The Telecom Treasure Hunt

How to find easy money by organizing and validating your telecom service inventory.

By Mark Evans, CEO, Quickcomm Software Solutions

Introduction

This paper was developed from ideas put forth in a Quickcomm webinar by the same name. The goals of this paper are to help companies to:

• Learn how to create and maintain a clean telecommunications inventory
• Know where to go to get started with telecom expense management (TEM)
• Create an internal telecommunications evaluation process
• Understand what is driving their telecommunications expenses
• Make the best use of their own internal resources

The challenge is how to turn existing practices that "spot check" telecom expenses into a "best practice" process of ongoing telecommunications expense management. As with any such undertaking, where and how to start can be major stumbling blocks. There are issues of who is responsible for what and who owns the information, as well as how and where do companies store the information needed to truly and effectively manage telecommunications expenses.

What is the Nature of the Problem?

Many executives may wonder what the problem is in the first place. Is it important enough to warrant a lot of effort and resource? A few simple facts will help to illuminate the nature and the scope of the problem.

• 10-12% of telecommunication invoice charges are wrong!
• Of those, 85% of the errors are in the telecommunications carrier's favor.

Companies regularly under and over utilize services and still have active telecommunications services for people and places that are long gone.

Simple math is all that is necessary to realize that any substantial company is incurring telecommunications expenses that range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars that they should not be paying.

Getting Started Means Collecting Information

For any company, the first step in getting telecommunications expenses under control is to collect the right information. The collection of data is a three stage process:

Stage 1: The company should collect account numbers with detail.

Stage 2: The company should breakdown and list "service numbers".

Stage 3: The company needs to gather information about locations including open and closed locations as well as historical and pending lease terms. From human resources (HR) they need to gather at least 3 years of records on active and terminated employees. Existing inventory, IT records, provisioning information, and cost/project codes should also be gathered.

The first place for a company to start is to collect information from their carriers. It is very important that the data must contain service numbers, service types, and physical service locations. If the carrier provides bills on paper the company can still request an inventory in an electronic format.

The next place to collect information is internally. A great deal of the information will be found in HR and Finance systems such as PeopleSoft, SAP, Oracle and other databases, and spreadsheets. Additional provisioning information may be found in IT systems.>

Extend the Value of the Exercise - Make it a Repeatable Process

It is important to move this exercise beyond a one-time "snapshot" to a constant and repeatable process. To do this a company will need to convert their paper data into an electronic format. Inventory data will need to be normalized into a single database. It is important to combine mobile and landline services and create templates for storing information. A company should clean the data as they go so that they have a clean, organized service inventory that ties into other important data sources.

Employ a TEM Solution to Help

A telecom expense management (TEM) solution can help with the gathering, storing, and normalizing of telecommunications data. In addition, it can help a company to:

• Automate validation and manage by exception
• Understand Usage Drivers
• Ensure Contract Compliance
• Retire Outdated Technology
• Enforce Corporate Policy
• Create an Ongoing Validation Process

What a Company Will Find

Companies should target their hunt for problems in the following order:

• Locations
• People
• Cost Codes
• Corporate Projects

Following are the types of problems that they will find.

Company Mishaps

A company will find problems such as:

• Services are for invalid cost/project codes
• Billing is active for invalid cost/project codes

Vendor Mishaps

Companies will also identify problems with their vendors, such as:

• Incomplete MACDs (moves, adds, changes and deletes)
• Complete MACDs that were never reflected on bills

Combination (Company/Vendor) Mishaps

The company will also uncover problems that can be laid at the feet of both the vendor and the company, such as:

• Billing is active for services at closed locations
• Billing and services are active for terminated employees

What Should be Done with the Findings?

A company should first identify if the problem is internal vs. external. If the problem is internal, the company should:

• Develop or change business processes to address the problems
• Implement or enforce corporate policies

If problems are external, the company should:

• Understand their rights as well as the statute of limitations (there is no point wasting time on issues that can no longer be addressed)
• Submit findings to their carrier or carriers with as much background detail as possible
• Track credits to validate timely resolutions
• Escalate problems where necessary

Whether the problem is internal or external, the company should record the steps that they take and the lessons learned.

Conclusion

By collecting the right information, putting in place repeatable processes, and supporting the effort with a telecommunications expense management solution, any company should be able to successfully cut telecommunications costs by simple identifying and rectifying errors. Rectifying internal problems will help to prevent costly problems from happening. Identifying external errors and obtaining credits from carriers will save additional expense dollars.

About the Author

Mark Evans is the Chief Executive Officer of Quickcomm Software, a position that he has held for the past 11 years. He has 30 years of experience managing and consulting to telecommunications companies and has held previous roles as the Managing Director of ICC Telecommunications and Telecommunications Director for NatWest AsiaPac Market.