Call Accounting Saves Company $1.1 Million and Counting

CDW/Berbee (News - Alert) realized $1.1 million – and counting – in first year telecom cost savings, or more than 30 percent of expenses reviewed. These savings included ongoing cost reduction of approximately $900,000 per year.

Sound good? Read on to see how it was done.

CDW (News - Alert)/Berbee is a provider of information technology infrastructure, hosting, applications development, IP telephony and security to organizations in the Midwest, and partner with Cisco, IBM (News - Alert), Microsoft and others.

The company’s IT, telecom and accounting departments reduced and managed telecom costs through ongoing work with carrier representatives and monthly reviews of telecom invoices. Management realized there were opportunities for additional cost savings with specialized tools, information and expertise, but were concerned that the time they would have to devote to the project would not be worthwhile.

So they brought in ISI Telemanagement Solutions (News - Alert), who provided summary and detailed reporting by location, vendor, service, account and type of recommendation, tracked and implemented all approved recommendations, inventoried and validated services and eliminated those with low or no use, used telemanagement and bill processing software to analyze traffic and usage, performed detailed contract and tariff benchmarking and analysis (down to the “USOC” billing code), documented billing errors associated with network changes, service orders and contract variances, conducted in-depth vendor evaluations involving mission-critical services based on RFI (News - Alert)/RFP process and pecified and negotiated custom contract pricing and terms for separate and merged services, among other functions.

The majority of savings were identified in less than four months, and nearly 100 percent of the recommendations were approved for implementation. Savings were realized on “all vendors and all types of services – wireless, voice local and long distance and data (WAN, dial-up and Internet).”

These results were achieved with minimal staff involvement, active coordination and progress tracking with internal staff and vendors, and no business disruption. ISI was retained to perform work for other subsidiaries and to provide ongoing expense-management tools and services. CDW/Berbee has also decided to introduce ISI to its customer base so their customers’ telecom cost optimization and management needs are addressed.

CDW/Berbee officials say ISI has contributed in other ways, citing enhanced market competitiveness and overall profitability, reduced, better controlled cost structure for both administrative and customer related services and tools to perform ongoing expense analysis, validation and tariff optimization.