National Distributor

The CIO of this nationally-recognized Canadian organization was faced with the prospect of reducing services to Users if he could not achieve a reduction of 20% to his ongoing monthly telecommunications expenditures of $150,000/month. Within the first three (3) months of this corporation’s current fiscal year the IT Department’s spend for monthly telecommunications services exceeded Budget by approximately $25,000/month.

Upon recommendations from a colleague, the CIO agreed to contract TelOptimize to conduct an audit of his department’s telecommunications services, specifically noting that he would require a monthly decrease of approximately $35,000/month for the remaining eight (8) months in order to meet budgetary commitments.

Given the urgency of the situation, TelOptimize quickly gathered all available and necessary data to conduct the audit including recent invoices, all available contracts and Voice and Data network configurations and proceeded to build an inventory of the Client’s Local, LD/TF, WAN, Internet and Wireless services in order to facilitate the analysis.

Within forty-five (45) days TelOptimize prepared and presented a Report to the Client for review and approval. Primary findings included:

1. The Client’s monthly rates for their WAN network (MPLS) were approximately 35% greater than current market rates for similar services (similar SLA’s) with more than twenty-four (24) months remaining on a three (3) year term contract that was signed four (4) years earlier with an automatic renewal clause.
2. The Client’s rates for various Internet services (ADSL, DS1 and 20 MBPS) were approximately 50% greater than current market rates for similar services (similar SLA’s) with more than twelve (12) months remaining on most contracts. The Client had separate agreements for each service, different terms and termination dates for each service and automatic renewal clauses for each service.
3. The Client experienced a 20% surge in monthly wireless costs as a result of a recent deployment of Blackberries that the CIO neither approved nor budgeted for. Although the IT department was not responsible for the hardware costs of the devices they were responsible for the monthly service costs.
4. Rate Plans for both Voice and Data Wireless devices were not optimized based on call volumes and traffic patterns for each User. Savings in excess of 20% per month were attainable simply by optimizing and pooling (where applicable) Wireless Voice and Data plans.
5. Traffic Studies revealed that the Client was invoiced for Local services that were under-utilized or inactive. Most locations were serviced by PRI Local accesses that were improperly sized and/or configured.
6. The Client was invoiced for Local Private Line OPX’s that were no longer required as a result of recent consolidation of offices.

Upon approval from the Client and with the Client’s support, TelOptimize spearheaded the negotiation process with the Client’s primary vendor to establish a new consolidated ‘Master Agreement’ with separate Service Schedules for each of the Client’s complete range of services including Local, LD/TF, WAN, Internet and Wireless. The new Master Agreement and the optimization and elimination of unnecessary services reduced the Client’s ongoing monthly telecommunications costs by approximately $40,000/month and effectively re-aligned the Client’s expenditures to budget.