Ask the Experts about Encore Care (Webinar Recording)
TRANSCRIPT
Nicole: Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our Encore Care Unlimited Ask the Experts Q&A panel with Encore Business Solutions. My name is Nicole Chorney. And I’m an Account Executive with Encore. And I’m gonna be your host for today’s webinar. With me, I have three experts who are gonna be answering some of the core questions that we receive from clients on a daily basis about our unlimited package.
So to start, I’m just gonna give you a brief introduction of our experts here. So we have Melissa Andrus who is our client support services practice lead. She has 20 years experience with ERP and 10 years of vast experience here at Encore specifically. She’s also held roles here at Encore that include customer sales manager and Dynamics GP practice lead. And she currently leads our support practice where her main focus is Encore Care.
Next, we have Lexi Lindway. Lexi is a relationship officer here with Encore. Lexi along with our other relationship officer are responsible for logging and dispatching all incoming cases and any questions for Encore clients. So she has six years experience working in Microsoft CRM as both a power user and a system administrator.
Our final expert with us today is Tiffany Newton. She is an account executive with us as well. And she manages several clients here at Encore. So she’s kind of their main point of contact when any of her clients have care questions. And she also organizes their enrollments into the program. So her background is actually in organizational psychology. And she has been with Encore for over two years now.
So just kind of to get started, we are going to do a quick poll just to kind of gauge how familiar everyone is with our Encore Care Unlimited package. So you should see a pop-up window. And you’re gonna have about 20 seconds to respond to that poll. Okay.
Okay. So we can see that everybody has voted. And most of you feel that you’re somewhat familiar. So we’re hoping that by the end of this webinar today, we’re gonna be changing that to very familiar so that you guys feel that when you’re making a decision on Encore Care, you’re fully educated. So we’re gonna start by just asking some of our most popular questions that we receive about our Encore Care Unlimited program. So we’re gonna start with Melissa. Melissa, can you start off and just tell us a little bit about what Encore Care is?
Melissa: Oh, I certainly can, Nicole. To start, Encore really wanted to reimagine how we wanted to support our clients today and focus on how our clients want and needed to be supported. Encore Care really focuses on quality support processes and support programs that fit the needs of our clients. We wanted to build a more proactive and collaborative approach to support where we continually provide the resources, tools, and knowledge. So you and your users can become self-sufficient with your system, yet give you the comfort of an extended team should you need help.
Encore Care is our commitment to not just supporting you on the applications and technologies used in your business, but focus on the additional demands of your business where we can help alleviate some activities through onboarding services, limit potential downtime, and help grow your solution. That’s really why we developed Encore Care Unlimited.
Nicole: Great. Thank you. So really Encore Care is just a predictable and budget-friendly way to access support that really fits your needs, while at the same time really making you more self-sufficient with your solution at the same time. Thanks, Melissa. Can you talk a bit about what’s included in Encore Care Unlimited?
Melissa: Sure. So let me start by telling you a little bit about the program. It’s a per register user fee program which is an all-encompassing offering that provides, like I mentioned, the comfort of an extended team who not only supports your systems but they can participate in corporate onboarding processes. They can give you insight into user demands, and needs, as well as proactively evaluate your supporting technology. As well, we can critique in your future strategies and growth of your solutions.
With that, why don’t we just run through this chart that details out the features of the unlimited program? Our break-fix and application guidance are obviously our most popular features. And it provides you the users with the help they need when they encounter a problem in their system or just need a bit of guidance on how to use the application, so finding a feature function.
From there, we have a number of features to work with clients on onboarding new users where we offer new user orientation training, workstation installs, and user setups. This is where our experts can work with you or your team, to ensure your newest team members are set to begin their new role within your company by making sure they have the applications installed on their workstation. Security is set up based on their role, functions that they need to do their job. And it’s ensuring they have the basic understanding of the systems as they start this new role.
In addition, we do offer a five-point quarterly system health check. It’s basically a condensed version of our managed services offering. And it’s a proactive approach to ensuring your technology that supports those applications are in working order, so essentially just mitigating any potential downtime or data loss. And those checks point out any potential issues and suggested actions to complete before they really become a problem.
Our next feature is the cloud consult, which is the beginning steps to understand how your business can benefit from cloud computing or how you should take advantage of the cloud to enhance your business operations. And with all those features, I’ve discovered we then provide a quarterly usage report that you can review with your account manager where you can begin assessing your users, understanding their needs and demands, see areas that may require more focus like additional training, it really gives you a great bird’s eye view of any trends with your systems and your users, and allows you to course-correct or use as a tool and feature you use on system planning.
