AT&T Product Center: An RQ4 Success Story

A few months ago, I sat down and interviewed Mark Butler and Tony Saraceni, the president and vice president of AT&T Product Center, one of our RQ4 clients based in Long Island, N.Y.

We had a good conversation about lessons they’ve learned in running their wireless retail business, not to mention the 20-plus years they’ve worked in retail.

**To read the complete case study I put together about AT&T Product Center, you can go to the RQ Case Studies section of our website.

One of the most interesting parts of the interview was about scalability and how, for Mark and Tony, it was difficult to get over the 5-location hump. That was until they brought RQ4 in to help manage their business.

“RQ4 enabled us to take the stores that we had and really make the number of locations more profitable, by looking at all the different metrics and different items that could produce profit for us,” says Mark.

Mark and Tony took a new approach with RQ4: They began to identify where they were making the most profit, on what phones, with which add-on features, and by which salespeople. And they tweaked operations according to what was most profitable.

When the profit-per-door went up sufficiently across the chain, it was time to open another location. They kept going with this model and now, they operate 19 locations in New York and New Jersey, with annual revenues of over $16 million.

Below is a summary of the AT&T Product Center case study. Make sure to check it out in its entirety.

AT&T Product Center at a glance:

• Mark Butler and Tony Saraceni have been in the mobile communications business for over 20 years, since the days of carphones.
• They began invoicing and tracking inventory manually, eventually moving on to third-party retail management software.
• 2007: Using a different software solution, their growth reached a 5-location plateau.
• 2011: Since adopting RQ4 in late 2007, AT&T Product Center has grown to 19 locations in N.Y. and N.J. with annual revenues of over $16 million.
• RQ4 offered a more scalable way of looking at growth: increasing profit-per-door, streamlining management processes and improving efficiency across the chain.
• RQ4 has improved employee accountability: AT&T Product Center’s product loss is virtually nonexistent.
• Using RQ4​’s BI module, management ranks employee performance daily – this is a huge performance motivator for staff.
• RQ4 has also enabled AT&T Product Center to improve its relationships with its customers and its carrier.
• The iQmetrix Wireless Summit is an annual highlight for Mark, Tony and their staff, both for networking and sharing best practices.