Our client is a leading international mining group with executive offices in Melbourne. The organization has over 30,000 full time employees and tens of thousands of contractors worldwide. Operating activities span the world but are strongly represented in Australia and North America with significant business units in South America, Asia, Europe and southern Africa.
The organization’s telecommunications spend in 2007 was estimated to be $20 million. Each individual cost center managed their telecom spend with the system of their choice. With disparate systems, it was nearly impossible for management to get an accurate and cohesive picture as to who owned what. Expenses were both unaccounted for and allocated to the wrong cost centers; the majority falling under the IT department’s budget.
One of the major challenges for the client was the management of telecom invoice processing. Processing approximately 300 invoices a month and allocating costs was labor intensive. Without the ability to read invoices electronically, it was impossible for them to capture usage data or validate the correct amounts were being paid. The company’s finance department was primarily concerned with getting the bills paid on time in order to avoid late penalties. When the invoices arrived, they were paid even though there was a high probability of them being incorrect.
“Resources were being wasted, people were unaccountable and money was being thrown away. We knew there was a better way to manage the process but we were unaware of how to do it. Then Quickcomm came into the picture,” noted IT Infrastructure Department Head – Asia Pacific.
In 2006, the organization embarked on a carrier driven reporting project. Though the initial project did help create a centralized reporting system, it was evident that the data reported wasn’t accurate. Shortly after the project began, a sales director from Quickcomm reached out to the company’s IT department and introduced them to the concept of Telecom Expense Management (TEM). They quickly came to realize without tying the bills back to the inventory, orders and contracts, it would be impossible to confirm they were paying for valid services at their contracted rates. The meeting resulted in a glaring need for a telecom management platform that would go beyond managing telecom invoice processing and reporting and help them manage their telecom resources more holistically.
In early 2007, the organization licensed the Quickcomm solution. They wanted to manage inventory, orders and billing while delivering a complete management and reporting system. Quickcomm offered state-of-the-art TEM software to help simplify, evaluate and manage the entire telecom infrastructure in real-time. The primary goal was to implement a solution that would deliver visibility across the entire organization. While implementing Quickcomm, the client was able to consolidate their accounts and determine their actual yearly telecom spend was $26 million.
“Prior to deploying Quickcomm, we didn’t have a clear picture as to what our telecom spend even was.”
Quickcomm was chosen as the only supplier capable of supporting their unique international requirements. Spanning across 5 continents, Quickcomm’s worldwide experience, capabilities and scalability surpassed the other leading TEM providers. They were impressed with Quickcomm’s demonstrated ability to read invoices from anywhere they had a presence, streamlining the telecom invoice processing task. Quickcomm’s ability to consolidate invoices proved to be a success with a reduction of invoices received from 200 to 29.
“Bill management was a black hole and Quickcomm provided us hope. We were truly impressed that Quickcomm’s software could electronically read over 95% of the bills we were receiving.”
One of management’s major objectives of executing a TEM solution for the organization was to gain control. Better control of this manual and highly disjointed process would enable them to finally create and enforce corporate policy. There were no internal checks and balances process in place which led to a lack of accountability. Previously, employees purchased devices off contract, terminated employees left with devices, and excessive usage was rampant. Quickcomm enabled the company to impose a complete procurement-to-payment process with formal authorization requirements that left leaving no room for holes or leaks.
The organization’s return on investment has been exponential. Within the first 90 days, the software identified over $2 million in savings attributed to redundant services alone. The software enabled them to capture and analyze usage for the first time. During the first week they were able to track why usage had increased on a particular bill, drilling right down to the calls that had been made on a specific service and then being able to highlight that back to the cost center manager. The analysis Quickcomm provided gave them the power accurately allocate costs and to lower expenditure exponentially by identifying under and over utilized services. Specifically, they identified a number of excessive mobile users, some spending over $5,000 per month.
Quickcomm’s reporting capabilities has helped create accountability across the organization. Both end users and supervisors are now fully aware of the services belonging to their business unit. Each month, the software sends out a detailed expenditure report to over 5200 users throughout Australia. The first report distributed helped identify over 100 services that needed to be cancelled.
“We have a new level of visibility that we never saw possible before. The reports are invaluable and enable us to identify trending patters and understand how we can optimize our infrastructure”.
The organization is experiencing unprecedented efficiency gains since choosing Quickcomm to manage their infrastructure. The software and best practices surrounding it have completely streamlined their processes. Prior to implementation, the organization spent hundreds of man hours attempting to track their year-to-date spend. Quickcomm’s intuitive database and reporting engines reduced this effort to a matter of minutes. While previously employing 5 people to process all of the billing, it is now handled by one individual. The order management process, once disjointed and decentralized, is now handled by 10 users on one unified platform.
The project has been a complete success and has yielded $3 million in savings thus far. Quickcomm is used throughout Australia and the organization has begun capturing their Asian telecom services to provide even further visibility.
“We have found over $3 million in savings as part of this process,” said the IT Department head. “Being able to report that to our executive team was unreal!”
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