The Lion King’s Telecom Management Wisdom

The Lion King’s Wisdom; Equip Your Telecom Management Team With Needed Tools For Optimal Expense Management Success

Recently while watching the Lion King video mesmerize my Granddaughter, the Lion King (Mustafa) offered his young cub (Simba) some wonderful words of wisdom.  “You
have not yet become what you will be!” This is a powerful truth, often overlooked by management, and yet can relate easily to your company’s telecom/wireless management teams telecom expense and asset management. Given the right tools combined with determination and training, your management teams can produce maximized savings and optimal efficiencies that cannot be replicated through their own diligence. In effect; Becoming all they can be. 

Bring your telecom management team into the 21^st Century and give them what they need to discover cost savings your company requires to stay competitive. Or better yet, get a competitive advantage on rival businesses in this vital indirect spend category. If your team is not using best-in-class software for automating inventory, expense optimization, procurement/Help Desk, invoice and payment management, your telecom/wireless management teams, Have not yet become what they could be!

Consider these Seven Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)

The Aberdeen Group describes the following Seven KPI’s and demonstrates your wireless/telecom management team’s function optimally when companies implement best-in-class Telecom Expense Management (TEM) solutions with these terrific outcomes:

Best-in-class companies exhibited the following characteristics:

• 45 percent average productivity increase for fixed invoice reconciliation, audit
  and disputes
• 41 percent average productivity increase for fixed procurement and service order
  tracking
• 42 percent average productivity increase for mobile invoice reconciliation, audit
  and disputes
• 40 percent average productivity increase for mobile procurement and service order tracking

Another report also stated:

Execute on Wireless Expense Management to Drive ROI, showed that best-in-class
companies accomplished a:

• 31 percent decrease in the cost of monthly wireless voice services
• 24 percent decrease in the cost of monthly wireless data services
• 26 percent decrease in the cost of managing devices”

You have management teams in place. Help them to help your company achieve optimal results and become what they can be.

Just Think What Your Management Teams Must Do To Optimally Manage Your Wireline and Wireless Assets

A business’ telecom management team must be able to track all wireline and wireless assets from inception to elimination (with hopes accuracy has been fully maintained), analyzing all telecom invoices covering every vendor while examining each asset. Optimizing/Validating:

• contract compliance while optimizing each plan/asset monthly
• all zero or low use assets of each service offering; for example … identifying data,
  voice, texting on a wireless device
• all feature/plan options flagging those assets not needed or used
• vendor invoices while demonstrating all negotiated and available discounts are correctly occurring
• feature options are on the optimal plans without over-charges
• recommended changes while tracking all moves, adds, changes, and deletions
• all corporate policies are followed

Once each telecom asset is optimized, correctly processing the invoices and preparing them for timely payment (as your team takes into account all asset assignments and cost centers) is required for best-in-class TEM/WEM management.

Expense Optimization Results

Our experience indicates, your telecom management team results are reflective of their
telephony expertise, time available/spent optimizing with or without automating
tools for managing these vital assets.

Your expense and asset optimization results will undoubtedly fall into one of the following
categories:

• worst case scenario; excessive time spent for less or no real savings
• excessive man-hours achieving optimal savings results (dramatically reducing ROI)
• best case scenario; least amount of man-hours spent to achieve best possible
  savings.

Unfortunately for many companies the worst case scenario is quite typical.

Efficient Telecom/Wireless Expense Management (TEM/WEM)

This is when your telecom management team becomes what it can be!
Your company providing telephony training (or smart-sourcing to a TEM/WEM
solution provider) utilizing a best-in-class
automated software solution will move your telecom management team to the
coveted best-in-class designation with optimal savings while providing valuable
time-saving efficiencies.

Is your current telecom/wireless management team equipped and prepared to become all your organization has determined that they should be?

Let me know how I can help your organization successfully accomplish telecom/wireless savings your telecom team properly assisted would love to achieve.

The Gordian Knot: Slash Through Corporate Inertia, Maximize Telecommunications Savings

Savings Opportunities in Current Difficulties

There is a silver lining to these current dismal economic times. The very hardships corporations face today may open a right thinking management team to solutions and strategies that historically would not be considered. Great management teams will likely embrace and maximize new savings opportunities while stressing efficiency like never before. This is especially true when it comes to right-sizing and optimizing your enterprises telecommunications and wireless environments.

The Gordian Knot

The ancient fabled Gordian Knot was tied by the gods and purportedly could only be
untied by the coming and favored king of the world. Only a great leader untying
this knot would reveal his glory and gain the allegiance of the rulers of Asia
Minor. The great Alexander of Macedon, sizing up the impossibility of the
unraveling of the fabled knot, chose to change the rules, break the paradigm,
and slashed through the enormous knot with his trusty sword. Then it is said he
turned to the guardian priests and elders, pointed out that he and he alone had
unraveled the great knot, then asked the guardian priests for their blessing.
Who likely understood, that the same sword that dispatched the knot would
easily dispatch them if they did not see the wisdom of the new king of the
world.

