Wireless is a highly dynamic cost center — and an extraordinarily difficult expense for businesses to control.

 

Vendor rate plans change with the wind, users are constantly adding or changing phones and device accessories, and what was initially an optimal plan for an individual or group of employees may no longer fit when usage patterns change.

 

What’s more, errors are notoriously rampant in wireless billing, and even when rectified, they have a way of creeping back into invoices.

 

While it would be great if wireless expense reduction could be addressed with one

invoice audit, the reality is that cost reduction is not a one-time process. Up-front savings are nice, but the real payoff comes from an ongoing audit and optimization process that’s tightly synchronized with the evolution of your business.

 

Each wireless charge should be reviewed on a monthly basis to ensure that the negotiated discounts, tariffs, waivers and credits have been applied. If the actual charge doesn’t match the expected charge, always initiate a dispute process with the vendor. It’s important to review charges on a monthly basis, as history shows that carrier billing systems are prone to mistakes in applying credits, discounts, and international roaming charges uniformly across a billing group.

 

Proper rate plan Optimization must include a review of each employee’s usage on a monthly basis and ensure that all users are on the optimal plans. All to often the standard carrier menu of plans is not the right fight for each organization, and going off-sheet to the hundreds of unpublished plans are the best match.

 

With the right platform rate plan Optimization will consider usage from prior months as well as seasonal business patterns in optimizing plans. The right platform will allow to more easily predict future usage patterns and assign the most beneficial plan in the context of those plans available post-discount. This process doesn’t necessarily apply only to primary plans (i.e. voice or data); it can apply to text messaging and other features as well.