It’s not just you. Mobile phone usage IS very difficult to manage within an organization. In fact, wireless costs are increasing a rate of 30% or more for many enterprises partly due to increased use but also because of insufficient or just plain out of control mobility management.
I recommend three ways to get this beast under control:
- Establish a strong corporate policy for mobility with automated enforcement. The key here is not only top-down support of the policy, but a formal (meaning documented and publicized) policy that assigns service plans/devices by job roles, and defines consumption / usage rules. I’d also recommend a procurement portal to automate enforcement for acquisition, upgrades, and deactivation.
- Manage employees’ plans to save money. Sounds easy when I say it like that, huh? But to be serious, this requires a structured, automated approach. You absolutely need software that monitors wireless plans / consumption for you. Also, you do need to do a little work to get the biggest bang for your buck from providers. Get in touch with someone here at Telesoft about how to pool users, optimize service plans, negotiate better rates, etc.
- Automate invoice management, validation, and reporting. These tasks are incredibly labor intensive and there’s no reason to keep doing them manually! Automate to avoid billing errors, human errors, late payment penalties, as well as automate reconciliation of billing with inventory, automatically manage chargebacks, and fully meet tax compliance requirements.
If you follow my guidelines and implement a wireless expense management program, I predict you save at least 5%, but maybe as high as 35% of your total telecommunications expenses. I look forward to hearing your individual feedback and results.
For #1, I’d add that international roaming, data usage, application and ringtone downloads, 411, and add-on services such as LBS should definitely be part of the mobility consumption policy. But having been in the trenches, creating a policy just means that a few IT or operations people understand how things should work. It’s not until the organization gains automated policy enforcement and routed approvals for service orders that these policies gain teeth and enforceability.
For #2, that breakout between data, voice (broken out into in-network, in-play, overage, international, and roaming), and SMS/MMS usage is increasingly important as the US catches up the the rest of the world from a messaging perspective. Companies leave a criminally large amount of money on the table because they don’t have the skill sets to understand rate plan optimization and contract negotiations.
For #3, I’d also add compliance issues such as Sarbanes Oxley and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which require a level of archiving that many IT and telecom departments may not be familiar with. If they have call accounting systems, they may be covered on the landline side, but few companies are well equipped to meet these compliance issues from a wireless perspective. Direct cost is important, but there’s also a TCO perspective to consider for your readers.