.

Intelisys has always had a process in place for dealing with commission errors, Leonard said, but the new program will help the master agent be more "proactive" on behalf of its agent partners. Prior to the Precision Payment Program, Intelisys would help process payments between suppliers and sales partners. If a sales partner found an error and reached out to Intelisys, the master agent would intervene and reach out to the supplier to correct the error, Leonard said.

"Now, we can look for and find those errors and discrepancies as opposed to waiting for sales partners to find them," he said.

The new program will involve a dedicated Proactive Partner Solutions team focused on analyzing commission payments. Once a sales partner signs up for the program and provides Intelisys with their order information with a supplier, Intelisys will put their payments through a "five-step process" to ensure partners are being paid the correct amount, on-time, he said. Sales partners are then alerted to any discrepancies through their My Intelisys portal.

Intelisys has already uncovered and subsequently secured several large, incorrect commissions payouts to partners this year. The master agent discovered a mistake worth $150,000 for one partner, $98,000 for another partner, and has discovered multiple mistakes in the $40,000-$50,000 range for solution providers in 2017, the company told CRN.

Master agents, as opposed to smaller shops and one-man telecom agent organizations, are more likely to get the attention of carriers to right payment wrongs, Leonard said.

"That's the value for a partner in going with a master agent or distributor," he said. "We'll fight with the supplier partner to retrieve that money for the sales partner."