Financial Transformation in Broadband - ETI
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October 4, 2022

Financial Transformation in Broadband

Peter Pizzutillo
Thank you for joining us today. I like to welcome this special guest, Brandon Ogilvie. He’s the CFO of all points broadband. Brendan, thanks for joining our conversation today about financial transformation.

Brandon Ogilvie
Thank you. Happy to be here.

Peter Pizzutillo
We’re gonna dig in a little bit about what you and all points are dealing with in today’s marketplace, but before we get started, we are really helpful to just kind of unpack what or who all points broadband is, and then we can get a little bit into who you are and why you joined.

Brandon Ogilvie
Certainly. So, all points broadband was formed in 2014 with the mission of delivering high-quality broadband Internet access to unserved and underserved people living in rural markets.

Brandon Ogilvie
And during the first five or six years of the company’s existence, the company built a very stable, robust platform and service in the Mid-Atlantic region, serving primarily in Virginia, and Kentucky with some customers in West Virginia and Maryland as well as using predominantly fixed wireless technology to deliver.

Brandon Ogilvie
Internet date service to our customers.

Peter Pizzutillo
No, that’s great. And you’ve joined all points broadband in the last 18 months, and you have an interesting background. So, what is it that drew you back into the infrastructure and broadband space, and specifically what’s the opportunity that you saw with all points?

Brandon Ogilvie
Yeah. So as by way of background, I started my career originally undergrad as a civil engineer, so I always have been attracted to infrastructure projects.

Brandon Ogilvie
Uh did return to get my MBA about midway through my career, and after that, I entered the renewable energy industry. And about the 2008-time frame where I worked for about eight years on large infrastructure projects. But on the finance side and really have a passion for those infrastructure projects, I’ve switched industries in the 2016-time frame, but this opportunity with all points came along in 2021 and I jumped on it. I really liked what they were doing.

Brandon Ogilvie
It appealed to my personal preference for large infrastructure projects and I happen to know some of the original founders and principals of the firm. And so, it was overall a good fit for me when I decided to join last year.

Peter Pizzutillo
Yeah. And we hear that a lot these days of folks coming and being drawn to this kind of mission-driven work to really help the underserved and unserved space and bring those talents from other markets into this space. So, appreciate that with that, there’s a lot going on, right? So, here’s what we’re seeing in the marketplace there are really aggressive schedules to build out and get service to these markets and communities that lack have been lacking for many years. But with that, what we’re seeing is network operators come into the market.

Peter Pizzutillo
With ideas about how do you do this with reduced focus on reducing operation expense, right? Trying to find ways to build sustainable, affordable capabilities that last ten 20-30 years.

Peter Pizzutillo
As well as focusing on reducing complexity, be it on the IT system side as well as on the business process and operational side, looking at ways to consolidate processes, and adopt standards so that you have the efficiencies and the ability to do more with less, right? And I know you guys have kind of embodied some of those concepts, but right, you know what I’d like to start with is your aggressive plans to grow and transform. Can you give us a little bit of an update of kind of where you guys are and kind of next steps?

Brandon Ogilvie
Certainly. So, beginning several years ago, even before COVID occurred, the Commonwealth of Virginia put in place several pieces of legislation to ultimately design to close that digital divide, where the rural markets that are unserved and underserved. Virginia created several special programs to help businesses, such as Arrows partner with the local counties and municipalities, to be able to fund. Wireline improvement. So, wire line-based broadband which is predominantly fiber optic-based broadband.

So, beginning in 2019 we were working with several localities, and then of course COVID hit and that has just accelerated and expanded the number of resources that the federal government and the state governments have made available in this space. But we had started that transition and focused on it.

On pivoting from a fixed wireless operation to a fiber operation back in 2019. Fast forward to now the amount of growth that we anticipate is significantly larger than what we had first envisioned would have been feasible back in 2019 before this additional funding was made available through the American Rescue plan and more recently beat.

Brandon Ogilvie
That growth caused us to then look internally at our own systems and our infrastructure and our business processes. And when we evaluated what we had put together on the fixed wireless side, while we’re using an industry-standard billing platform and an industry-standard accounting ERP system, they didn’t talk to one another and in the billing platform, it really focused on billing and had some. Ticketing and field dispatch capabilities, but we as a company had developed several homegrown solutions kinds of wrapped around these systems to really enable our field personnel with information on their cellular devices are out there doing home installs or working on a radio tower to repair it.

Peter Pizzutillo
Right.

Brandon Ogilvie
As we’re looking ahead to. What’s coming down the pipe with our pivot and focus now on these fiber rural fiber deployments, the IT became pretty apparent to us that the scale of growth meant that we wanted to. We needed to focus on that growth and not on expanding and continuing to develop these homegrown internal systems to support scaling up the enterprise. And so that led to us searching back in mid-2021, starting to search for an out-of-the-box solution that could handle our range of needs from start to finish.

Peter Pizzutillo
No, it’s helpful. You’re good.

Brandon Ogilvie
Umm.

Peter Pizzutillo
So kind of where is you on that adoption? I know you’ve been a customer of ours since January. You know, taking that platform approach. But you guys have done it in kind of a sequential way. I mean, so you kind of can you give us a timeline of the adoption that you guys have taken and where you see going?

