Wireless Management: Come Together

By now, you’ve heard me mention the word “consolidated” or “shared minutes” many times. This simply means all of your users (or a big chunk of your users) are all on one bill and one account and are able to share minutes with each other. I say “able to share”, not “are sharing”, because even though all users may be on one account, they may not all have shared plans.

Consolidating on to one provider, or as few providers as possible, presents a huge savings opportunity. It costs less to have peak minute coverage when shared as a group than on an individual basis. You end up purchasing less minutes because people who have high usage can use the minutes of people who have low usage. A person who uses 2,000 minutes a month can have a 450 minute plan and not go into overage because he’s taking minutes from others on 450 minutes plans who only use 100 minutes a month.

Let’s start with the basics of consolidation. You typically have to have at least five users to be eligible for business share plans. If you have less than five, an alternative would be to go on a family share plan. Just because you’re a business doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of a family share plan; it’s all about the number of lines, not the nature of the entity.

Assuming everyone is on the same carrier but not on the same account, the next thing you need is to get the phone numbers and account numbers of all people you want to consolidate. Forward that list to your account rep for that provider and they should be able to help with the consolidation. Different carriers have different approaches to this. Some are easier than others.

What starts to get tricky is if you have individual liability phones (phones owned privately by the employee) that will be transferred to the corporate account and become corporate liability phones. Waivers have to be signed by the employee and submitted to the wireless provider, a bill may have to be given to the provider, the employee may have to call customer service and verbally authorize the corporation to take the line over. It can get obtrusive, believe me.

If you are migrating users from one provider to another, be wary of early termination fees, or ETFs. If your fleet of phones is scattered across the country and is a hodge-podge of users and carriers, it’s financially advisable to move people from small-time providers like Helio and US Cellular to larger providers like Sprint and Verizon. If you plan on doing this, make sure you know what the contract expiration date is of those users being migrated to another carrier. ETFs can range from $150 to $200, even if the user is just shy of fulfilling their term commitment. If there’s only a handful of months left on their contract, wait until it expires before moving. If a new contract was signed, it’s usually advisable to eat the ETF and move the user. If the user has 18 months left on a two-year contract and the ETF is $200, you’ll more than make up for the $11.11 per month the ETF breaks out to be.

When consolidating users, be ready with a new profile of plans. With some providers, you have to have new plans ready to go. With AT&T for example, if you consolidate individual users to a business enterprise plan, their individual plans don’t carry over. You have to know how many minutes you’ll need so you can buy that large chunk of minutes as soon as everything is consolidated. This isn’t as pressing an issue with Verizon or Sprint. Individual users will carry their plans with them and will start to share those minutes as soon as everything is consolidated and as soon as they have a share plan. With Verizon and Sprint, the difference between a share plan and an individual plan is $5. Verizon, as an example, has a 450 minute individual plan for $39.99; to be able to share those 450 minutes, it’s an extra $5 fee. You don’t have to change anything else but you have to specifically request this. Just because you’re asking to consolidate lines doesn’t mean your provider will automatically change the individual plans to share plans.

Consolidating multiple accounts to one may or may not require signing a new contract with that provider. That’s a perfect seg-way for my next post; what to include when entering into a new wireless contract.

Wireless Management: Wireless Plan-tastic

So here we are, the moment of truth. You know how many users you have and you know what their usage patterns are. Now it’s time to go out there and shop around for the best plan(s) to fit your wireless usage. The problem is each wireless provider has their own unique (or at least somewhat unique) plans to accommodate business usage. Which one is best? There really is no “best”. There are just better and smarter fits for your particular needs. Again, to keep things simple, I will assume you are already consolidated and sharing across users. I will address this specific point in a subsequent post.

There first thing to know is there are two different types of shared plan approaches. I will loosely call them pools and buckets. A pooled plan means every user must contribute some minutes for all to share. Think of it as a March Madness office pool where everyone who participates chips in $10 to wager. Then there are buckets, which is just one lump of minutes that people don’t contribute to, they just take away from. It’s like a bucket of crab legs at a seafood shack; the server brings them to you, you put them to good use.

Out of the major players (Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Alltel), Verizon and Alltel use the pool method. Every user has to have some kind of a peak minute contribution, whether it be 450 minutes or 4,000 minutes.

AT&T and T-Mobile use the bucket approach. They have business enterprise plans where a large chunk of minutes is purchased for all to use. There may be a small line charge per phone using that pool. AT&T has a limit on the number of lines each bucket can have and charges a line fee for each line. T-Mobile has no line limit per bucket and each bucket comes with an included number of lines at no monthly fee. A line charge will be assessed after going over the set number of lines. In this approach, no one technically has allocated minutes the way Verizon or Alltel does.