Alexander broke through the restricting traditions and comfortable paradigms of the
peoples and other rulers of his age. Through ruthless initiative, creative
strategies, state of the art war technology, boundless energy, and confident
leadership, Alexander changed the boundaries of the known world. To this day he
is one of the very few leaders in world history whose last name is ‘the Great’.

Wikipedia states, “The Gordian knot … is often used as a metaphor for an intractable
problem solved by a bold stroke (“cutting the Gordian knot”)

The Bold Stroke

Often a business’s leadership has enterprise traditions and corporate philosophies
that ‘knot up’ innovation lending support to the status quo. These times
require a ‘Bold Stroke’ to slash through to more profitable strategies. Today’s
difficult and treacherous economy demands ‘out of the box’ creative thinking. Many
companies have recognized for years the importance of technology and the wise
use thereof, to optimize various aspects of their company’s core
business functions. Yet remarkably find themselves bound to higher then
needed spend on non-core business categories. This occurs through dated sourcing
practices, inefficient methodologies, lack of internal expertise, and no longer
tested and true strategies once considered successful. Industry experts state,
this is clearly true of most company’s telecom services and their current optimization
strategies.

Questions To Ask

How is your company ensuring your telecom services are correctly utilized and in
proportion to its real needs and requirements? Do you have in-house expertise
in achieving Best in Class pricing and fully optimized telecom inventory/plan management? Is your telecom management team using Best in Class optimization solutions and strategies? Or are they locked into limited time/cost savings results their dated current inefficient efforts provide?

Finding The Right Solution

I recently talked with a CFO of a major enterprise who acknowledged precisely
this situation in his company. They could produce their product with ruthless
efficiency, while their purchasing practices for non-core related sourcing (including
telecommunications services) had been inefficient for 20 years or more. Some of
those areas of spend accounted for 30% of their companies overall budget.
However, their company’s corporate philosophy was in-sourcing, even though many
of their internal human assets had neither the time nor the expertise, not to mention
the energy left to fully optimize their non-core sourcing and management
initiatives.

He was happy to find that with the right solution, united with the industry
expertise, and energized by a non biased third-party with a stake in the
savings their efforts generated, was just what his company needed to accomplish
significant savings and recoveries.

Pick Up The Sword

Whether, your enterprises corporate philosophy has always been in-sourcing, or your management team occasionally out-sources, the wise use of technology and out-source
expertise on non core purchasing practices such (as telecommunications services)
can truly be vital for your company in those areas that so often get
overlooked.

Perhaps it is time for you leadership team to pick up the sword, and slash through the
inertia that plagues so many companies.
Unleash the power of a telecom solution coupled with years of telephony
expertise. This Smart-sourcing is a wise blending of your corporate assets and
third-party expertise along with state of the art solutions. Smart-sourcing
will maximize your optimization efforts for your corporate telecom environment through
cutting edge expense and asset management and time/cost savings with resulting
efficiencies.

Called Great

Wouldn’t it be awesome, if your management team would
associate your name with ‘Great’ for thinking and stepping outside the corporate box … finding significant savings in ways never experienced in a time when it is undeniably
needed.

Perhaps now is the right time for you to pick up the sword & slash through the
Gordian Knot of telecom optimization inefficiency and retrieve unexpected cost
savings and recoveries. Your boss will think it great and you will be glad you
did!

Let me know if we can help?

Vital Importance Of Non Cash Donations To Your Not For Profits – Cell Phone Recycling Can Help!

Dire Impending Substantial Contribution Fall-Off

I recently reviewed some potentially devastating data on the drastic changes coming to Not-For-Profits (NFPs) due to shifting demographics and the aging of the typical donor base.  The info excerpted from Pew Research stated in just 5 years, Baby Boomers who now give 90% of donations will reduce their giving by 59%. If that is true, it is vital for NFP’s to connect with the Millennial Generation (born 1984 & later) while looking for other non-cash ways to raise badly needed funds. This tide is rising for NFP’s and it’s time to act.

Get Millennial’s Involved

The Millennial’s are big on technology, interested in green initiatives, and in this economy many are short on funds. That is why a vibrant Cell Phone Recycling (CPR) program may very well be a NFP’s ticket to initially penetrate the Millennial demographic with a viable non-cash donation opportunity.

Millennial Activation & Cell Phone Recycling

Once a Millennial is convinced of the worthiness of a NFP’s cause, they will begin to look for ways to help. If offered a green initiative (like a cell phone recycling program) they can communicate through various social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc …) on how easy it is to get involved and help. To feed the poor, grow a tree, help the rain forest, support ministry’s, aid battered women’s shelters, feed the pet’s from the local no-kill shelter are all good works cell phone recycling currently benefit and all demographics are willing to engage.

Get Access To Millennial Donor Info
A well thought out CPR program liquidator will gather donor information and provide that info for the NFP to contact. The NFP will email a note of appreciation for the cell phone donation and file the info for additional contact in the future.

