Telecom Expense Management and Managed Mobility Blog

When TEM Hits Home - The $18,000 Mobile Bill

Family, Verizon far apart over nearly $18,000 phone bill

Reading this article on my local news site, it really did bring home the challenges in Telecomm Expense Management. It's personal to the anguish felt by one family who've fallen victim to the complexities of carrier plans.

 

Putting scale aside, there's a great deal of similarity between companies trying to wrap their arms around telecomm expenses and the grief in mismanagement of a single family plan.  Sorting through the pages of fine print in a contract to understand your corporate bills - you just don't have the time.  The invoices roll in, hundreds if not thousands of them each month for a company and you're contracted to pay them within a few short days.

I am not beating on Verizon as it's a complex area and all the carrier plans are pretty much the same. But I particularly liked this quote "What carriers are doing is akin to the government's posting signs that the speed limit is 16.6 centimeters per millisecond, instead of 40 miles per hour".

It is hardly surprising that an industry exists to bring order to this.

Is It Really the "Fox" Guarding the Hen House?

A popular topic recently is; what sort of organisation is best suited to manage an enterprise organization's telecommunications needs?

There are of course, two schools of thought on this topic.  The first portends: "How can a telecom provider be impartial to effectively manage an enterprise's infrastructure and contracts?" The counter argument to this is: "Who better to manage my telecom environment than the experts?"

Personally, I come from a consulting background where impartiality is always critical to objective advice.  Indeed I built a business whose key value was exactly this clear impartiality. However my customers back then were paying for strategic advice - not day-to-day management.

With respect to this discussion, the current contention is around management rather than advice.  Day-to-day functions from which only one element is the provision of information needed to be able to make strategic decisions.

To me, an important aspect of telecom expense management (TEM) is visibility.  If the role of managing any environment is to be outsourced to some degree to an expert, then it is key that the customer gets visibility to exactly the same information as the outsourcer.  If it can be assumed that this is the case, then any recommendations that are made are based upon information that is transparently available to the customer.

Let's take the example of mobile fleet management.  The decision to allow an outsourcing organization (a telecom provider, SI or consulting group) to manage a fleet of mobile devices is not primarily based upon a requirement to ensure that they are getting the best deal; it is based upon a requirement to have experts manage the continuing functions that are becoming increasingly complex. Logistics, provisioning, application management, device management, etc.

Nonetheless, to provide the appropriate results, the outsourcer will need to have access to contract and billing information. So what if it is a telecom provider? They will have access to information that will allow them to... what?  Provide a better plan than those currently contracted?  Does this matter?

There are two ways a telecom provider can handle this situation:

1. Introduce and contract "Chinese walls," where the managed services side of the telecom provider does not share information with the network provider, or

2.  Be open and actively use the information to offer better deals

I believe the question is - if a telecom provider is placed in a position where it uses the information to be able to offer (with no obligation for the customer to accept) better deals than their current plans, then does it matter?  How compromising can this be for the customer?

This is of course, not the only consideration.  There is always the issue of carrier A objecting to carrier B having access to their rates. This has always been an issue with systems integrators like IBM, GS, etc., but somewhat now more pertinent with a carrier offering managed services.  A different subject though, and perhaps one that is worthy of its own post.

On the flip side, it could be said that a managing carrier will only offer a new deal that is "just" enough to beat what the customer currently has, as distinct from a true market analysis through RFP process for example.  This is true, except that again, the customer is not obliged to take such an offer and is at liberty to run a more thorough analysis to truly test the market.

In closing, it seems to me that the popular position of not having the "fox guarding the hen house" is somewhat overplayed and for me at least, the advantages of having an expert in telecommunications (usually with a global infrastructure) manage my telecommunications estate, outweighs the perceived risk.

photo by Laurie Pink

Increasing Efficiencies With Your Helpdesk Requests

I feel like I have been neglecting our service provider audience so I thought that I should write a post today that is applicable to both our enterprise and service provider readers.

Whether you are a TEM/MDM service provider, enterprise, or a carrier, the explosion of your mobile workforce has inevitably led to an increase in the number of service order requests (ie. new mobile, new plan request) you are receiving.  Smartphones are surpassing the mobile phone presence in the enterprise and they require more attention and assistance than ever before with the added pressure of managing applications and new plans, ensuring data security, etc. 

Here is a little food for thought-when you are trying to manage and overcome the increasing service request challenge, remember that there is a direct correlation between the number of reworks a service order will require and the method by which you facilitate the request process. 