Sprint has a hybrid of the two. A single user can purchase up to 4,000 minutes to add to a pool, much like Verizon or Alltel. But Sprint also has what’s called “Add-On” users. These users don’t contribute to the pool of minutes but they can take away from the minutes, much like AT&T and T-Mobile.

Those are the basics. In most instances, if you are reconfiguring plans, you will be sticking with the incumbent provider. That pretty much narrows down where to look. If you’re looking to migrate service to another provider, then there’s much more work to do. Either way, you have to do your homework.

Knowing the different plans can also steer what you look at in your analysis. Some plans may have unlimited within network calling but no free nights and weekend. You’ll want to look at those elements of usage along with peak usage to get the best plan. If you have a lot of weekend usage, you’ll have to figure that in to your minute needs.

Look for the details and special offers too. For a short period of time, Verizon offered what they called “Option 1” and “Option 2” plans. Option 1 plans had the standard number of minutes (450, 900, 1350, etc) and had unlimited nights and weekends. With Option 2, for the same price, you would get more minutes (550, 1100, 1650, etc) but no unlimited nights and weekends. If you have no or limited night and weekend usage, Option 2 would be more cost effective. This is a good example where due diligence can reap rewards.

The moral of the story is once you have a handle on your usage, and I mean really have a handle on your usage, start scouring the web and making phone calls to wireless reps and know their offerings inside out. Devise different scenarios to see which plan of attack provides adequate coverage at the best price. Sorry I couldn’t give a magic bullet, but I never said this would be easy.

Global Sourcing Live Critique

This past Tuesday, April 29, 2008, was the Global Sourcing Live virtual global sourcing conference. For more information, go to http://www.globalsourcinglive.net/. This is a very good idea and an ambitious undertaking. As with anything done on such a large scale, there are some kinks that could be ironed out for future conferences. Here’s my opinion of what could be improved upon based on my experience. I love being Devil’s Advocate.

Sound Quality: This is at the top of the list for a reason. If there was one thing that hamstrung this conference, it was the sound quality. It was difficult to hear and understand the presenters. I tried both the Windows Media and Real Player and so did a few coworkers of mine and the results were poor. If I really paid attention and cranked the volume, I could get it, but that would mean I couldn’t do anything else the whole time to distract me from honing in. Also, you could hear some background noise and mouse clicking which crowded out some of the speaking. I can’t imagine this being too hard to correct. I listen to NPR all day at work and that comes in fine as a live feed. Next time, try a better sound system or record it in advance and edit any background noise and enhance voice quality. I know that would take away from the interactivity, but I will address that next.

Time: Everything was GMT. Not to be your run-of-the-mill, egocentric American, but being on EDT, I missed the first two presentations, and if I recall correctly, part of the third. I like my job, but you won’t find me here at 6am; find me at the gym then. This goes back to recording the presentations in advance and lack of interactivity. If I was on Pacific Time, I would have missed the whole show, so it wouldn’t have mattered if it was interactive or not. So if everyone’s not on the same time and can’t listen live, why not spend the time to make quality audio? This ties to my next point, interactivity.

Interactivity: The lengths GSL went to to make this interactive are highly commendable. This isn’t a rag on their efforts in any way, just a few points to maybe make it a bit more user-friendly next time. If not everyone in every time zone will be in the midst of business hours while this conference is transpiring, why not broadcast pre-recorded presentations in a staggered fashion, the way TV shows are broadcasted across the U.S.? You might say, “The material is available to be viewed at anytime until the end of July, so if you miss it, big deal.” Reasonable point.

This is where sound quality, time, and interactivity come together. To give participants across the world interactivity with presenters, it may be a good idea to stagger the broadcast times based on time zones and then have a Q&A with the speaker after that block. Say you have an eastern and central time zone block starting at 10am EST. The presentation lasts 45 minutes and then is broadcast at 10am Mountain and 9am Pacific. While that second block is hearing the presentation, the first block is in a Q&A with the presenter. Have it revolve in such a fashion. This way you could record the presentation in advance for superior performance and sound quality, you can listen the day of at a reasonable time based on your time zone, AND you still have the opportunity to ask questions of the presenter. I don’t know how feasible this is, but it’s my thought.

Minor Point: The lounge, where you can interact with different participants and trade contact info is a great idea. In the future, it would be helpful to group participants by a category like job title, or company, or industry, or specialty, etc. Instead of browsing through every participant, with appropriate labeling, you could narrow in on who you want to engage with.

Overall: This is a great idea and I wish it success in the future. If I didn’t want things to improve I wouldn’t have put my two cents in cyberspace. I’m sure I will attend future conferences. GSL has a lot going for it. The ability to access the documents and download slide shows three months after the conference is a great idea. The web presentation was incredible. It made me feel like I was playing a corporate version of Grand Theft Auto. By making a few tweaks and having a bigger turnout with more sponsors, this could turn in to something.