Cell Phone Recycling Helps NPR’s and the Environment

Often consumers/businesses find themselves with used and unused cell phones/smart phones/PDA’s wondering how best to dispose of them. It certainly should not be an option to dispose of retired cell phones in the trash (ending up in the local landfill) due to the harmful elements that are contained within the devices. It’s true, some carriers will buy the phones back (for next to nothing) to remove them from the re-use market. On occasion the cell phones are re-purposed for resale.  However, when given a choice, recycling retired phones to the benefit of a favored NFP while benefiting the environment makes very good cents!

Why not make your retired cell phone/smart-phone/PDA count for the good of your selected Not-For-Profit that is both worthy and needy of your best help. As a consumer or an enterprise you can make what seems to be junk benefit that organization that you have an affinity for. A NFP will be to happy to utilize funds derived from Cell Phone/PDA/Smartphone donations. Re-usable devices will be re-purposed, while the non-reusable devices will be disposed of in an environmentally responsible manner, proceeds benefiting your selected NFP.

Help Your Not-For-Profit Fight Back Against The Tide

With the economy inspired drop off of donations occurring now and the donor demographic cataclysm quickly approaching, many NFP’s are scrambling to find viable ways to offset both their real and additional anticipated losses. A tried and tested Cell Phone Recycling program can be just one weapon in your favorite Not-For-Profits arsenal to fight against the ominous tide rapidly approaching. If you have a box of old cell phones turn them into cash to benefit a not-for-profit today. Let us know if you have any questions. We will be glad to help.

Mobility Management – Automation Is Key to Efficient Corporate Labor Performance

Government, business, and consumers are swimming together in a debt laden pool. All alike are being sucked into the vortex of an ever expanding burdensome financial debt load. The newspapers scream about deficits, businesses are rocked with one fiscal blow after another, and fear of the dreaded double dip is the elephant in your executive’s board room. The knowledgeable use of automation is a real key to efficiently managing, competing and generally surviving in such dangerous economic waters.   

 Thirty years ago I was visiting a third world country. Early one morning I was awaken with a horrendous shrill metal scraping metal noise. It was a train derailing next to the Hostel I was staying in. A few hours later I looked out the window and saw a mass of humanity struggling to right the train and repair the mess with human power, animal power, simple levers and ingenuity. I was amazed at the controlled chaos I was witnessing and asked my translator, why not bring in some lifts, tractors, cranes and help all these poor folks out doing this dangerous labor in the extreme heat? My translator matter of factly said, “We have a billion people in this country. We choose not to use such equipment so we can provide our people the work they need”.

 Simply speaking it was just their way. It wasn’t efficient, it wasn’t safe, it wasn’t really even cheaper in the long run. It explained a lot as to why this country at that time was not able to compete in an international economy.  Currently it is transforming itself into a developing powerhouse. This same country is becoming an automated, efficient, dominating economic entity as it is lifting millions of its people out of poverty and servicing many of the worlds corporate powerhouses. Telecommunications automation is one of the keys to this economic renaissance.

 Telecommunications An Enterprise TOP Spend Category

 Telecom is often one of the top spend categories most companies require. Wireless spend has recently surpassed landline corporate costs in the Telecommunications subset.  Through years of experience Integrity Communications has learned automation of your enterprises Mobility/Wireless Expense Management is as fundamental to your organizations competitiveness as an advancing third world country employing both cheap labor and automation to give it the edge it needed to propel forward into the world economy.

 Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)

 Aberdeen Group found the following Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) demonstrating why automating your enterprises Wireless Expense Management (WEM) efforts make a world of sense in a world of expense.  

 Best-in-class companies exhibited the following characteristics:

–45 percent average productivity increase for fixed invoice reconciliation, audit and disputes

–41 percent average productivity increase for fixed procurement and service order tracking

–42 percent average productivity increase for mobile invoice reconciliation, audit and disputes

–40 percent average productivity increase for mobile procurement and service order tracking

 Additional Aberdeen Findings reported;

  Execute on Wireless Expense Management to Drive ROI, showed that best-in-class companies accomplished a:

–31 percent decrease in the cost of monthly wireless voice services

– 24 percent decrease in the cost of monthly wireless data services

– 26 percent decrease in the cost of managing devices”

 Automated Efficiency Saves Big Dollars on Corporate Telecom Spend

 This important KPI data demonstrates that best-in-class companies lower telecom spend management as much as 40 percent. Extraordinary labor cost reduction will optimize a company’s telecom management team’s time and overall corporate spend. Such efficiency will free your human assets to focus on other critical areas of telecom infrastructure, delve into optimum capacity issues and evaluate additional expense management savings opportunities they have been too busy to investigate or uncover.  Compounding your telecom team’s optimization effectiveness while resulting in corporate savings will far surpass any costs incurred during the update while enhancing your ROI. 

eProcurement and Help Desk Time/Cost Savings Generator

Another key efficiency generator is the Wireless Procurement and Help Desk modules of Wireless Expense Management. Employees will inevitably require new device activations and upgrades or at least Help Desk support on issues that arise. Combining the automated solution with a centralized data base useful for reporting and asset management, with a knowledgeable wireless support staff will allow your wireless end-users the opportunity to quickly communicate their issues, submit a ticket and get back to work.  This wile your (or your outsource experts) wireless support team procures the devices or resolves the issues. This as your corporate personell is diligently fulfilling their core responsibilities without needless distraction.

