In 2006, when Kate Phelps was hired at Retirement Living Services (RLS), part
of her job was to
compile data from each client and transform it into pretty
charts and graphs that could be included in their marketing plans. Each month,
when the updated data came from the clients, she was frustrated to see that it never
matched up from the previous month. Instead of using reports from REPS, clients
sent manual Excel files into which they would just type their numbers. Everyone
at RLS would beg them to put data into REPS and tried to convince them that "if
it's not in REPS, it didn't happen," but it was a hard sell. More often
than not, RLS managers had to look at those manual reports instead of REPS
reports to pay commissions and understand what their clients were up to.
Out of pure frustration, Kate finally said enough and built her own Excel package of reports that would work
directly with REPS. The result was that Kate could say to clients "stop sending us your reports each
week. You just put stuff in REPS and I’ll send you reports each
week." No more manual reports! The reports worked great. After Kate
went in and standardized codes for clients, RLS was able to compare apples to
apples across databases. Having access to dozens of databases also allowed Kate
to identify best practices then share that information with clients. Everyone
was happy!
When RLS was bought, Kate’s job was eliminated so she started thinking about
what to do next. It didn’t take much thought. When clients heard she was
leaving, they said, "Wait! We still
need our Kate reports! Can’t we just keep paying you to send them, Kate?
And Taylor Reporting Solutions was born.
When Kate went out on her own in 2009, she had four clients. There was lots
of time to dig as deep into their data as she could go. She dissected REPS
until she knew more about it than almost anyone and that led to her becoming a
certified REPS trainer. Over the years, TRS has worked with hundreds of
communities helping them get their REPS database working in tip-top shape and
training their sales teams to be REPS power users.