As mobile
devices are quickly becoming the most used communications device
within the enterprise, new strategies must be used to manage this
challenge.
Since the
growth has caught most companies off guard, it is no surprise
that many companies still allow their employees to just "own
and expense their own cell phones". Allowing on the
honor system or just letting people use their phones and have the
company pay for it, and have I.T. support it. This is not a
good solution.
As an executive
with fiduciary responsibility to shareholders; the thought
of letting each employee, buy their own furniture, desk phones,
local phone service, long distance service, data services, VOIP,
PBX's, T-1's, internet; own it, expense it, take it with them
when they leave and expect the company to support everything is
truly unthinkable and ridiculous. (sorry for the run
on). So why let employees do just that with arguably the
most important and fastest growing communications expense.
(Mobile).
The primary
reason companies still allow this to go on is their belief that
they don't have time, skill or tools to effectively manage
it. It is just not a priority.
More and more
companies are discovering there is a solution to this
problem.
Utilizing a
combination of outside experts, technology, best practices and
policy setting can truely fix these challenges.
The latest
management tools allow for a flexible systematic way of both
establishing and monitoring policy without human intervention.
These will be outlined below.
In order to
implement these best practices, there are a number of steps you
must take:
First and foremost. (You have to decide at the
"C" level, that this is a priority to change
policies). Many times we lead the horses to the water,
but, well you know the rest of it...
It is best practices now to communicate to the
employees that any phones used for business, are on a business
card or are expensed will need to be transitioned over to
corporate owned or they must get a separate phone for
business only. Employees might "groan" at
this, but hey, you’re paying the bills. In
addition, by having the company own the numbers, this eliminates
the chances of your employee taking a very important asset,
their number your customers knows, along with them when
they leave.
Best practices is to let the outside
management company setup a web based form which then gets sent
to employees with key information such as their number,
device type, carrier, account number, ESN, sim card info,
and a form which is sent to the carrier approving the
transfer of ownership. Once this data is collected
centrally, the management company can simply place bulk orders
to transition ownership. This only requires a simple
letter of authorization indicating that you agree to take
over the financial responsibility. Not as bad as you
think with the right tools and people who do this sort of
thing for a living.
Establish a personal/business use spend policy.
This is important. Most companies could reduce their
mobile expenses by 15-20% just by setting business use spend
policies. These can be done in a number of ways or
combined. These include:
Time of day policy. - if your employee is expected to use
their phone between 8-5M-F most companies are willing to
pay for that. If the employee wants to use their
phone for personal uses outside of business hours,
that’s ok, but the company should not have to pay for it.
Spend limits. Depending on the type of
employee e.g. sales, tech support, admin, exec etc... Each
user type should have some basic spend guidelines. E.g.
a sales person or exec will be expected to use their phone more
frequently thus they may not have a limit. However
for other types of employees, you should have their direct
manager decide on how much that employees needs.
Typically allowing a set amount e.g. $50/month in business
use.
Area code /international policy. Depending on the role of
the employee, where they call and what the company is
willing to pay for will differ greatly. Employees
with business internationally should be allowed to use their
phone at the company’s expense. Employees who do not
however, should not be given a free pass to call anywhere
they want at the company’s expense. This type
of rule is easily established on a user by user basis in
the latest systems. This does not mean your employee
can’t call a foreign country, it just establishes that the
company won't pay for it, if it is unauthorized.
Data use. Depending on the employee, data
needs will differ. Some company’s infact will
only pay for data usage, e.g. blackberries. SMS, MMS,
and other little "tack on" services can very quickly
run up a bill. If an employee wants to text message
all of their friends all the time, that’s fine, just
not on the companies tab. This type of rule is also
very easy to set up with the right management tools.
Call by call. You would be shocked at how many
companies still print copies of bills, send each number
detail to the user, have the user, "highlight"
their personal calls and then have the admin try and break
out the charges. For some companies, this is by far
the most advanced and strict way of managing personal/business
expense. This is not for most companies. Many
govt. agencies are required by law to break their bills out
at this detail. Utilizing the latest mobile
management tools, this is much easier to accomplish.
Systems can actually provide each user with access to their
phone bill and allow them to "check off" which numbers
or calls are personal. e.g. their home phone number.
From that point on, these systems will remember these
numbers and not require the end user to re-key them unless
they wish to override it for other circumstances.
Since the data is all centralized into one database, the
admin costs of tracking this, drops by over 90%.
Implement monthly rate plan optimization. Utilizing
algorithms and the latest technology, some systems can look
at your usage patterns can optimize your rate plans within
each carrier. This can be done every month with your
vendor. (See our article Mobile Management Myths our
homepage.) As you add and remove employees, rate plan
changes happen etc... You can typically find 20-25% savings
just be keeping your rate plans in line.
Implement standards for devices. You should come up
with a small set of devices based on the function
needed. I.e. One or two types of data enabled phones,
a basic voice phone and a higher end voice device.
Preferably, using the same manufacturer. The reason for
standardizing is that batteries, chargers, car chargers and
accessories may be re-used. (if you own the phones. see #1)
Implement a centralized web based, policy based ordering
portal. Having a purchasing policy based on approval
workflows is key. You don't want employees buying
iphones for $500 and expensing it. Today’s tools
enable your company to establish a list of approved devices
to order. In addition approved, accessories the
company is willing to pay for, and approved data, SMS and
other key configurations. An approval work flow will
enable the end user, the manager or the admin to place
orders online directly and have an email sent to the appropriate
person for approval. This email usually comes with a
hyperlink to either approve, decline or amend. If the
manager hit's approve, the order is automatically placed and
shipped to the end user. If declined it goes back to
the person ordering it with comments.
These rules can
also be used in any combination. E.g. A $50/monthly
limit, no text messages, international or calls outside 8am-5pm
M-F. Again, this does not mean the users can't make the
calls they want, it just means that the company is not going to
pay for them.
Once these rules are established (in a good system, these rules
should take no more than 30 seconds to a minute to setup), they
should be able to be applied to everyone in the company, specific
departments or individuals very easily. At the end of the
month the latest mobile management systems will automatically
extract all calls and dollars which fall outside corporate spend
policy and have a file ready which is sent to finance by
user. This file allows HR and Finance to easily take the
personal spend from the employees paycheck.
The most important aspect of this is that it is all system
managed. The company and its manager need only to manage the
policy, not the bills. This removes the need for the
"honor system" and reduces the admin cost of managing
this by at least 75-80%.
These policies
will reduce your total mobile expense by an average of
25-40%
In addition, we
do not recommend a long RFP processes. This is a
competitive space, so virtually all mobile management company's
pricing is within 5%+- of each other. The present value of money
lost by delaying this is large. For every 1,000 devices
you have, the cost of not doing this immediately is an average of
$35,000-$50,000/month. The small cost savings you may get by
doing a 3-6month RFP will be completely blown away by the savings
missed while doing it. Plus your CF/CEO would rather
have this hit the bottom line "this quarter" rather
than next.
I would hope
you give Optelcon a call, since we do provide all of these
services for small medium and fortune 100 clients; however it is
more important that you just do it. Talk to a few
providers, find one you like to work with and just "go with
it".
Your feedback
and suggestions, success stories, practices which have helped
your company that are not mentioned are very welcome.
Thanks for
spending a few minutes reading. I hope you took something
of value away from it.
Bob Pommer
CEO/Founder
Optelcon
bobpommer@optelcon.com
http://www.optelcon.com
1-877-678-3526
