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2621 Bay Street Suite
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Customer Testimonial: "Due to significant transitions in our facilities, coupled with telecom personnel changes, we weren’t able to properly reconcile active circuits with billing. Total Solutions Group identified over $20,000 per month in unused connectivity which we cancelled within days, generating considerable immediate savings."
--VP Finance, Michigan Banking Group
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| December 2003 |
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Volume 1, Issue
8 |
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| Planning For Your 2004 Telecom
Budget |
| Tips you need to
know, before you do! |
Audit Just One
Piece
Of Telecom Savings Pie
Total
Telecom Cost Management (TTCM) is more than hiring auditors for billing error
refunds.
To lower costs, you must
attack them at their source, in a "proactive" fashion.
"Reactive" after-the-fact solutions, such as audits, are far more
costly and ultimately less rewarding from an ROI perspective. And we say that
even though we perform audits for many of our clients!
Aberdeen
Group
and Gartner Dataquest, the leading analysts on telecommunications, both agree
that telecom costs can, and must, be driven down. We agree with them, and that's
why we works to reduce ALL of the unnecessary costs associated with telecom.
Keep in mind that the majority of unnecessary costs will never be recovered.
Once paid to the carriers, those dollars are gone forever.
An Integrated Effort
Managing telecom networks
for maximum performance and minimum expense are not independent activities.
Unless the two objectives are pursued in tandem, pushing for results on one side
can negatively impact the other. A unified "Total Telecom Cost
Management" (TTCM) approach keeps both performance and cost in mind at all
times.
TTCM can be likened to
a five spoke traffic circle.
Where you enter the circle
depends on where you are coming from, and how far you travel around the circle
depends on where you need to go. The framework for TTCM is simple:
| Network |
Insure
that the right technology and services are in place to deliver the
performance your enterprise demands. |
| Procurement |
Acquire
these services under the most favorable terms. |
| Billing
Accuracy |
Insure
that you are being charged correctly per your contracts, USOCs, tax
status and applicable tariffs and/or service guides. |
| Invoice/Service
Management |
Drive
out all unnecessary costs and wasted time related to managing your
network inventory and the business side of telecom operations. |
| Information
Reporting |
Provide
everyone with a vested interest in telecom from a technical or financial
perspective with access to the information they need for budgeting,
planning or network controls. |
Simple isn't it? Yet few
companies can truly claim to be successfully performing these functions within
an overall telecom management strategy. As one telecom expert states,
"Every unnecessary payment going to the telcos is like making them a
donation. And they aren't my favorite charity."
Entering The Circle
As with cars on the road,
you can enter a traffic circle from any direction. We encourage you look at your
needs, both immediate and long-term, for guidance on what cost management issues
to tackle first. Here are some scenarios that might sound familiar:
- A data-heavy financial
company needs a network analysis, but there isn't time to get it done before
a contract for data services comes due. So, we attack the contract first,
making it as flexible and supportive as possible of network changes that are
likely to take place in the coming year. When the network is addressed at a
later date, at least the customer won't be boxed into using a set of
services it no longer wants or needs.
- A holding company is
having problems managing the business end of its telecom services. Cost
allocations, cost center approvals and AP/GL issues are driving them crazy.
They need to get this automated first. They can deal with their networks and
contracts later.
- A pharmaceutical
company has concerns about the validity of their bills. They have contracts
expiring in 6 months and are prepared to change vendors due to the problems.
They need an audit to quickly find and quantify all errors under this vendor
so they can be settled while they still have negotiating leverage.
- A large sales and
marketing company has over 1,000 cell phones. It's a primary cost category
for them in telecom and they have lost control. They need wireless
management right now since their unnecessary costs can never be recovered by
an audit.
TTCM defines best-in-class
telemanagement. If your goal is leadership in this critical area (and we assume
it is), keep in mind that it can't happen until you and your team take action.
If you're ready, we'd like to learn about your needs, and whether we can help
you in the same way we have helped other businesses.
Consultation With
Experts
Nobody likes a sales call,
including us. We think that an enterprise telecom professional should be talking
with a peer expert, not a salesperson. That's why we make our senior telecom
professionals available for informational conferences with interested companies,
rather than our sales team. Just to talk telecom, not to sell. We learn about
you. You learn about us.