And lastly, if your company is growing, and expanding, and require additional users or new functions or features that require additional software as part of Encore Care Unlimited, you may qualify for a 5% software discount. And for those of you using Dynamics GP as their main solution, we do offer two extended offerings when you sign up for Encore Care Unlimited where you can subscribe for two years. And you can include your upgrade for an additional fee, or you can apply it to Canadian payroll for an additional fee where we’ll complete your mid and year-end tax updates. So as I mentioned, there are a ton of great benefits with your Encore Care Unlimited program that you guys could take advantage of.
Nicole: Great. So basically to summarize, you get things like break-fix application, user guidance, new user orientation training, things like workstation installs, new user setup, system health checks, cloud consultations, potential software discounts, and usage report to make sure that you’re getting the value out of your plan. Thanks, Melissa. Tiffany, can you tell us who could make use of something like Encore Care?
Tiffany: That’s a great question, Nicole. Actually, anyone who is currently either a Dynamics GP, NAV, or Dynamics 365, or CRM customer can use Encore Care Unlimited. Our aim is to give every one of our clients an equal opportunity to the benefits that come with this unlimited offering. So whether you’re a small, medium, or large organization, we want your end users of your ERP and CRM systems to feel like they can reach out whenever they feel the need without hesitation.
Within your organization, you give your users permission on whether they can reach out to the care department. So some organizations choose to have one to two main contacts internally for cases to be submitted through, whereas others allow all their ERP and CRM users to reach out to us on a per needs basis individually. You control this. It’s up to you as an organization.
Nicole: Right. So basically pretty much whoever has permission to access Encore Care is gonna be able to log request with us. How much is Encore Care?
Tiffany: Sure. So this is a question that might be easier to break down based on the product we’re supporting. So to start, if you’re a Dynamics GP, or NAV, or Dynamics 365 client, then you would fall under the unlimited support offering that costs between $50 to $55 per full user per month. This is a variable cost. It’s just due to whether you decide to pay annually or monthly as shown on the screen. There’s also the other popular add-on options that Melissa talked about as well already. So that includes the tax table update option and the upgrade option.
Next, if you’re a Dynamics 365 or CRM customer, then you’re looking at a price range of between $15 to $16.50 per user per month. Again, this is dependent whether you choose to pay monthly or annually. And if you have any other questions about pricing especially when it comes to the upgrade options or the payroll options, please do reach out to your account manager to review those together.
Nicole: Thanks, Tiffany. So basically the price is dependent on which solution you’re using and then depending on that there’s different tiers where you would choose if you want to include upgrades or tax table updates. So Lexi, how do you use Encore Care?
Lexi: Well, there are three easy ways for our clients to contact us and use Encore Care. The first is simply emailing a short description of the question or the issue to care@encorebusiness.com. This method is great because you are able to include any screenshots of the errors or the issues you are seeing. Clients can also call our support line at 888.898.4330, which rings directly to myself or the other relationship officer, Chris Jeffrey. Our support hours are Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m., 7 p.m. Central Standard or 6:30 a.m. to 5:00 Pacific. So if clients call outside of that time frame, they’re more than welcome to leave a voicemail and describe their support requests.
Lastly, clients can also connect with us through our website and submit a support request just by going to our home page and clicking support in the top-right corner. After we receive your email or phone call, we log that case in our system. And then you will receive a confirmation email, or whomever is the contact on the case will receive the confirmation email. This email has all the information you need to reference your case including the priority level and the case title when speaking about your case to one of our experienced support specialists.
As your case is worked on, you will collaborate one on one with one of our certified solution specialists who will provide direction and guidance in solving your issue whether through email, phone, or direct screen share. After your question or issue is resolved, Encore will resolve the case and keep record of it on your account in case for historical referencing or for future solutioning. And then these cases are going to appear on your quarterly usage report that we’ve discussed earlier by Melissa to give you an overview of what type of support requests your team is submitting.
Nicole: Great. Thanks, Lexi. So there’s a quite a few options on how to reach us for supports. If you’re more somebody who likes to pick up the telephone and give us a call or somebody who prefers to send a quick email, there’s a couple different options of how you can access that. So Tiffany, Encore Care has been out for quite a while now, why are we seeing Encore Care clients renewing their subscriptions?
