CCBill WMS ? The Road Ahead: An Open Letter to our WMS Sponsors & Their Affiliates
 

For years you?ve known CCBill as an organization full of innovation and drive. Our history not only reflects the growth we have achieved, it also (and perhaps more importantly) is marked by the levels of trust you have placed in us. Many have grown right along with us, and we are extremely proud to continue to serve as a solid, steady online payment processor for our valued clients.

Over the past few months, CCBill has staged the launch of its new affiliate marketing product, Web Marketing Service (WMS). Our intent for this expanded system was, and remains, to further improve the functionality and performance of the affiliate marketing initiatives of our clients and their affiliates, without the added cost of a third party solution.

In recent weeks, much has been said about WMS. Due to a string of issues, some of the feedback we have received both publicly and directly has been negative and I would like to apologize to our WMS clients and their affiliates who took the time and resources to move over to this new system only to be disappointed in the results.

With this apology, I would also like to offer clarity into these issues, and share our findings. First and foremost, the core of the product works. While it has had some issues and still does (as with any new product launch), we are confident it functions as intended and will be the future of our affiliate software. The majority of issues seen to date that have been discussed in public forums and in private conversations originated from programs that were converted from our Original Affiliate System to WMS. While these conversion issues did not affect payouts to any new programs and/or affiliates that joined WMS directly, the conversion process was not handled in a manner that we and the market expect from CCBill, and mistakes were made.

In my mind, it is beyond unfortunate that with this conversion, we did not live up to our historically high Quality Assurance and implementation standards. The bugs and issues that stemmed from the conversion are unacceptable and inexcusable.

While we have corrected most of the mistakes/bugs and worked with affected clients to credit any funds as appropriate, we have lost the confidence of these users and have decided it is best to re-enable the Original Affiliate System for them, and give them the choice to convert to WMS in the future.

As of today, we have addressed and resolved a large amount of known WMS issues, and in the weeks and months to come, it will become our mission to work harder and smarter in an effort to regain the trust of our valued clients and their affiliates.

The first step in this process will be the re-enabling of the Original Affiliate System to each affiliate that previously converted to WMS. On Monday, March 8, 2010, at approximately 11:00 a.m. MST, anyone that had converted will have the Original Affiliate System re-enabled. It is important to note that with the re-enabling, all traffic going through WMS is still going to get counted, links will still function, and applicable sales will still be credited.

Simultaneously with this deployment, we will contact clients that migrated to WMS individually, and begin an extensive evaluation, redesign, and development of the ?WMS Affiliate Conversion Process.? Only after a granular Quality Assurance and testing cycle, will we once again provide the option to convert affiliates from the Original CCBill Affiliate System, over to the feature-rich WMS System.

These initiatives are not a departure from WMS, or an abandoning of its toolset. The core of the product does function properly and we are committed to making it work for all of our valued clients and their affiliates. Rather, CCBill clients and their affiliates will now have access to both the new feature-rich WMS System and the simplified, tried and true Original CCBill Affiliate System.

We will allow clients to run both systems in parallel, enabling their affiliates to choose which solution they would like to utilize based on their needs. Correspondingly, in the future we will let affiliates choose if they would like to be converted to WMS, rather than require clients to select one system or the other on behalf of their affiliates.

It is our belief that WMS will become the system of choice for both clients and their affiliates, due to its enhanced functionalities and features. We believe in the product. However, it will remain up to clients and affiliates to make that choice. And up to us to regain their trust.

Additional details as to how the re-enabling will work, and what it means to both WMS clients and their affiliates for program settings, payouts, and reporting can now be found within the CCBill Web Admin News area, or by contacting your CCBill Sales or Client Support Representative. Our Client Support Director, Lloyd Briggs, is able to provide additional assistance at [email protected], as is our Corporate Advocate, Paul Kluzak, at [email protected].

For 12 years, we at CCBill have taken pride in earning your business and trust with unparalleled dedication to our clients, exemplary service and innovative products. We will learn from these conversion mistakes so that today and into the future, we can restore and maintain that trust once again.

Thanks,

Ron C.

dont need to change or replace any links? thats good news =)

CCBill has been good to me :D

Glad to see you're on top of things!

ugh you must be letdown, i bet you sunk some serious money into building the wms

persistence pays is what i always say, your new approach to it will surely be golden

ccbill for the gold :)

yes, this must have been a very hard decision. but CCBill is about making things right

kudos to ccbill

wow

8 char

Ron, i never expected such straightforward and sincere email to come from ccbill, this decision must have been hard but its good you guys seem to be minimizing the impact on your clients for the change.

After you guys work on wms for a bit, im sure it will come back much stronger.

Again, a class-act move from CCBill.

smart move.

CCBill has been and most likely will always be the leader in adult processing. Im not saying that other companies are not good but CCBill has done well for lots of people..

Honestly you can trust ccbill. they work hard and help you earn.

Got to love a company like that.

Ron. Send me some shirts and hats. :)

Hi Ron
The WMS concept, its tools, features and set is no doubt something that once functioning correct will bring tons of value to program owners and affiliates.

But giants like Microsoft and Xerox sometimes release a good thing too early.

