Telecom expense management is one of the fastest growing areas in the telecommunications industry for one simple, obvious reason: Companies want to keep their cellular and landline costs down. Ten years ago saving money on these items was a relatively straightforward research and accounting task, but in the age of the smartphone, cell phone plans alone are complicated enough to demand attention from an expert. As multiple-service platforms subject to sophisticated (and according to some, deceptive) pricing schemes, modern phones often inflict the second highest expenses on businesses – just after payroll.
Telecom expense management experts put communications costs under a microscope, examining them for savings opportunities. A full service telecom expense management firm can not only generate savings requests for proposals (RFPs) but implement them through its own team of certified experts. According to telecom expense management firm GILL Technologies many cost audits discover savings based on the following three factors. These aren’t the only ways telecom expense management services save clients money, but they’re prominent enough to draw attention to in this article.
Cell Phone Billing Errors: Many people are surprised to learn that wireless carriers routinely overcharge out of sheer error – some estimates put the error rate as high as 30%, with most mistakes leading to added costs. Many billing errors are subtle and difficult for a non-expert to spot, such as erroneous dates for service migration and cancellation. Others are more blatant, but can fly under the radar in an enterprise-scale organization, such as when carriers charge for extra handsets.
Cell Phone Usage Analysis: Although gigantic cell phone bills display usage (along with other line items that are incomprehensible for the non-expert) they don’t provide any easy way to analyze your company’s usage across the entire fleet. Telecom expense management professionals don’t just find the cheapest plans based on basic costs, but on how members of your organization actually use their phones, down to the minute, message and bit of data. In a more dynamic environment where use fluctuates, RFPs will often feature pooled minutes and other shared resources to compensate for these changes. Otherwise, it becomes possible to select billing that fits your usage needs as closely as possible instead of one size fits all packages that effectively overcharge you for data, messaging and minutes you won’t actually use.
Carrier Analysis: Telecom expense management experts study the carriers as intensely as they do your business. That means they’re fully conversant in the major carriers’ latest pricing schemes and administrative procedures. This allows an analyst to renegotiate your contract from an educated standpoint, migrating services to a new carrier if need be without changing or interrupting any aspect of your existing service. You keep the same phone number and handset and at minimum, the services you’ve always used, but you pay less. Consultants can manage billing and services across multiple carriers in a way that would be impossible (or at least impractical) for an in-house accountant.
Once you add these tactics together you may be looking at a significant cost reduction. For example, some GILL Technologies clients have saved over 50% on their billing compared to their previous plans. These real savings (telecom expense management consultants typically draw profits from a percentage of the savings, so costs never increase for their clients) demonstrate why telecom expense management has become such a popular business to business service in both prosperous and uncertain economic climates.
Established in 2000, GILL Technologies provides
telecom expense management solutions covering
cell phone plans, VoIP, IT and data and landlines, as well as hardware procurement and dedicated customer service.