Wireless Management: Usage Sewage

In the wireless world, your usage drives the plans you buy, which in turn, drives your wireless spend. Squeezing every last drop of usage out of that spend takes some leg-work. Admittedly, it’s not easy, but it can add up to significant savings. If you’re starting from scratch, or just about scratch, it will take a large upfront time investment if you have a large number of users. The good thing is it will pay for itself. Once you have the right program in place, it just takes periodic maintenance after that.

There are two ways to go about getting your users’ usage: pour over the invoices or get a downloadable report from your wireless provider. Some providers are much better than others at making this information available. Intentional? Not only just providing it, but providing a respectable level of detail. Again, intentional? Did someone say conspiracy theory? Some times, you have no choice but to get your hands dirty and pull out the paper.

Until I say “stop”, everything I type from here will assume one wireless provider with all users consolidated and sharing minutes. I just want to keep things simple for now.

The main items you want are how many peak minutes have the users/company bought, and how many did they use. Most plans descriptions will have the number of minutes bought, and there’s also usually some table with minutes available and minutes used in a usage table per user. CD ROMs and online reporting should (emphasis on should) have these figures available. Once you’ve found this:

• Spreadsheet the peak minutes bought and used for each user for the most recent three months at least
• If the business is cyclical, try to capture the three or four peak months
• Take a cigarette break
• Take an average of the peak minutes used
• Compare this to how many minutes are available
• If average usage is less than 85% of available minutes, you’re over-subscribed
• If average usage is more than 90% of available minutes, buy more
• If average usage is more than 100% of available minutes, you’re in trouble. Remember that analogy to herpes I made in my last post?

If you’re over 100%, unless you have a roll-over plan, you hit the big-O; overage. Overage charges are usually easily seen on the individual user’s usage summary sheet. It may say something like “billable”, “voice charges”, “usage adjustment”. It can also be gleaned from the front page of the bill. If you see any exorbitant amount of charges for “Usage Charges; Voice” or “Cellular Services”, etc, unless everyone makes a ton of 411 calls, it can be safe to assume there is overage.

Stop. Ok, here’s an important caveat. Just because all users may be with one provider and they’re all under corporate liability, doesn’t mean they are all sharing minutes. It’s not uncommon for people to be added to a corporate profile of sharing users yet be subscribed to an individual plan. As you’re checking plans (for providers where it’s not just one big bucket) look for the word “share” in the plan name and look for that or some other indication in the usage box.

This will have two implications in your analysis. First, you have to take those non-sharing users’ minutes out of your calculation of total minutes available. Those minutes are only available to that person and that person only. If that individual user is in overage, stop the bleeding and get them minutes immediately. Don’t wait for that person to be absorbed into the pool.

Here I thought I would get into plans but I already wrote a book just on usage. Next time I promise to get to plans. Now that you know what the deal is with usage and you know your needs, you’ll have a better idea of what to look for when shopping for plans.

Wireless Management: Minute Mayhem

You’ll hear me refer to “usage” quite a bit throughout these wireless management posts. Of course that means minutes used, but there are several different types and/or levels of “usage” or “minutes”. Wireless companies like to invent things at their convenience. In addition to the different types of minutes, different providers can have different terms for the same type of minute. I’m convinced this is because the implicit intention is to confuse as many people as possible. Here’s a rundown of the most common types of minutes you’ll encounter. Keep in mind, not all providers will offer unlimited amounts of some of these types of minutes. Know your usage (and type of usage) to find the best plan with the right carrier.

Peak Minutes: These are minutes used typically between the hours of 7am and 9pm, Monday through Friday. Peak minutes are the type of minutes that draw away from the plan minutes you bought into, but not in every instance. Keep reading.

Nights & Weekends: Common sense on that one. These can also be referred to as non-peak minutes. These minutes typically will not take away from the peak minutes purchased. Some providers, such as Sprint, have calling plans where nights and weekends start at 7pm.

Shared/Pooled Minutes: This applies to groups who have purchased a large chunk of minutes for use amongst all participating users with that carrier. This also applies to people on a family share plan. A “pool” can be a large glut of minutes bought that everyone pulls from, it can be a collection of minutes where every user has plan minutes contributing to be shared, or a hybrid of the two.

Within Network Usage: These are minutes used between people on the same provider (Verizon to Verizon, Alltel to Alltel, etc). Verizon refers to this as “IN” usage. Sprint and T-Mobile refer to it as “Mobile to Mobile” usage. Some providers have unlimited mobile-to-mobile calling on all plans, which will not take away from peak minutes purchased. Other providers may not include this is every plan but offer it at an additional monthly charge as a line feature. Still others may let you choose a certain number of people where you can have unlimited calling.