Tiffany: Thanks, Nicole. So we’re coming up to our third year of offering Encore Care Unlimited. And we’re now getting to see our clients who have made use and enjoy the ease of this offering. And they’re continuing to make use of it. I actually have a client who has been using Encore Care Unlimited. They’re now about to finish up their second year of being on it. So they love and appreciate the ability to just reach out when they want to or need to without having to, you know, go get approval for the time or worry about how much time they’re spending with us. For them, it’s a dependable and predictable renewal, which allows them peace of mind.
I actually have another client of mine that is coming up to start their second year of Encore Care Unlimited. This client not only makes use of the unlimited support guidance and coaching, but they’re making great use of the new user onboarding training. They’re a larger organization. And it’s helpful for them to have the step of setting up a new user and giving the new user an introduction to the system taken care of. So whether you’re a small, medium, or large business, it’s providing our clients relief to their management’s time spent on the initial training and setup.
We do understand that every organization is different, and some are more self-sufficient than others. So it’s worth your while to weigh out the options where you think it might be a good fit. For example, if you have five full users in your system and you’re submitting one to two support cases on average per month, you could be getting so many additional benefits to the support and saving money at the same time.
So we do recommend having the initial conversation with your account manager like myself, and to discuss how this offering works and really looking at the pros and cons. After that, if you believe the unlimited offering isn’t meant for you, we do have other options that can be discussed with your account manager.
Nicole: Great. Thanks, Tiffany. So basically, I guess to summarize the topics that we kinda went over and what these experts had to share with us, there’s really a lot of great features in the Encore Care Unlimited plan. But in the end, it’s ultimately up to you as an organization and as a representative of your organization to decide whether you would value this offering.
So I would suggest that most accounts can utilize this offering in some form or another whether is providing you, you know, predictable budget for support, maybe something like saving your employees’ time so they can focus on other things is something that’s important to you, and just being able to take advantage of the perks like news, or training, user guidance, and coaching, various things like that. So if you are interested in Encore Care and to find out more information, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your account manager. They would be more than happy to have a discussion with you and kinda talk about your options.
So we have some time left. And we are going to finish with a couple more poll questions just to get some feedback from you, guys. So you should see that popping up on the screen. And again, we’ll give you some time to log those responses.
Awesome. So I can see that everybody has voted. So it looks like majority of you break/fix and user application guidance was kind of the key thing that you guys were interested in. And we did have some people that were interested in the onboarding features, system health check, and the cloud consult as well, so all great features of that package. Now, I’m kinda gonna open it up to all the attendees for questions. Oh sorry, I was just informed that we have one more poll question coming your way. And we’ll give you a couple seconds to answer that.
Okay. So that looks good. It seems like we have provided some useful information. And most of you guys feel better equipped to make a decision on the Encore Care Unlimited plans. So that’s great. Now, I’m going to open up the floor to our attendees, just Q&A if anybody has any questions, comments, or anything, you can type your comments in the comment section of the webinar. You can also raise your hand as well and we can unmute you. Okay. So we have a question, “Is the $50 annually per user?” And that answer would be no, so it’s $50 per user per month.
Melissa: I’m can elaborate on that a little bit. So if you do the annual option, it is $50 per month rather than the $55, you would pay that upfront on an annual basis. And that’s where the cost savings are for you.
Nicole: Okay. And we have another question, “Per user that you serve or per user Dynamics license?”
Tiffany: I can answer that one Nicole.
Nicole: Okay.
Tiffany: So it’s based off of your full user count. So you could have five full user licenses. So we do it based off of that. We do that because, you know, dependent on the number of users, you have that, you know, how much your system is being used. And that’s where that calculation came in. And it’s based off of your per full user license owned.
Nicole: Thanks, Tiffany. The reason that question came through is because this user has 800 plus users. So in that situation, I think we would do our best to work out a plan that would work for them. Maybe Melissa could elaborate on that a bit more?
Melissa: I guess we would certainly wanna have a chance to meet and discuss kind of what their requirements are and who those users are. I think there’s a little bit of a difference in terms of what the count really means. So GP specifically is registered as a concurrent user. So you could have based on your system or through Microsoft or registered 10 users but you could have 15 users use those 10 licenses. So we would just need to have a quick conversation. And I think it would make sense that we connect with you through your account manager and discuss kind of what this package would look like for you, guys, based on what you have registered and who’s actually using the system.
Nicole: Awesome. Thank you. Is there any other questions before we wrap everything up? Perfect. So I will take that as a sign that we were hopefully able to answer everybody’s questions today. So thank you so much for joining us. We really hope, again, that we could provide some valuable information on our Encore Care Unlimited package. And we, of course, look forward to seeing you on our next webinar.
So enjoy the rest of your day. And we’ll see you again.
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