Service orders placed via a phone experience have three times greater rework rates (18%) compared to service order requests placed via a web portal (only 5%).  According to AOTMP, 80% of enterprises are still using email or the telephone to handle service requests.

Automate your service request process by implementing a web portal.  Your time is valuable. Whether you are trying to provide a better service to your clients or you are trying to keep your mobile infrastructure up and running, automating the process will give you more time to focus on your core competencies.

I came across this image and had to include it in this post.  It reminded me of one of my favorite SNL skits - Nick Burns: Your Company's Computer Guy...Mooooove! :)    

photo by Security4all

Contract Management Tip: Arm Yourself for the Carrier Negotiation Battle

I have received some really good feedback from the tips I have been sharing with you so I will try to continue sharing ones that I come across and hear my colleagues sharing with clients.

AOTMP Tip #246 

The contract you sign does more than establish the relationship you have with that Telecom Service Provider; the terms and conditions may conflict with requirements within other Telecom Service Provider contracts. Before beginning negotiations, consult your contract catalog, a repository for key, quantifiable information about each of your telecom contracts, to determine the role the new contract will play in your overall contractual landscape.

First, examine the services available under your current contracts to ensure you are not wasting time negotiating a contract for services already available under another contract. Track the end dates for all current contracts to ensure that the proposed contract's term corresponds with your contract management needs. Identify all current revenue commitments to ensure that the proposed revenue commitment aligns with your overall telecom budget. Review all exclusivity clauses in your current contracts as well to ensure the new contract will not leave you in breach of such language with your current Telecom Service Providers.

Your service provider contracts are complex and sometimes the negotiation process can be intimidating. But proper contract negotiation and management has great payoffs - it can reduce your telecom spend by 10-30%. 

I can't stress how much easier the negotiation process is if you have some sort of repository for all of your contracts that gives you visibility into the bigger picture.  Your catalog should house everything from T&Cs, the services covered under each contract, revenue commitments, key dates, SLAs, rates, termination penalties, exclusivity clauses, etc.

Armed with all of this information, you will be in a much better position to avoid overlaps in contracts, understand what parameters you should work within,  and what successful or unsuccessful in the past for you. 

REMINDER: Unfortunately, your work is not done once that new contract has been signed. Don't forget to keep an eye on your new invoices to confirm that they reflect your newly negotiated rates and terms.   

Until next time!

It's All About the App

The proliferation of applications on mobile devices has provided opportunities for all sorts of folks to get involved in the mobile device space, from device manufacturers, os vendors, to pure application suppliers.

The myriad of device / os / application platforms that exist today have produced more powerful, more diverse and more complicated offerings for users to consume, for company's to manage and for carriers to provide. This trend is going to continue for some time.

The impact on Carriers has been the most unheralded but in some ways the most pronounced. We have seen Carriers take sides, not only in the battle to gain exclusive rights (AT&T with the iPhone, T-Mobile with the G1), but increasingly extending into the realm of applications.

AT&T's current battle to block Google Voice is a case in point.

Carriers have begun to take a very active interest in applications.

This is driven by the desire for control, but increasingly this will become about the enhanced profits.

Carriers will also want to control the applications that get deployed on their offerings. QA will be one (a phone that keeps crashing will affect market perception, regardless of who wrote the bugs), but optimum network usage will be another. 

Applications that use too much bandwidth will cause the carrier network management hassles, whilst applications that are too restricted will become next to useless in comparison to their all singing all dancing competition.

An offering with restricted applications, will soon become a offering that a user will want to terminate. To keep customers and attract new ones, carriers will want to control and enhance applications to ensure their offerings meet the market need, if not become the market leader.

All this should see some interesting interaction with the current application providers as the current situation seems a cash cow that they will be very keen to retain. A joint effort could reap huge benefits for both, but putting all the eggs in one basket may prove too risky for both the application providers and the carriers to handle. 

The other shift will see the FCC need to address this application space. That may take the form of today where they treat pure voice usage as very distinct from data transmission. The concept of Universal Service is possibly too far entrenched in current legislation for it to be otherwise. 

This will be problematic for vendors such as Google that wish to treat it so. I am also confident, given the proliferation of application providers, that a whole new set of apps that incorporate Voice is in the pipeline. Just how the FCC will respond then will remain to be seen.

Photo by umpcportal.com