Are Your Wireless Costs on the Rise?
By Stephen Machin, CMA

Many companies that have a large mobile work force have seen their wireless telecommunications costs increase dramatically over the past 3 or 4 years.  Executives, sales forces, technicians, delivery staff and other remote works make up the majority of wireless costs.  There is no doubt that the advent of cell phones, blackberries and PDA’s have made these employees much more productive but the costs can in some cases be extremely high. 

ERA Canada has recently worked with a client that was spending over $200,000 a year on about 75 mobile devices.  The biggest challenge that they faced in managing this cost is that the usage patterns varied substantially from user to user.  In addition, individual user’s requirements changed over time due to changes in jobs, territories or general business adjustments.  This makes for a very difficult environment for IT departments, which is where responsibility often ends up, to manage these costs. 

To make matters even more difficult, the wireless carriers make their pricing strategies as complex as possible to make it even more difficult to monitor and manage.  For Telus and Bell and to a lesser extent Rogers, the greatest growth area for revenue and more importantly, profit is in the wireless market as opposed to the traditional land lines and long distance.  It is no surprise that they will do whatever is necessary to protect and enhance this business.

The greatest challenge for companies in managing their wireless costs is that they don’t have the resources available to monitor all of their existing plans.  Our client recognized that this and engaged ERA Canada to review and implement changes to reduce these costs.  After carefully analyzing the usage patterns of each user over a 3 month period we were able to recommend changes that better matched the individual requirements to the available rate plans.  Often the carriers will have unpublished rate plans that are only available if specifically requested, therefore, current market knowledge is imperative to obtaining the best rates available. 

Our first set of recommendations for this client resulted in savings of 20% or $40,000 per year.  Shortly after implementing these savings there was a shift in the market and we were able to implement additional recommendations that added another $20,000 of savings.  The key to realizing these savings is the ongoing monitoring that ERA Canada provides for 24 months.  This ensures that the savings are actually realized and when the next market shift occurs we will make sure that this client gets benefit of further rate reductions right away. 

If you think your wireless costs are too high here are 4 steps to help rein them in:

1. Analyze usage patterns for each user for 3 to 6 months.
2. Review rate plans of the carriers and select the best match for each user.
3. Regularly review current usage to make sure that the selected rate plan still is the most appropriate.
4. Check for any new rate plans introduced by the carriers that may be more economical.

If all this sounds like too much of an investment of scarce resources consider outsourcing this function.  ERA Canada can provide all of these tasks and our “no savings, no fee” guarantee will apply.