Company Sees Significant Measurable Savings By Adding

In this time of economic uncertainty, one thing is certain – cutting costs is the only way to stay afloat. Since increasing revenue is an unlikely goal in this penny-pinching economy, most companies are focusing in on ways to cut their costs or “trim the fat.” Call management solutions are one sure way to identify unnecessary costs and opportunities for streamlining telecommunications systems and cracking down on policy enforcement.As an example of how call accounting solutions can help companies increase efficiencies and lower costs, we have a specific customer testimonial. A second party facilitator for insurance companies needed to find a way to manage and properly allocate the costs for their long distance service. They could no longer expend the resources necessary to manually track all in and outbound calls for a large multi-national company.

Previously, this company had allocated five full-time resources that were strictly assigned to scouring through telephone bills page by page and line by line for each facility. They would then allocate the appropriate costs for each location and compile their findings into an excel spreadsheet. Not only was the company providing staffing to do these tedious analysis, they were also experiencing a significant delay in this analysis. It was nearly a month after the bill was received that the final reports and allocations were submitted. This means it could have been as much as two months after the actual calls were made. With this significant delay, going back and questioning activities that seem out of the ordinary was pretty much out of the question. The delay made going back and tracking these activities virtually impossible. This customer was able to install a call management solution to bill back both internally and externally for long distance service and maintenance. With 16,000 employees in 300 offices worldwide, they needed to not only track the calls, but to easily summarize the usage for proper allocation. The regularly scheduled reports provided the customer with an efficient way to summarize the usage associated with each affiliate and therefore allocate their expenses. Equally, they were able to quickly and efficiently review their telecommunications activities and address any issues quickly. The most exciting surprise that the customer experienced by integrating a call management solution was in actual, realized cost savings. In 1991, when they first began using the new call management system, they were able to realign and regroup their long distance lines and cut 2 to 3 T1s in the process. From this, they incurred an annual savings of $12,000 per location by eliminating unneeded bandwidth. Given that cost savings are hard to come by these days, this was quite a welcomed surprise.

Additionally, this company was able to reallocate the five full-time resources that they had previously dedicated to bill allocation and analysis to other projects, thereby efficiently and effectively using the resources they already had without having to add any additional resources. This allowed the company to cut their new hire budget significantly and therefore, allowed them to see even further cost savings.

By simply adding a call management solution, this company was able to realize real cost savings. As many companies struggle to keep their doors open, these types of investments may seem like bad idea, but the potential cost savings available far out way the initial cost of a call accounting system.