Mobilitie Partners isn’t in the real-estate leasing business, but when the company hired The MASYC Group for an ERP implementation, the integrator’s expertise in real-estate solutions was a big plus.
That’s because, when you think of it, Mobilitie’s business isn’t all that different from your typical real-estate leaser, except that its tenants take up less space. They are the radio waves that enable cell phone communications; Mobilitie leases space on thousands of cellular towers to wireless service carriers such as AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon.
“The tower is like a building, and each antenna is a space rented to a [wireless service] provider,” says Russ Stenquist, CEO of The MASYC Group, Santa Ana, Calif. “Mobilitie has to have the same class, dealing with the big guys like T-Mobile and Verizon, with an auditable approach and without a million employees.”
Mobilitie was on a rapid growth path and concluded it needed an ERP system to accommodate that growth. The company wanted to increase its cell tower footprint and the services it offers customers, says Gary Jabara, founder, president and CEO of Mobilitie, Newport Beach, Calif.
“It was a fairly straightforward decision: We needed a robust ERP solution. Prior to the ERP implementation, we’d grown so fast that we were using [Intuit] QuickBooks, believe it or not,” Jabara says. “We did consider some alternative ERP solutions from an asset management perspective, but Oracle’s JD Edwards solution was head and shoulders above the rest.”
The Right Partner
After deciding on an ERP solution, Mobilitie focused on finding an integrator to do the work. The JD Edwards team introduced the company to MASYC, which builds solutions exclusively based on JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP software.
MASYC’s vast experience with real estate and its knowledge of the construction industry were just what Mobilitie needed, says Stenquist. MASYC specializes in solutions for service and contract billing, heavy and specialty construction, home building, property management, engineering and field services.
Eschewing the typical generic proposal, MASYC and Oracle did a joint demonstration for upper-level Mobilitie executives, addressing specific client needs. For instance, rather than referring to apartment complexes, the presentation used cell towers, Stenquist says.