Push-to-Talk Minutes: This is also known as walkie-talkie or direct connect minutes. This is the feature that Nextel popularized with that annoying chirp and bad reception everyone within 250 meters could hear. As with everything else, it depends on the provider whether this comes standard with your plan or if costs extra. Also, depending on the carrier (how many times have I said that or a derivative of it so far), you may need to choose from a select variety of phones that are capable of this feature.

Overage Minutes: In the wireless mismanaged company, overage minutes are like herpes; you certainly don’t want it, but you may not know you have it. Overage minutes are any amount of minutes used over your allotted pool of minutes. Too many of these will put you in an early financial grave. Costs of overage can range from $.25 to $.40 per minute. You better have protection to prevent this. Always have at least a 10% buffer over average peak minutes used. I will get into this in more detail in the next post on usage.

Roaming Minutes: These are minutes where the call you make originates outside of the territory of the service provider. For instance, you bought your phone in Chicago and have a Chicago area code. You take a vacation to Cabo and call the office to check on things. Those minutes are considered roaming and you will be charged (oftentimes an arm and a leg) for those minutes. The reason for this exorbitant charge is you are using the network of a provider you have no contract with. I use the international example because that is most common. In the early days, roaming could occur within the same country. Now even mom and pop wireless providers will piggy-back on a large provider’s network who have nation-wide coverage. Most wireless providers on their web pages will provide a list of international rates.

Wasn’t that fun? I could have gotten into more detail and said what providers offered what, but we probably suffered quite a few casualties already. This is the jumbled wireless world we live in. For the individual, it’s not too bad. But for businesses, it gets ugly. Now that you know the various types of minutes, the next step is knowing your usage of each type of minute and finding the proper plan. The next installment will do just that.

Wireless Management: Know What You Own

This post is going to sound a bit rudimentary, but I feel the need to cover my bases so much I’m posting on a Friday. There will be some overlap between this and my eventual usage post, but for good reason.

After you’ve recruited the company decision-maker, the next step is to know the inventory. On the surface, this sounds like a no-brainer, but it isn’t as easy as you think. In my experience, most companies assume they know their inventory, but you know what the acronym assume stands for. You can be dealing with different wireless providers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Alltel, Helio, etc), and among those different providers, you may have people who submit expense reports, and others whose invoice is billed directly to the company. You may also have single users who have family share plans (not individual plans), multiple devices (such as a cell, blackberry, and aircard) and those devices may be with different providers. That leaves ample room for people’s complete inventory of devices to fall under the radar. Can you now see how un-simple the inventory issue can be?

You can’t control your wireless spend until you can control your wireless inventory. There’s no one silver bullet to this situation, but here is a comprehensive approach that is as good as any I can think of:

• Talk to your wireless rep for each provider and have them generate a report of all users they bill for on all company accounts and sub-accounts
• Work with accounting and get all wireless expense reports
• Get an HR listing of all employees and their cell phones (there is a fine line between corporate and private use, so use discretion with this)
• Consult the general ledger and see if all costs in the first two points have been captured in wireless spend GL categories

Another issue with inventory, is once you know what you’re paying for, you know what you can get rid of. There may be spare phones sitting around that have had no usage in the past six months and aren’t even on stand-by and you’re footing the bill. Dump those devices. This is the cross-over with usage I alluded to. You can get rid of those devices without penalty if you’re slick about contract negotiations, but that’s a post I’ll get to down the road.

As I hope you can see, inventory management isn’t simply about having a head count. It has implications that are very broad. This is the foundation to get you on the path to wireless savings. Next time, I’ll speak about the different types of minutes. Until then, enjoy your weekend.

Wireless Management: Find the Boss

And I’m not talking Springsteen. The absolute first step in addressing wireless issues is to FIND THE DECISION MAKER! I know this sounds simplistic, but having done many wireless projects, you’d be amazed at how important this step is to a successful savings initiative.

The reason this is so important, which partly depends on the size of the company, is that different department budgets can be involved. You can have a sales department who handles the sales team, an IT department that handles Blackberries, a fleet department that handles push-to-talk phones, an executive secretary who handles C-level phones. See how convoluted this is already? When laid out like this, it sounds ridiculous to have so many levels of influence in something like wireless, but the reality is that many companies work with this model. When it comes to wireless, corporations immediately become schizophrenic. It reminds me of the Bill Murray movie “What About Bob”. “Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m a schizophrenic, and so am I.”

Before you can have any impact, find the one person in the company who can pull the trigger and supersede everyone else. It can be the CFO, the CEO, the COO, whoever. The example of schizophrenia above is actually dumbed-down. Not only can you have different department budgets to deal with, but you may have different wireless providers to deal with and corporate liable and individual liable phones. That’s a morass that can only be traversed with a solid, upper-level sponsor. Get that person or get out of Dodge.

Next class session I’ll discuss inventory issues and how that can affect the overall savings goal. It’s basic, I know, but you have to start somewhere. It’s all going to add up and save a bundle.