Brandon Ogilvie
Yeah, certainly. So, we started the search in the spring of 2021. We evaluated about half a dozen platforms and each platform has its strengths and weaknesses. There are several good platforms out there. What attracted us to the ETI solution was that it was based on Microsoft Dynamics or architecture. The hosting was provided by Microsoft, and it included not just your classic OSS, and BSS functionality, but it also included.

Brandon Ogilvie
The full ERP solution that Microsoft provides is called Business Central, which is its middle market accounting ERP system. To buy late summer, we made the decision to engage with ETI on a full soup to nuts implementation. Not just possess but also field service modules and marketing modules. Uh worked with ETI and integrated with our preferred merchant processor and on the accounting system. With this we uh timed it so that. We engage with the ETI and by September, and October time frame by January we were live on the ERP system in Microsoft Business Central. So, we rolled out first and foremost with the accounting software. Uh, it, in part timed to match our fiscal year-end.

Peter Pizzutillo
Ok

Brandon Ogilvie
Will be launched with that component of it because we really wanted to have all the building boxes in place so that once the various modules within the OSS BSS are billing and field service came up, they had a place automatically. Synchronize and record the transactions and the financial transactions that are occurring. On the OSS BSS side, to be able to report it in the accounting system automatically on day one of bringing up those systems.

Peter Pizzutillo
Yeah. No, that’s great. And you mentioned a couple of things. So, payment processing, you guys have some interesting thoughts on your processing. What, are the things that you think about in terms of kind of where current and future payments? Processing capabilities are. Right now, in this market.

Brandon Ogilvie
The so when we first started working with ETI, there were a couple of payment processors at ETI, had been working with prior to us coming along. What we’re finding in this space, is that there’s gonna be a lot of project finance involved, which means working with banks as lenders. Uh, those lenders in the project finance space.

Brandon Ogilvie
They often will also stipulate that you will use them for treasury services. You will use them for your merchant processing services, and so in some discussions with the ETI and bringing them up to speed on what was happening and evolving in the project finance space.

Peter Pizzutillo
Right.

Brandon Ogilvie
Not the merchant processing processor relationship.

Peter Pizzutillo
Right.

Brandon Ogilvie
In particular, because it’s part of a broader banking relationship that ETI clients have. And so with that. I am working with ETI personnel and senior management. They went through the review and evaluation and they and they recognized that this was probably going to be a need and even though represented in architecture change for them, they proceeded with implementing this change and I believe now that the solution that has been implemented gives ETI the flexibility to integrate with basically most any

Peter Pizzutillo
Right. So, you’re coming up on about a year of your decision process, right? So, it’s been a, I’m sure, crazy journey with highs and lows. You know, what are some of the key lessons learned that you could share with our listeners?

Brandon Ogilvie
Well, I think the sequencing of bringing up the accounting system first was a strong benefit. They’re there because of the data that’s passed back and forth. I think early in the process. A valuable exercise is to understand those relationships and to work with ETI to really understand the relationships between each of the components and modules and how they’re ultimately going to interact. So, whether it’s interacting in terms of how GL accounts are passed back and forth or items in inventory codes are passed back and forth, coming up with a standardized structure and approach early on can save a lot of redos or restarts down the road.

Peter Pizzutillo
And or nonfinancial leadership that may be listening to this trying to help them understand, to help guide their finance teams. You know you know what, what should folks start doing now? You know, it’s kind of late fall you got your end to closed kind of things in terms of helping them understand the system evaluation. What can they start doing tomorrow to kind of start moving in this direction and need suggestions?

Brandon Ogilvie
I mean, eat, are you asking from the standpoint of if someone out there is evaluating the system for the first time?

Peter Pizzutillo
Yeah. So, you know you’re, you’re the lazy liaison to the CEO and to the board and those folks and in your role. What if, if somebody knew these three things that would make your life easier? What would that look like?

Brandon Ogilvie
Yeah. So, this type of solution affects every department within the company.

Peter Pizzutillo
Right.

Brandon Ogilvie
Getting stakeholder involvement by creating a multidiscipline interdepartmental team of internal personnel who represent each department but who are also influencers and drivers in each area, is critical because they’re anytime you overhaul your back-office systems like this, you’re also overhauling all your business processes and how those human beings interact with those systems, and how they go about doing their day-to-day business. And so getting in place at. A multi-disciplined interdepartmental team is key to mapping out the business process flows of what you do today and then working with ETI, and I found that working with the ETI team, there are a lot of smart, passionate, hard-working individuals. They’ve taken business process flows of hours, looked at them and

Brandon Ogilvie
Using our solution, this is how we recommend you tweak your flow, and you update your flow to get the maximum utility out of the system, which is processing efficiency, and accuracy, minimizing the amount of human-machine interfaces and automating as much as possible a lot of the steps within these processes which ultimately lead to a better result.

Brandon Ogilvie
Or a better customer experience.

Brandon Ogilvie
So I would recommend pulling together and getting those processes and then having that dialogue with ETI to really understand how the environment that they set up for you is going to meet the needs of the organization and ultimately the customers.

Peter Pizzutillo
No, that’s great. That’s very helpful. I wanted to thank you. I know we’re out of time, but it really appreciates it’s been an enjoyment working with you guys the for the last 12 months. Looking forward to maybe getting you back and the year’s time and kind of figuring out where you guys are and keep sharing and building that community. So, thank you for your time, Brent.

Brandon Ogilvie
Oh, you’re very welcome, Pete. Thank you.