Priority One Clearing Services is a processing center for magazine publishers and the agents who are selling the magazines. Essentially, Priority One acts as a broker between publishers and agents, by finding subscriptions for publications and providing the opportunity for the agents to sell and process those subscriptions. Priority One's agents include those that work with fundraisers, Internet sales, telemarketing agents, direct mail and door-to-door sales.
Priority One was founded by CEO Dawn Daugherty in July 2008. Dawn has been in the industry for more than twenty years, and wanted to build a company that offered a solution that no one else does. Dawn needed a technology solution that would run the entire company's operations. The platform needed to be user friendly for the internal users as well as allow her company to provide superior service to clients. Agents and publishers manage a large volume of data, and her system needed to be able to easily process and report on all that data.
Dawn had looked into some off-the-shelf solutions, but it quickly became apparent how much customization those products would need to meet her objectives and she realized she needed a custom application solution. Priority One put out a RFP and ultimately chose Amadeus Consulting to be its custom software development partner. "I chose Amadeus Consulting because the team portrayed an understanding of what we wanted. They were competitive and showed an enthusiasm and excitement about what we were trying to achieve," Dawn said.
Amadeus Consulting built the order processing web application platform entirely from scratch. The immediate result for Priority One was being able to get orders in and out the door right away. Publishers don't interact with the system, but Priority One was able to easily pull reports for publishers to see whatever statistics they needed. The system is extremely user-friendly with good documentation and advanced reporting capabilities. Thanks to the ease and effectiveness of the system, Dawn was able to manage the entire operation from the beginning with minimal staff, while still yielding high value for her clients. Dawn indicated, "It was critically important to me as a startup that we have a small, efficient staff and I needed this system to manage to that format."
Priority One had to focus and allocate its expenses on the basics of getting the system built. Once Amadeus Consulting met the immediate needs of the company with the custom platform, Priority One was able to grow right away and as it grew it was able to build an even better system. "It has really been an advantage for Priority One. Agents often tell us the reason they do business with us is because they like our system, our customer service (which is a reflection of the system) and because we readily have information available for them," Dawn stated. Over the past three years, the relationship with Amadeus Consulting and Priority One has continued and flourished, and Priority One has been able to enhance its system and create a nice, comprehensive and streamlined process. The data flow in the system is far better than Priority One's competitors.
Priority One started with zero subscriptions, and is now handling millions of subscriptions with ease. Amadeus Consulting ensured the system was built with scalability in mind with the integrity to handle this growth. Priority One is an exciting story of a great company with a great idea, as it was started in the midst of a recession and instead of folding, it has grown exponentially. It has been a steady and supportive partnership between Amadeus Consulting and Priority One, and Amadeus Consulting stuck by Priority One's side to ensure a win for all parties, even in a tough economy. Not only did Amadeus Consulting build the platform but the company also provided technical support for three years with its dedicated Client Support team to enhance and support the system. There wasn't a month that went by without additional value being added through the Client Support relationship with Priority One.
One of the unique services Amadeus Consulting provided was performing about 80 percent of the recruiting process for Priority One when it became time for Priority One to transition from Amadeus Consulting as its sole IT resource. Amadeus Consulting ensured through its selective hiring process that Priority One would have an extremely able employee to handle the first tier of support going forward. Once Dawn Daugherty was able to vet candidates that were a good match culturally, Amadeus Consulting did several technical interviews to find a reliable employee for Priority One with considerable technical talent.
The system Amadeus Consulting built has never gone down in three years. Because of the technical expertise with which Amadeus Consulting developed the platform and the proactive Client Support systems put forth, Priority One doesn't have to put out fires and or find "Band-Aid" solutions. Of the relationship between the companies, Dawn said, "It has been such an amazing partnership from the very beginning of selecting Amadeus Consulting. Had I not been helped so much through the process of growing by Amadeus Consulting, I don't think I would have been quite as successful as I am now. The team at Amadeus Consulting helped us build, enhance, and maintain a platform that runs our entire operations and prepared us to be a stable company with a stable system and hire an in-house programmer that was absolutely capable."