 Optimal Team Performance

 It is exceedingly important to integrate tested automated solutions with TEM/WEM Best Practices to give your management team the best possible chance for their team to perform optimally.

 Whether your in-house team avails itself of the best TEM/WEM software available, you choose to outsource to those with the automated tools and the expertise to utilize it, or an intelligent blend of the two (we will call Smart-Sourcing); such knowledgeable use of automation may be as critical to your company’s survival as it was critical for the country I visited so long ago reversing 1,000 years of decline while leaping into the 21^st century.

 Like my translator, your management team can undoubtedly explain many reasons why the status quo is the best your company can hope to achieve when it comes to telecom/wireless optimization. We’ve never did it like this before … , Such automation may be too costly … , we have no in-house expertise … , or even “We choose not to use such automation, so we can provide our people the work they need”.   However, if a third world country can turn it around and make such a leap forward with great benefit, your telecom management team can dynamically improve its efficiency realizing the terrific advantage automation coupled with industry best practices a Wireless /Telecom Expense Management solution can afford.

Let me know if I can help you determine how best your team can utilize a Telecom Expense Management or Mobility Cost Management solution.

Key Alert Indicators For Dynamic Mobility Device Optimization and Wireless Management

Alert signals can be annoying as all get out, until you experience their true value. How many times has that seat belt alert light flashed and annoyed you into compliance? But when you have an accident you’re grateful for the alert, even more so in buckling up. That annoying buzzer in your house makes a terrible racket, however, my mom can attest to the fact that it saved her life during a recent house fire! When alerts can be put in place in managing your wireless device spend/usage it may not save your life, but it will save your enterprise a ton of money, and the corporate bean counters will be glad you did.

 Automated Key Alert Indicators

One of the key indicators your company has a dynamic Best-in-Class mobility device optimization program is setting alerts in place to reliably focus your expense management team on the various spend/usage categories associated with your active wireless inventory. Integrity Communications provides this management by exception as a Best Practice discipline your wireless management program should require. You need an automated software application that provides a centralized data base for all wireless devices regardless of carrier. One that validates all:

• spend and usage on all carrier invoices
• carrier contract compliance
• configurable corporate policy and rules
• correct feature/options utilization

Integrity’s mobility management discipline provides visibility to all identified compliance errors, recording and tracking all vendor disputes through to resolution and credit. 

 Automated Comprehensive Information Management

Our effective TEAMmate software tool will capture all invoice data (often via EDI) for expense and asset audit as well as other pre-agreed to data exchanges (I.E. HR feeds, requested hierarchical data, and designated client personnel info). This data should is useful for optimization as all info is collected in a centralized data base and reported by:

• location
• end-user
• pooling plans  
• spend/usage
• feature utilization
• cost center
• corporate division
• carrier specific and comprehensive
• to name a view

These auto generated data reports are scheduled for usage analysis and spend optimization. Mobile activity/spend/usage reports by location, department, and individual end-user, as well as by cost center, feature utilization, and pooling are available 24/7 365 days a year to all client designated personnel by right, role and responsibility. In this way each cost center is both made aware of their usage/spend but also implement initiatives tailored to reduce wireless costs in their department.

 Exception Management by Alert

Rather than your optimization team looking at each invoice line by line your Wireless Expense Management (WEM) solution will provide an automated alert application identifying all rule violations and define for your team what the infractions are. Alerting your telecom management team to where the problems are while not wasting audit time on data points without any real issues. In this way your team efficiently saves enormous amounts of time and corporate money.

 Enhanced Management Efficiency

Integrity’s exception based Best Practice wireless expense management solution will provide performance efficiencies, invoice/contract validations, spend/usage audits and optimizations, manual processes cannot hope to achieve. These alerts should appear on web-based easily accessed dashboards while auto generated reports will give your management and telecom team mile high to granular visibility.

Having Integrity’s exception management application in place is the best practice tool your enterprise mobility expense management team needs to provide your company the best possible optimization and unnecessary cost avoidance results. Give us a call, perhaps we can help.

Is Your Not-For-Profit’s Cell Phone Recycling Program Operating On All Cylinders?

