Managed Mobility Services (MMS) task management utilizes costly organizational resources because of both technological issues and process issues: dealing with multiple end users, devices and expenses; fulfilling orders; managing bulk roll outs; troubleshooting many end-user issues; vendor billing issues…
With years of experience as an MMS provider, we have observed that in most corporate settings, the in-house wireless management team is usually scrambling to handle rush priorities. As a result, medium-to-long term planning/policy suffers in the process.
This short case study aims at showing how ExpenseLogic®, our business intelligence SaaS platform, associated to the expertise of our team of problem solvers, provides a cost-efficient framework for all Managed Mobility Services (MMS) inside a multi-location organization.
Challenge
A food service company with a wide array of locations, distribution facilities, food plants, farms and ranches had hundreds of wireless devices to manage. Unfortunately, our client had no wireless procurement policy framework, and no structure for adding new users to their plans or for procuring new devices. Hence their decision to hire RadiusPoint to rationalize their inventory of devices and lines. This was an MMS mission, a specialty in which we have a long-running experience.
Upon auditing the situation, we discovered:
- 600+ phones billed monthly with no identification of the employees using them
- Multiple pagers unaccounted for, that were part of the wireless program
- An absence of approval process for mobile equipment procurement
Opportunity
RadiusPoint was able to make immediate recommendations to save our client money, and make sense of their entire Wireless Program.
- A “Register your Line” program site was created
- Vendor contracts were reviewed for accuracy (Terms & Conditions, rates, etc.)
- A proper “Wireless Policy” was created
- A full audit of services & devices was started
Note: All of these aspects fall under the purview of MMS. These findings are nothing out of the ordinary for our MMS team.
Solution
RadiusPoint created a client-specific ad hoc website for the end-users (company employees) to register their line and device through the Register Your Line portal created by RadiusPoint. This easy-to-use platform enables end-users to follow a link to register their wireless or pager number.
We sent out a text message/email to end-users, instructing them to go to the site to register their phone number and their device. Each end-user had to provide their name, Cost Center number (if they knew it), Manager’s contact information, and their own contact information. Owing to the number of employees and missing data, the process took two months to complete. At the end of the period, each user had registered their device and services.
We could then proceed with inventorying mobile devices, both mobile phones and pagers, and perform a cost attribution.
The MMS process enabled us to find out:
- 56 identified users were no longer employed by our Client, but services were still paid monthly
- Numerous wireless and paging devices had been lost by their users, but our client was still billed by vendors monthly
- Numerous in-stock devices were billed monthly, but were not assigned to any user
From this data, we provided our client with a report on all services and devices that should be canceled.
We then helped writing a “Wireless Policy” for all end-users to follow, with a view to rationalizing procurement lines and terms.
Results
At the end of our MMS mission, we had enabled our client to save 22% in monthly costs.
For reasons of confidentiality, we can’t disclose the amount in dollars saved by our MMS intervention. Let’s just say that the savings were significant as our client could now control their costs over 600 lines, and cancel all services associated with past employees and unused/lost devices.
Transcript of the video
In this session, we’re gonna talk about managed mobility services and how we assisted a food service company save over $400,000 a year on their telecom expenses.
Introduction: client and MMS mission
This company is a food service company; they process and distribute food, and they have ranches, distribution facilities across the US, employing thousands of people. When they came to us, they did not have a previous TEM company. They were managing all of the [TEM] services internally. We did take over their Telecom Expense Management and their Mobility Managed Services to assist them in both areas, cutting costs, identifying what services they had. They had thousands of wireless numbers and did not know who the lines [were assigned] to, they didn’t have the personnel. They had one person that managed the phones at their site, distributed them, ordered the services, etc. This person also had other duties with the telecom, and this was not his sole focus.
Then there was a second part of that, that was not just ordering the services and helping the end-users, but also managing the invoices and ensuring that the contract rates were given [by vendors]. Once those new services were ordered, they also had issues with people [staff] going out to the wireless phone store and just getting a phone and adding it to the company account, getting approval. And then they had no visibility regarding that phone. What type of phone? Was it at the contract rate? So they had a lot of different issues we were working [to help them] with when we first started this process of their setup.
MMS: Inventorying mobile devices
One of the things we did immediately was what we call our “Register Your Line” portal. We set up a portal for them; corporate would send out an email to all of their wireless users, asking them to register their line and letting them know that if they did not register their line, after 60 days it would be canceled and disconnected.
With that, we were able to get most of the people registered so that we could verify that they actually belonged to the company, verify what call center they were with, and the actual phone they had. In the process, we were able to identify over 50 users that were no longer working with the company; some had not been with the company for over two years, and the company continued to pay for those services. We were able to disconnect immediately those phones. The unfortunate part was we were not able to recover those phones but at that point they were older, so the company just let that go. We were able though to discontinue those services and keep that from continuing to bill.
MMS: more cost cutting
We also identified phones that were out-of-contract and billed separately. Their users were sending those in under their expense reports, all those lines were billed at non-contract rates, about 30% higher than what [the company] could have gotten under their contract. We were able to port those over to the contract and save them about 30% on all of those rogue cell phones. Not only did we identify all of the lines that were supposed to be on contract, but we also identified another set of lines (over 50 of them) that were no longer associated with the company and should have been canceled. We did disconnect those.
MMS: KPIs
We were able to save this company some 22% of their Telecom Expense Management budget on an annual basis, i.e. over $400,000 a year in savings. There were also other positive ongoing benefits : we helped them on a monthly basis better manage this [budget] so that the person in charge, even though they had to go through an approval process, was able to order all of those services online, have them verified, and ensure they flowed through to the contract and the proper billing platform… instead of on their own billing and coming through expense reports. This saved their Accounts Payable people time as well.
RadiusPoint still works for this customer on a monthly basis, managing all of their telecom expenses and giving them granular, detailed reporting.