Telecom Bill Auditing Identifies Millions in Savings

COMPANY BACKGROUND

The organization was founded in 1984 and has grown to a US$39 Billion global company of more than 65,000 employees in 28+ countries whose very name is synonymous with computer networking.  The Company’s engineers have created, and implemented much of the cutting edge telecommunication technology, industry-leading products, and networking solutions that connect our modern world.

BUSINESS CHALLENGES

Providing and managing all the necessary connections to support The Company’s global operation is a challenge even for a networking giant like this organization.  More than 150 Service Providers and Telecom Vendors currently provide connections, circuits, and services to the Company, generating a total annual spend that exceeds US$175 Million.

Direct challenges included:

  • Timely processing of telecom bills received in many forms, cycles, currencies, and languages
  • Creation and management of an accurate inventory of circuits and services associated with carriers
  • Reporting on key metrics
  • Working with service providers to define and receive bills in electronic format wherever possible
  • Paying bills accurately, on schedule
  • Identifying billing errors and flagging for dispute
  • Creating a method for anyone within The Company to request new, or changes to existing, services and circuits

And last, but certainly not least:

  • Doing all of this with the existing staff of telecom billing experts

PROJECT OVERVIEW

After winning the competitive RFP and entering into a contract in late 2007, the Company and Quickcomm worked closely together to implement a comprehensive TEM solution to address their telecom billing and inventory challenges.  The sheer magnitude of the task was daunting, so the project was broken into two phases.

Phase-1

This phase started in November 2007, and continued through the end of 2008 with a focus on contract and telecom bill auditing.  Phase-1 identified the Service providers in each of their 28+ countries that comprised approximately 90% of the annual US$175 million telecom spend.  The Company’s TEM team gathered bills and telecom contracts from service providers across the globe.  The Quickcomm Professional Services and Development teams analyzed each bill and billing format.  Where necessary, Quickcomm created new applications and scripts to normalize and load those bills into a common database to create the overall inventory

As a parallel activity, the organizations professionals delivered baseline information to Quickcomm regarding locations, cost codes, and employee hierarchy to correlate and identify circuits and services to create a detailed and manageable inventory.

To satisfy the Company’s requirement for their employees to have the ability to request new services, or changes to existing services, Quickcomm worked closely with the organization to develop and host a new web portal.  This portal, known as QCWeb, ties directly to the main telecom inventory database, and allows any of their 65,000+ employees to enter a request for a new or changed service.

Phase-2

This phase started in October 2008, with a focus on migrating from Deployment tasks to Operational tasks, and to provide their TEM experts with the necessary support to do this as smoothly as possible.  Phase-2 also identifies the Service Providers that make up the remaining 10% of the annual telecom spend, and provides continuing support to the Company for their maintenance of inventory created during Phase-1.  At this point, their TEM experts are well versed in the handling and maintenance of the telecom inventory.

Other Phase-2 tasks include:

  • Defining the migration of primary application problem reporting from the Quickcomm Help Desk to the Company’sHelp Desk
  • Creation of a formal Change Management system between the organization and Quickcomm
  • Addressing requests for new or expanded features
  • Identifying additional areas with the Company where the use of Quickcomm TEM tools can add value

Phase-2 is expected to continue through mid 2009.

RESULTS

The Quickcomm application has generated a greater than 100% ROI.

The project has been expanded to other global regions.

The savings total is greater than $15MUSD and counting.

This project was delivered to the original specifications, on schedule, and within budget.

Some of the many areas of audit and optimization findings included:

  • Active telecommunications services assigned to terminated employees – Quickcomm automatically identified these through integration with their global HR system.
  • Unused services such as audio and web conference – Quickcomm automatically identified these by tracking usage patterns and identifying under / non-use services.
  • Active telecommunications services at closed / non-company locations – Quickcomm automatically identified these through integration with their global premises system.

The entire project has been coordinated by a core group of approximately six TEM experts, with a supporting team of approximately ten other TEM professionals located around the world.   Quickcomm provided two dedicated professionals with a supporting staff of approximately six others from Professional Services and Development.  In addition to handling the additional workload of implementing the new TEM system, professionals continued their regular handling of invoices, management of inventory, processing requests for new and changed services, and approving invoices for payment.

This company is proud to use Quickcomm and available for select reference calls.


Join the conversation