There is nothing like a finely tuned car humming down the highway all cylinders performing optimally. When some of the cylinders are missing, the car will make progress but not perform up to the desired standard. The same is true of a cell phone recycling (CPR) program instituted by a Not-For-Profit (NFP). For the best possible results to bless the participating NFP please consider these 6 Cylinders For Optimum Donor/Benefit Performance:

1. Develop your marketing/communication plan/caused base plea. Insert a simple, but clearly seen hyperlink to your web site and all email/electronic correspondence that would hyperlink to your CPR info/donor program with a brief description on how the program works as well as how the donor can  help, … I.E.:

                                    (Directions Tab-Click Here to Donate Cell Phones)

Your donation of just (?) used/unused cell phones will feed 1 child for 2 months … or will plant 1 fruit tree to help feed a village for 20 years … Or Place a battered woman …

2. Contact your active donor base with your CPR launch plans & plea for their used/unused cell phones.

• Insert hyperlink and plea in each NFP monthly/weekly reminders as you constantly remind them of how this non cash donation can help.
• When the donor requests shipping/donation info, your team will be notified. We suggest that your team contact the prospective donor/requestors and thank them for wanting to participate. Ask them to find others who would like to add to their donation box. Suggest family, friends, neighbors, churches, business associates, business friends.  You will turn 2 phones to be donated into 10, 20 50 or more!
• Make sure you have an easy to understand caused based strategy as we outline above; I.E.: how many donated cell phones does it take to feed a child, plant a tree, place a Bible, translate a passage of scripture, etc … 

3. Your team needs to contact Corporate Board members, C-level Executive Friends of the NFP, and current Corporate Sponsors. Ask them for their retired/unused corporate devices.

• Ask them to roll this program out for their employee’s to participate in donating their cell phones.
• Ask them to contact corporate friends and counterparts in other companies to see if they would like to participate as well.

4. Contact your NFP Inactive Donors – Chances are your former/inactive donors still have an affinity towards your ministry, perhaps circumstances now prohibit or even another NFP has become the beneficiary … Your asking them to participate in this CPR program may very well be the catalyst for your former donors to reengage with you organization. emphasize the following:

• Non-cash plea
• Turn your junk into another’s treasure
• Support your NFP mission while helping the environment

 5. NFP Social Media drives; Get the young people and social networking enthusiasts engaged in your CPR effort. FYI, Young people often have more up to date and valuable smart-phones, they also are often upgrading to the latest “cool” technology. They will often give old cell phones to a friend or sell on Craig’s List … when if they knew they could sacrifice for the benefit of others, they would. These more up-to-date devices are the most valuable thus beneficial to the NFP.

• Facebook
• Twitter

Here is an idea your team may want to consider as well … seek a campus contact to lead a CPR campaign on college campuses. You could even partner with various campus ministry/environmental entities to be the “tip of the spear” for your effort at the university. Your CPR program will likely not be in competition with the various ministry partners and the youthful, idealistic, environmentally, focused will expend themselves for your worthy cause. As well as provide the most valuable/beneficial cell phones for your organization.

6. Media drives & celebrity help:

• TV
• Public Service notices from news organization.
• Radio
• Celebrity spokespersons help …

 If you’re NFP will fine tune your CPR program and engage on all cylinders, you will see a maximum donation performance benefit that will not only benefit your much needed ministries, but also bless the environment as well. Why settle for minimal benefits with a hitting/missing CPR approach. 

 Let me know if you have any additional questions. We can strategize together and fine tune all 6 cylinders of your CPR program. In so doing the CPR benefit will more than just hum. It will SING and bring greater benefit to those who need your NFP’s valuable essential services.

Wireless eProcurement & Help Desk; Power Performance Twins For Mobility Management

Economic realities demand your business find savings opportunities where ever you can.  Optimization of spend in critical sector management categories is essential to the viability of many enterprises in such difficult times. A holistic approach to your companies procure to pay process will produce bottom-line results strengthening your businesses competitive position and providing your enterprise the margin needed to persevere through economic hardships during this current negative business cycle.

The mobility portion of your telecommunications spend category is one of those areas that is often increasing in cost while other categories are being radically reduced. New wireless technologies, increased capabilities, and an employee’s/management assumption Smartphone’s are a needed benefit by all forward thinking institutions. This makes the Power Twins of an automated/centralized procurement and Wireless Support/Help Desk service offering essential to both an accurate inventory/asset management as well as the best possible cost/usage optimization. 

Power Twin Wireless eProcurement/Fulfillment

For these reasons it is vital to implement a procurement strategy that permits only corporate approved assets to corporate approved employees and into the wireless inventory to be tracked, device histories recorded, and monthly optimized.

Automating procurement and centralized control of wireless life-cycle management is a real key to overall asset/device optimization. A web-based procurement/fulfillment solution is the first step to the holistic Mobility Telecom Expense Management approach companies must require. Outsourced managed services by wireless fulfillment professionals will efficiently introduce the wireless devices into your company’s inventory meeting and exceeding all vendors SLA’s while provisioning the devices with your end-users needs being fully realized. The entire process is recorded, tracked, and reportable for inventory and expense management purposes.

 Power Twin Help Desk/Wireless Support

Once your telecom assets have been accurately entered into your wireless inventory, it is crucial to continually maintain the inventory’s veracity. Help Desk is an important means by which you can preserve wireless device asset accuracy while establishing process efficiencies to optimize employee time/cost factors end-users inevitably require.

