This Month’s Tech Topics
The Rising Costs of Enterprise Mobility Management
In October 2017, IDC forecasted worldwide mobility spending at a staggering $1.58 trillion. This amount included hardware, software and services spending. It also estimated that this spending would reach a whopping $1.72 trillion in 2021.
In a world where access to technology has become easier than ever, why is the cost of enterprise mobility and telecom rising?
Forrester Research1 recently conducted a survey of over 300 business decision-makers to help answer this question. In the Cisco-commissioned report, “Optimize Mobility Management TCO Through Automation,” Forrester found that subscription costs, such as monthly telecom bills and overages are a key expense of a company’s overall mobility budget. However, these costs make up only a third of the budget. The bulk of corporate mobility costs go into maintenance tasks, such as mobile services management, employee support, and managing devices.
Some key findings from the report include:
- Approximately 90 percent of the enterprises interviewed incur overage charges on their bills each year
- Approximately 20 percent of corporate-owned devices go unused
- Manual processes continue to be the norm, with more staff taking more time and resources to handle thousands of monthly mobile device and service changes
- A general lack of real-time usage tracking results in costly and time-consuming billing disputes
As costs rise, businesses are being forced to re-examine their budget-busting telecom expenses. A crucial first step getting a handle on these expenses is a telecom audit.
1 Forrester Consulting (2017) Optimize Mobility TCO with Automation. Available for download here.
Getting Started with a Telecom Audit
A telecom audit is the first step you need to take when trying to take charge of your expenses.
An audit gives you a complete overview of your current services, contract terms, usage, inventory, and invoices. In doing so, a telecom audit helps you identify cost saving opportunities that can help you bring down your telecom expenses.
A thorough telecom audit is a five-step process. These steps include:
- Project Initiation: This stage brings together the auditors and the company to review and agree upon the audit scope, define roles and responsibilities for the audit process, confirm timelines and deliverables, and establish a communication process by which to keep all relevant members apprised and informed of ongoing results.
- Discovery: Once the stage has been set with clear roles and expectations, the audit begins by pinpointing all current inventory locations. This includes an overview of current services and usage, including a complete collection of current invoices and contracts.
- Analysis: Upon the completion of data collection in the discovery phase, the audit then enters the analysis phase. Here, current costs and inventory are benchmarked. Gaps are reviewed as are any telecom expense management efforts.
- Assessment: In this stage, an audit will take stock of current customer service records. Invoices are profiled, savings opportunities are identified, and a cost-benefit analysis of implementing changes is performed.
- Recommendation: In the final stage of the audit, the current state is documented in a report, together with an executive summary, and a financial impact analysis is detailed. A good audit will also include a list of future considerations for the business to keep in mind. The results of the audit must then be reviewed and approved.
Although it is not a quick fix, a telecom audit can go a long way in helping to drive down rising costs. As 2018 rapidly approaches, it’s time to seriously consider an audit if you haven’t already — the investment will be we well worth it in the long haul.
This Month’s Customer Spotlight
Our client, a leader in the visual analytics market, has over 1,600 devices currently included in its wireless expense management (WEM) platform. The company was challenged to support the field with limited resources. For example, one internal resource supported over 800 wireless-related service desk tickets per year. The client also also wanted to optimize plans and features to reduce expenses and prevent overages through automation.
Implementing WEM enabled our client to shift the resource support to our TEM partner, GSG, freeing up internal resource time. Now end users send requests and receive support directly from GSG. There is even a link within their ServiceNow system to allow end users to easily access support requests.
The WEM platform also provides optimization recommendations every month to keep costs down while making sure rate plans and features are optimized to prevent overage charges. One of the game-changing aspects of this optimization is the link to HR’s personnel travel feed. The GSG platform links up with their HR personnel travel feed to show the team when and where end users are traveling. This allows GSG to add or remove international features as needed to keep monthly recurring and usage costs at a minimum.
Our client currently has WEM deployed for the US, Canada, UK, and Sweden. They have intentions of expanding to other countries to create a global standard for wireless support throughout their company.