This news is great and this will make so many program owners and affiliates happy, we just got done testing the roll back to legacy (original system) and we tested it every way possible and knock on wood everything is functioning perfect.

The team there Mark, Paul, Doug from accounting, Ray and many others who I didn?t talk to but worked behind the scenes showed they care about their clients and did whatever it took to try to resolve WMS issues and then after that, work on the roll back.

For those who look at WMS as some failure, read the words written in the 1920?s by Napoleon Hill:

?There is no such thing as failure, unless it is accepted as such. Every defeat is temporary unless you give up and allow it to become permanent. In fact, temporary defeat often makes us stronger and more capable. Each time we try and fail, we learn something that helps prepare us for eventual success. Only in the classroom is there a single correct answer for every problem. If you try an approach that doesn?t work, try something else. When you view adversity as nothing more than a learning experience, your successes in life will far outnumber your failures.?

Thanks!

Nice move.

We're all guilty of pushing one thing or the other out too early Ron. Some of the biggest companies in the world do it. It certainly doesn't make me trust CCBill less because of it.

I wouldn't let it ruin your day. How you handle the shortcomings of the early released product is what will be remembered.

Looks like you're on top of it.

I love Napolean Hill. Chapter 12 saved my life.

Think and grow rich!

Nice to see them responding to peoples concerns :)

Hi Ron,

Long time no see..

Good post and straightforward...

Even know your company has put alot of time and resources into Wms - mabey consider talks / purchase if possible of Nats??

I only say this as your #1 in billing and they are at the top also.... What competitor could compete or touch you if you offered nats for ccbill clients??

Peace

Todd

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts" - Sir Winston Churchill

Thank you Ron.

CCBill is and always has been a great company with some great people, likely the biggest reason it's still in business and thriving, but the WMS was a complete failure. We tried it for very little time before reverting.

If I may make a suggestion, why not do this in stages.

Stage 1: Duplicate your existing system, with new code from the ground up (assuming this is necessary). This will allow you to go forward then without doing "patchwork" to an old system coded many years ago.

Stage 2: Add in new features you have planned for WMS slowly, one by one, to allow testing to be much more prompt. Once resolved, move on to the next feature until after a few months, you will have a brand new, solid product.

At the same time, during Stage 1 you should correct the negatives with your existing Webadmin. It is archaic and many people hate it, especially in regards to the slowness and unreliable way it generates reports. It is "clunky" for lack of a better term and hasn't been ushered into the current day and age while the rest of the company has progressed forward in other areas.

For example, your current system works horribly in Chrome. Chrome is a browser gaining ground and everytime I submit something in Webadmin, I need to re-try usually 4-5 times to get the "CCBill Loading" screen to come up.

No offense meant, but it seems for a good many years now you guys have been "fat and happy" to improve that aspect of the product; with reason I suppose, since few is the competition on your level.

All that aside, perhaps the biggest reason is I also just loving giving Paul K. more work to do :winkwink:

Our character isn't defined by what happens but rather how we respond to it.

What's important is that your company listened to its customers and reacted accordingly.

I also appreciate that the letter was humble. Far too many companies would have tried to spin it like they had no hand in things not working out how they had hoped.

This is another example of why CCBill is trusted with people's livelihood.

Since I know you'll probably be reading these posts, please add an ability to export stats by date range like below. Or even a screen like these to display stats easier, grouped by program

A csv or tsv would be fine.
report #1 (like nats)
datetime, site, clicks, # sales, ratio, $ earned
report #2 (like nats)
referrer url, clicks, sales, ratio

This would probably speed up the backend as we'd have a lot less clicks involved to get the same data that now takes a dozen clicks.

Agreed. :2 cents:

Awesome to hear this Ron! Thanks for listening to those that needed to be heard!


WMS is definitely has a future in our business. We have already begun working with the Engineers at CCBill to make sure when it is ready CCBTools will work with it.


I know a lot of my clients will be happy to hear this news!

Wow when I saw that email I fig screw it I am leaving ccbill as a AFF anyways and thought it was something that you were going to force on us, then I read what you wrote and was like WOW, Awesome and thank you.. My faith has been restored sir!

IMHO CCBill's stats system has always been the worst to deal with of all the sponsors Ive used in the past decade, i avoid that system like the plague... nothing wrong with CCBill past that, but the stats are slow, difficult to read and require way too much clicking.

start from scratch, get a couple fresh minds in the mix and give them decision making power... oh and a good UI designer would go a long ways as well.

I like my statsremote account pulling my ccbill stats for me its way faster then looking up the data

I'm glad it will be sorted this way, I am not a big fan of WMS.

The old and the new running side by side with the choice to choose either is a great move, i didn't understand why that wasn't available from the off, I for one wasn't going to risk a move in such early stages, I know it will be good in the long run!

a straight up no bull statement from CCBill, just shows why they are , where they are today:thumbsup

YEAH! Now I can get back to work. Rather be fighting the economy than a new-born system.

It seems to be the right decision from me to wait until switching to WMS.

Europeans Billing Europe!
 

Looking forward to seeing you and the entire CCBill Team at ThePhoenixForum.com :thumbsup

This is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

why reinvent the wheel, just get a copy of nats and have em customize it for ya ;)

yeah right :error

Thanks Ron for the update.

SRS document for CCBill