All employees using wireless devices will inevitably require assistance either from a provisioning standpoint and/or a move, add, change, or delete (MACD) perspective. In either case employees are being distracted from their core responsibilities. The more time these issues take to resolve the more time/labor costs are drained from your companies bottom-line. Help Desk professionals will take your employees call, enter a time,date and name stamped ticket on their behalf, allowing the end-user to get back to work, as your wireless support representative is solving the problem and gaining a timely resolution. A outsource professional help desk management team will collapse those labor time frames into efficient resolutions saving your enterprise both labor/time and spend. Freeing both your end-user and telecom team to focus on more important company required tasks is a desired result company’s should enjoy.

These power twins of eProcurement and Wireless Support will lay the essential foundation for true cradle to grave Wireless Mobility Management. Providing real muscle to your life-cycle wireless expense management system and a Best in Class optimization performance your company both needs and desires.

5 Critical Functions of Cradle to Grave Telecom/Wireless Expense Management

Why settle for less cost/time savings, when you and your telecom team can exceed corporate expectations with life-cycle management of your company’s wireless environment. Optimizing your enterprises entire telecom/mobile device inventory is not just a dream it must be a requirement? Did you know most organizations telecommunications budget is often one of the top three corporate budget items? Critical to your company’s competitive edge and fiscal bottom-line success may very well be Telecom/Wireless Expense Management (TEM/WEM). The wireless discipline is also known as Mobility Device Management (MDM).

Unfortunately, many companies assume they are either managing their wireless assets acceptably or getting enough out of their internal efforts to render unnecessary any additional initiatives. This mindset is most often not only counterproductive to your company’s fiscal best end result but also seriously flawed in remaining competitive in the current difficult business environment. Your rival corporate entities likely have understood mandatory life-cycle Telecom/Wireless Expense Management (TEM/WEM) is vital to their expense reduction strategies. If not, they will soon. Your team would be wise to prioritize this TEM/WEM approach as well.

If your teams telecom/wireless efforts are anything other than cradle to grave management, your company’s telecom/wireless spend and employee time commitments are likely greater than is necessary for your business usage and required services. Check out these 5 Critical Functions of cradle to grave TEM/WEM solutions.

5 Critical Functions of life cycle TEM/WEM Services

1.  Invoice/Financial Management  

From invoice receipt to payment an automated solution is key to an affective life-cycle management of your telecom environment services.  Once the electronic/paper billing is received the data must be fed into an automated software solution for the establishment of the TEM/WEM process.  Core to this course of action is a centralized data base from which your team can manage all aspects of financial, accounting, and bill payment workflow. Such solutions must provide the right processing tools; exception reporting capability, carrier contract & corporate rules validation, as well as cost/split allocations and a robust reporting tool with a telephony aptitude to utilize it. This application will form the foundation to a true Cradle to Grave TEM/WEM approach.

 2.   Order Management

Centralizing and automating your device procurement process is essential to corporate control and the establishment of an accurate asset management process. This practice permits only corporate selected devices from which the employee/end-user can choose and only corporate hierarchy/cost center/device type approved services/devices into the inventory. The following related procurement services include:

• Procurement/eProcurement– All telecom services should be ordered centrally and accounted for from inception from within the app.

Wireless - All vendor devices are selected from a corporate approved online catalog covering all accepted corporate carrier, device and accessories types.

The look and feel of the online wireless catalog should be client/company specific to give the end-user a comfort level expediting and enhancing their selection experience.

Additional Best in Class wireless ordering portal features are:

• selections from all corporate approved carrier/device/accessory types available and up to date.
• corporate policy should be required and accepted by end-user.
• corporate approval process automatically requested and certified before order placement.
• all approved device and accessories are shipped to the selected address.
• Procured devices/accessories are received by the correct end-user within all carriers promised SLA’s.
• the entire process is duly noted.
• optimally all above transactions should be hierarchy/cost center driven; i.e. Catalog device/accessory types are dependent on where the subscriber/end-user sits in the hierarchy.

Provisioning(wireless)  – Automated and/or live wireless support ensures:

• correct device voice and data provisioning/set up
• timely end-user device training
• accurately entering transaction, device/accessory, end-user data, and cost center/hierarchy info into the wireless asset inventory.

All such disciplines save the end-user/corporate telecom team (WEM solution provider) both time and the company capital due to proven automated process efficiencies.

3.   Inventory/Asset Management – Combined with the afore-mentioned eProcurement solution, wireless support/Help Desk is no less vital to maintaining an uncorrupted asset inventory. Maintaining the ongoing reliability of the data on who has what device, and what cost center/project(s) should account for it completes the loop for wireless inventory management.

 Help Desk (wireless) – On-line or live wireless support provides the ongoing accuracy company’s must require. Inventory Management requires controlling the distribution of your wireless device population while allowing your end users/telecom team to get back to work on their core responsibilities. Help Desk aids in resolving these time-consuming issues/distractions, saving your enterprise substantial time and money.

From centralized/automated device selection/approval, procurement order entry/processing, provisioning, all Moves, Adds, Changes (MAC’s), reporting, and data analysis, Help Desk/Wireless Support seamlessly maintains the integrity of the device/end-user/cost center data and helps to ensure its correctness.

