Unchecked Expense

Most of the clients of Renodis, a telecommunications expense management firm in St. Paul, are large organizations with multiple locations that spend a minimum of $25,000 per month on telecom expenses. “In many organizations, telecom is one of the top five expenses, and if we can save them 20 to 30 percent on their bills, that is substantive,” says Steve Lambros, president of the company.

He says Renodis was able to save one local law firm about $86,000 on its $3,332,000 annual telecom bill by applying control measures such as standardizing contracts with vend-ors and improving telecom inventory management. Renodis lumps typical savings from its billing audits into three categories: waste (unused telecom services or features), credits (corrections for misbillings), and pricing improvements (paying non-market rates.)

Lambros says conducting an audit pays the biggest dividends after a company adds new telecom services. “For any large organization with multiple locations, getting the telecom bill to match what was contracted for is a real challenge out of the gate, and can be a problem in 50 percent of the cases,” he says. “Telecom environments are not static in large enterprises. New services are frequently added or discontinued, and when there is change, there is greater opportunity for error. Most people have problems with their telecom billing because they didn’t get it right in the first place.”

Singh believes that inventory management has emerged as a major issue for companies seeking to get a better handle on telecom expenditures. “You would be surprised how often [it happens] in companies that when employees need a phone line, they just order it on their own without any centralized oversight or procurement,” she says.

Around the Clock Wireless

Wireless costs are one of the fastest growing expenses for organizations, and as managers plan for increasing use of personal digital assistants (PDAs), smartphones, and other mobile devices that enable wireless data and voice access from the field, those costs are likely to keep rising.

One of the best ways to harness those burgeoning costs, experts say, is to create well-documented corporate policies for wireless use. Formal plans help track inventory (cell phones and service plans), personnel status (how many people are using devices and which plans they use), job function, usage, and costs, resulting in more employees contacting carriers when they leave a company.