To arrange a conference,
please contact Amber Dufrene, our VP of Business Development today. She will
personally set up a meeting with one of our senior team members to discuss
telecom management issues. Amber can be reached at 877-455-3074 by email at director@totalsolutionsgroup.org
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| Nextel Retains
Top Slot |
| Nextel retained the #1 position in the Technology Business Research's
Quarterly benchmark of US mobile operators for the 3rd consecutive Quarter.
Nextel and Verizon (2nd) are the two mobile operators that
distinguish their operations from the pack.
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| Everybody
Wants To Offer VOIP! |
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Qwest Jumps into VoIP Market Qwest said yesterday it has begun offering VoIP
services to some customers in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, according to The
Boston Globe.
The company said it will eventually expand VoIP service throughout
its territory sometime next year. "The future of voice communications will
be based on the Internet," Qwest's CEO Richard Notebart said.
AT&T to Launch VoIP Service AT&T is expected to announce today that
it will launch VoIP service in over 100 markets in the next two years, according
to the Wall Street Journal.
The company said it will start with three markets on
the East Coast and also expand existing programs for business customers who rely
on VoIP.
The company said VoIP service will save it $10 billion a year by
enabling it to bypass the Baby Bell's networks. "VoIP is the most
significant, fundamental new technology shift in telecommunications in decades,
and will deliver value to all customers," the company said in a statement.
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| Business Expo
Drawing Winner |
Congratulations to Jennifer Bolie from National City
Bank.
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| Saginaw Saves
Money with TOS |
Total Solutions Group Saves the City of Saginaw over $193,000
annually!!! For more details on how we did it...call us and we'll come
and tell you how!
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| Join Us and
Save! |
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Join our Growing List of Satisfied Clients:
City of Saginaw
Detroit Educational Services
Freeland Public Schools
Wirt
Financial Services
McDonald Auto Group
Keystone Property Management
Saginaw Transit Authority (STARS)
We've eliminated
over $500,000 in Telecom expense this year!
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| Another Success
Story! |
“Until Total Solutions Group performed their audit of our long distance
charges, we thought our vendor-provided billing CDs gave us all the information
we needed to validate our charges.
It turns out that some critical call type categories were not broken out
on the CD, nor provided for in our contracts, and we were being stuck with
ridiculously high rates that were hidden from us.
With sizeable new discounts on these call types, we will save many
thousands every month.”
IT Director, Mid Michigan Hospital
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| Yet
Another Success
Story! |
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“Due to significant
transitions in our facilities, coupled with telecom personnel changes, we weren’t
able to properly reconcile active circuits with billing. Total
Solutions Group identified over $20,000 per month in unused connectivity which
we cancelled within days, generating considerable immediate savings.”
VP Finance, Michigan Banking Group
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Case Study: Driving Down
Wireless Costs
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In April,
2003 the telecom administrator at a medical equipment manufacturer was tasked
with trimming $100,000 from the annual telecommunications budget. He assumed
this process would require him to evaluate the entire spectrum of telecom spend,
and decided to start with the company's 400 cell phones.
But how? He
knew that they were likely spending too much on wireless but he didn't have an
internal option to resolve the problem. Whatever thinking had led them to this
situation needed to be "rethought". It was time for automation, and
help from the outside.
That's where
the CellAssess application capability came in. Within days of deployment, rate
plan optimizations and abusive-user savings opportunities were identified. Real
savings of $25 per phone and $10,000 per month were being captured by August.
And those are net savings, after paying the costs of this solution!
CellAssess
isn't just a one-time correction tool, it provides ongoing wireless management
capability. So building upon the initial savings, the client continues to
receive incremental monthly savings by enabling managers to closely monitor
spending while providing automated rate plan recommendations.
We encourage
you to consider CellAssess when rethinking your wireless management plan. The
savings opportunities are significant, and the reduction in administrative
effort will make this challenging task a whole lot easier.
Interesting Facts from a recent CIO Poll
During October 2003, the CIO Magazine Tech Poll panel projected IT budgets
to grow by 6% over the next 12 months, relatively unchanged from last month's
results (5.9%).
* The percentage of CIOs planning to increase spending on
telecom equipment was 37.2%, an increase over last month (33%) and the highest
increase in 26 months.
* Security software continues to be the strongest sector in the poll with 57%
of respondents planning to increase spending (versus 61% in September).
* A special question was asked this month about the level of priority that
business continuity/IT disaster recovery services expenditures will receive next
year. 21% of panelists indicated that it would receive zero-to-low priority, 51%
indicated it would receive medium priority, and 27% indicated that it would
receive high priority.
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