If data originally recorded needs to be changed or has been changed, your wireless support team provides that essential link to maintaining or accounting for device/accessory/cost center info so vital to wireless inventory management.

 4.   Vendor/Contract Management – The centralized data base relating to contract management is key to keeping current with carrier pricing, plans, terms and pricing. Quick visibility into such data will help your telecom team be able to access your current status and compare to the latest competitive offerings.  Such info across all vendors should include:   

• your vendors info
• vendor contracts
• carrier contract info including terms/plans/pooling
• contract validation data and processes
• carrier (specific/comprehensive) usage
• carrier (specific/comprehensive) spend
• reporting capabilities available for review (by right, role & responsibility) to all required company staff   
• Company Wireless Device/Accessory Policy and validation processes 

5.   Expense Management/Optimization – Finally all of the previous disciplines are designed to optimize your telecom/wireless expenses and contribute to a radically reduced spend. Comprehensive Usage/Spend Reporting, Exception generating capability, and analytical expertise will help you achieve the highest level of expense management success resulting in optimum savings generation. Your Expense Management strategies should include:

• Cost Avoidance/ Optimization – ensures enterprise should only be paying for necessary services, devices, accessories, features options required for the optimum operation of corporate telecommunications goals.
• Audit Services – invoice validation, contract compliance, trending analysis
• Report Management – contract/business rule compliance/corp. policies, pooling, dispute management, trending, zero use features/devices, feature option adds needed, features not needed, and additional ad hoc reporting capability is required.

Businesses utilizing these 5 Critical Functions of Cradle to Grave Telecom/Wireless Expense Management services will dramatically increase time/cost efficiency while radically reducing corporate telecom/wireless spend spectacularly.

Individual Liable V Corporate Liable; Which Is Best For Your Enterprises Wireless Device Environment?

Corporate Captains are asking themselves which is the best way for my company to get the greatest bang for our wireless bucks, Individual Liable (IL – employee owned cell phones & Smartphones) or Corporate Liable (CL). Some business Smartphones are reaching the cost of laptops while the population of wireless devices is escalating in many corporate inventories even during this dark economic downturn. In some companies cell phone/BlackBerry/smartphones can account for hundreds if not thousands of devices. Determining the optimum approach for controlling, managing, and paying for such services could literally save or cost your company a mint.

Your telecom team needs to consider the advantages for both approaches. Then you can decide which strategy is best for your enterprise, providing the best performance indicators and the most advantageous budgetary considerations.

Individual Liable Advantages

Corporate Split Liability is a strategy which may provide some advantages for a few businesses. Advantage may occur if corporate policy requires the employee to pay for a large portion of the monthly recurring and equipment charges. In this way the business may mitigate gains other wised realized by pooling, volume negotiated contracts, ETF waivers, equipment/device/accessory and feature discount offsets under the CL model.

• Employee is largely responsible for device selection and will likely have greater personal satisfaction with the device selected.
• Employee may be more careful with personally owned equipment while being more restrained from continually updating to the newest more expensive technology (which could also be a liability from a productivity and efficiency standpoint).
• A major consideration was a Tax related until recently. These issues are no longer any advantage after the change in tax laws in fall of 2010. Cell Phones are no longer a taxable benefit and no longer need to be tracked and accounted for.

Corporate Liable Advantages

It is essential to leverage your corporate wireless device population for maximum wireless plan and equipment discounts resulting in terrific savings as you improve your contract terms. For example:

• Negotiated discounted or free feature/equipment benefits (I.E. texting, data plans, phone equipment and accessories).
• CL Corporate discounts with an additional negotiated enterprise discount.
• ETF (Early Termination Fee’s) waiver concessions may provide your enterprise a large number of permitted devise early terminations without standard penalty fees.

A corporate decision maker needs to ask, why a business would prefer to pay standard consumer rates for a carriers wireless devices. Losing the significant pricing and term advantage their volume of devices will afford.

It is easy to see with such advantages that the CL savings per device could easily exceed $30 a month.  If your company had 1,000 devices in your inventory you would be looking at minimally $360,000 in annual savings.  

• CL combined with wireless expense management (WEM) solutions will provide automation, centralization and visibility into wireless usage, trends, and spend, while expediting procurement, help desk services, bill pay processes, optimization and cost avoidance services.
• Optimizing pooling plans will minimize your cost per device while maximizing your device usage, super-sizing your savings potential. Combining Wireless Expense Management (WEM) cost avoidance/optimization with cost/time efficiencies will produce significantly better results than the $30 per device savings described in the scenario above.
• Corporate control of your cell phones/smartphones/wireless devices. It is likely not beneficial to your enterprise for the telephone numbers your client’s are conditioned to call, leaving with former employees (IL scenario).
• A centralized corporate policy and an automated approval of all wireless assets will permit only devices into corporate inventory that are useful to your employees and commensurate with their roles and responsibilities.
• Better carrier or WEM Help Desk support providing time/cost efficiencies not received by the IL customer who will have to remain on the phone to resolve the issues on which they require assistance.
• Possible security issues. An IL device connected to the corporate network will be monitored and managed by either your WEM solution provider or internal IT. Without CL corporate control, the device will not be approved for access to the company network. The concern is the employee owns the wireless equipment/smart phone/cell phone; however, the company has ownership of all required corporate data and applications. Proprietary info and protecting corporate network infrastructure will be increasingly difficult exasperated by numerous IL users possibly given such critical access.

