Customer Stories / Software & Internet / United States
Better Together: Total Expert Increases Efficiency and Gains Momentum Using AWS Marketplace
Overview | Opportunity | Solution | Outcome
Streamlined billing
to reduce backend process time
Lowered the overall cost
of procuring SaaS to support business strategy
Supported entry
into new market
Overview
Total Expert, the customer engagement platform purpose-built for modern financial institutions recognized the need to be nimble as it sought to reach new markets. It has made AWS Marketplace an integral part of its overall business strategy—as an Amazon Web Services (AWS) customer and Independent Software Seller (ISV). Building on AWS helps Total Expert to achieve faster procurement and internal process alignment while creating a new growth channel.
Opportunity | Commercializing Customer Experience in the Financial Services Industry
Minneapolis-based customer engagement software provider Total Expert, an AWS Partner, provides a purpose-built platform for modern financial institutions that combines sales and marketing activities into one platform. By leveraging key customer data with intelligent marketing automation, financial institutions can stay ahead of lifelong customer relationships.
The organization has historically held a strong position in the mortgage market. In 2022, its platform powered more than 2.1M mortgage loans—36% of the market. Total Expert has experienced tremendous growth by partnering with leading banks, credit unions, and insurance companies to engage new and past customers, deepen relationships, and ultimately create customers for life.
To achieve that growth, Patrick Hanley, VP of Partner Ecosystems, knew Total Expert would be challenged to build business value from both ends. It would have to expand revenue by building pipeline and closing deals faster, while simultaneously creating greater operational efficiency. Friction in the software procurement process can have a significant negative impact on efficiency and an organization’s ability to maximize margins. Based on his experience, he knew that AWS Marketplace would remove that friction and accelerate Total Expert’s launch into new verticals.
SaaS is an integral part of Total Expert’s business strategy. We don’t want to build things we can buy. We want to spend our time working on things that drive success for our customers and provide us with new growth opportunities—that’s what partnering with AWS Marketplace gets us.”
Andy Fleener
Director of Platform Technology, Total Expert
Solution | Capture more Value by Streamlining Procurement and Maximizing Discounts
One of the ways in which Total Expert could gain agility while reducing cost was to increase its focus on procurement. AWS Marketplace private offers helped the team to streamline procurement with cost-effective and flexible terms and simplified deployment. On the back side, consolidated billing increased the efficiency of budgeting and management. The technical expertise of AWS personnel was also critical to the project’s success.
IT infrastructures costs are undoubtedly the highest expense for any software company. So, when Total Expert needs a new tool, their first question is whether it can be procured through AWS Marketplace. “We live and run all our workloads on AWS,” says Fleener. “Looking to increase the percentage of software we procure on AWS Marketplace provides us with cost savings. It’s a good strategy for us, and we’ve realized that other companies are doing the same.”
Total Expert continues to expand its SaaS (Software as a Service) portfolio in AWS Marketplace. It's so easy to use, says Fleener, that after negotiating a solution with Sisense, accepting a private offer was “two clicks and we were done.” Other software the team procured in AWS Marketplace includes SaaS solutions from PagerDuty, GitLab, and Freshworks. It also procured ZoomInfo as its go-to for business intelligence and prospecting, a homerun for both function and efficiency. ZoomInfo outperformed a legacy vendor giving them more value at a lower cost.
“Our focus on SaaS procurement is critical to our success. If we can get more value and be more effective about the way we negotiate for those solutions, we can build a better business case for the tools we use,” says Fleener. “AWS Marketplace makes that business case easier to sell internally.”
Outcome | Achieve Growth and Increase Customer Value
Hanley believes AWS Marketplace will also provide natural synergy in supporting its go-to-market strategy in new verticals. “Marketplaces in general are a huge growth area, and we know that there are many buyers who won’t transact without them,” he says.
Total Expert’s success as they launch into these new markets depends on multiple benefits provided by AWS Marketplace—including faster implementation, ease of procurement, and simplified billing. Listing its SaaS solution on AWS Marketplace was easy. The company was up and live in just over three months, ready to streamline the path for Total Expert customers to find and procure the solution.
Because of the high adoption of AWS and the growing interest in marketplaces in this tight economy, ease of procurement benefits Total Expert and its customers. “Speed to market is critical to ROI. Being able to leverage advantages like limited procurement cycle times gets our tools in the hands of those that need them more quickly,” says Hanley. “That in turn helps them to justify why they are committing to investment in our tools.”
For Total Expert, transacting as an ISV on AWS Marketplace continues to serve up the coveted “Win-Win”. It fits the company’s vision about how to spend money effectively, and how to add new tools or add value to existing solutions to help customers get more out of them. These advantages and the streamlined overall experience are creating significant opportunity for Total Expert and its customers.
About Total Expert
Total Expert is a purpose-built CRM and customer engagement platform that unifies data, marketing, sales, and compliance solutions to enable financial institutions to deliver a better customer experience.
AWS Services Used
AWS Marketplace
AWS Marketplace is a curated digital catalog enabling customers to quickly find, test, buy, deploy, and manage the third-party software, data, and professional services necessary to build solutions and run their business. Procurement teams leverage AWS Marketplace to accelerate innovation and enable cloud users to deploy solutions rapidly and securely, while reducing total cost of ownership and improving operational oversight.
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