Reducing Telecom Expenses by 26% in Healthcare
RadiusPoint collaborated with an Assisted Living and Nursing Home organization to enhance their oversight of telecom, IT, and wireless expenses. Serving as their telecom expense management (TEM) partner, RadiusPoint offered comprehensive insight into their invoices and spending and the range of services and equipment deployed across each site. This detailed visibility enabled RadiusPoint to identify and deactivate over 700 dormant business lines at various locations leading to a 26% reduction of their annual spend or $475k once the lines were disconnected and removed from the invoices.
Background
Given the healthcare industry’s focus on emergency preparedness, there’s a constant demand for reliable access to emergency personnel. Landlines play a critical role in ensuring immediate response in case of facility emergencies. Each location is mandated to have two copper lines for direct fire notification, with the option to add more lines for direct point-to-point access to the fire department. Safety for patients and staff is the top priority for this organization, necessitating RadiusPoint to meticulously validate vendor-provided information at every site.
Issues
The organization lacked previous inventory and audits of its telecom, IT, and wireless services. The service introduced detailed identification of each service type on vendor invoices, outlining all features, fees, taxes, and surcharges billed for each phone number. Various telecom vendors used different billing formats, with some providing only the total amount due without specific service descriptions or associated phone numbers. This limited visibility hindered effective decision-making regarding service removal or cost reduction through optimization.
As the costs of regular business lines escalated with vendors, the organization faced pressure to cut expenses. However, stringent regulations and safety protocols concerning patient well-being posed a challenge. Over the past two years, regular business line costs surged significantly, soaring from $50.00 to over $200.00 per line. Although newer, more cost-effective technology existed, regulatory restrictions prevented its use for regular business lines, prioritizing security measures.
Solution
RadiusPoint conducted an audit and inventory, yielding crucial information for eliminating unnecessary lines. This initiative validated services and phone lines across all sites, uncovering errors and overcharges in invoices. Some invoices continued to bill for services canceled years ago, obscured by invoice complexity or consolidation. RadiusPoint’s scrutiny pinpointed erroneous charges like features and taxes on phone lines canceled five years prior, prompting requests for credits from the vendor. In one case, even after an account was disconnected, circuits associated with it continued to bill due to a failed disconnection request.
The inventory and audit process began by verifying each phone line’s use through multiple calls and on-site visits for lines without responses. This process revealed over 700 unused regular business lines, some unconnected even in the phone rooms at various locations. Additionally, RadiusPoint offered recommendations to reduce line counts and optimize necessary lines. This enhanced visibility into remaining monthly expenses, enabling contract negotiations with vendors, and resulting in a further 10% cost reduction.
Results
Now equipped with ExpenseLogic, RadiusPoint’s proprietary software, this organization possesses comprehensive visibility into its telecom invoices and a complete inventory management system. In the Site Manager section of ExpenseLogic, a single click grants their team access to detailed invoice images, individual phone lines, circuits, wireless numbers, service features, and monthly costs for each location. Their annual savings exceeding $500k, alongside the elimination of 700 unnecessary lines, have led to reduced costs, improved services, and heightened accuracy in their monthly telecom billing.