 Our analysis concludes; CL places the load of wireless management on the company’s shoulders. However, that is really the only disadvantage. For the CL program to be truly cost effective, it needs to be managed either with internal resources utilizing an automated WEM solution or outsourced to a WEM solution provider. Centralization and automation of the life-cycle management of your wireless assets is critical to the cost/usage/time optimization and efficiency required to provide maximum savings ensuring the Corporate Liable advantage.

As information is power, the advantage is now yours. If the CL advantage makes sense for you and your telecom team; Corporate Liable is likely an authentic key to your company’s telecom cost reduction strategies.

Integrity has assisted several enterprises in migrating companies from IL to CL as well as transitioning from basic mobile phones to BlackBerry/Smartphones.

Let us know how we can help.

3 Keys to Why You Need a Telecom Professional’s Analysis to Maximize Your Business’s Telecom Savings Potential

Difficult times dictate radical changes in the way we typically choose to do business. Often corporate policy is to stretch their own resources to audit their telecom services. In house in-sourcing of such projects often makes sense on the surface. However, with additional thought there are several drawbacks that you need to consider. Once considered, you will likely conclude out-sourcing to a telecom professional is key. Let’s discuss 3 reasons why.

1.      Rethink Internal Insourcing; Optimal Savings Vs Minimal Savings/Outsourcing is KEY.

In house expertise is often not as motivated to achieve optimal results. This is an unfortunate condition that often afflicts even the best organizations. In defense of your telecom team, they are extremely busy trying to keep your critical telecom services operational. Most often they are overwhelmed and undermanned. This will often produce an attitude of “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” which develops a negative inertia that internally is hard to overcome.

If the incumbent carriers discounted services, all will be satisfied. Right? Wrong! Our analysts often report, when commissioned by the client to seek solution alternatives and competitive offers from various carriers, the incumbent carrier reps quickly go around our analysts with an offer designed to lock our client’s in to new terms with marginally better rates.   Unfortunately, this often occurs before the client has been presented with  competitive offers and negotiations have truly even begun.   

Minimal savings are accomplished. However, at what cost? The cost is often:

• unnecessary or excessive set up/incidental charges
• unreasonably higher monthly recurring charges  yet to be sifted through the competitive analysis and tested processes utilized by your telecom professional
• terms less favorable than otherwise available

For these reasons outsourcing is key to Optimal Savings Vs Minimal Savings.

2.      Professional assistance is KEY to providing all the alternative solutions for the highest level of optimization success, staying competitive.

Do you have the in-house expertise available to consider all the angles? Unfortunately, your telecom team works long and hard to get you their best results. Those results may not take into account new technologies representing alternative solutions which would take your optimization of services to the highest level of success. Providing savings is welcome, but stopping short of an optimal savings recommendation is short-sighted and may put your company at a competitive disadvantage.

Recently we found a client’s major competitor taking advantage of a cutting edge technology which supplied them with significant cost savings. While our client had negotiated aggressive pricing with their current carriers, providing marginal savings over last year’s budget, this effort had the unfortunate effect of locking in a 36 month disadvantage against a key competitor. Had the client utilized a similar alternate solution, the savings would have been far greater. They are now at a competitive disadvantage which could be quantified in excess of $1,000,000 corporate wide. In this economy, conceding such ground is more difficult than ever to make up. With the help of a professional telecom consultant/auditor this disadvantage could have been completely avoided.

Outsourcing to a Telecom Professional is key to providing the highest level of optimization while preventing a competitive disadvantage.

3.      Don’t Get Greedy; Calmly Stay Focused On Fully Utilizing Your Telecom Professional’s Expertise.

Once your enterprise has a qualified consultant/auditor working in your behalf, you need to let them utilize their tried and true processes to achieve your very best results. Often, your consultant is working on a contingency or “performance” basis. They are highly motivated to achieve for your enterprise the optimal outcome.

Let’s be honest, there is the temptation to bypass your consultant when the carrier reps come directly to you with their offer (and they will come to you with offers as soon as they realize you have hired a consultant). Your telecom team may surmise, if I get the savings direct from the carrier, I will not need to compensate the consultant for his work. Big mistake, don’t get greedy. Stay the course. Your contract likely covers this possibility and you shoot yourself in the foot, by settling for savings yet not achieving the optimal savings available. You also lose the time/labor efficiencies that occur when your consultant is implementing, supervising, and validating the maximum savings opportunities, freeing your telecom team to focus on their core responsibilities. Just as the Good Book teaches, Greed is not good.

We recommend you act on these 3 Keys as to Why You Need a Telecom Professional’s Analysis to Maximize Your Business’ Telecom Savings Potential. Contact me to see how we can help maximize your company’s telecom savings.

 Gary Sambursky