Are you still struggling with an "unmanaged mobile network" service?

When it comes to mobile services, most businesses buy airtime and devices directly from major mobile networks.

For a small number of very large customers, mobile networks will provide a dedicated mobile account team and on-site administrators.

This can help keep mobile administration under control. However, that’s often a chargeable service.

And these teams are usually order focused, rather than proactive in their support and management of costs and usage.

For most organisations, managing their mobile services and devices is a significant and growing “in-house” challenge.

One that continuously drains IT and Finance resources, creates ongoing budget challenges, and often leads to overspending.

Is your mobile network working in your best interests?

The truth is, mobile networks typically make significant “hidden” profits when customers fail to proactively manage their mobile estates.

Breaching usage allowances, uncontrolled roaming, and paying for unused services all lead to oversized bills. And profits for the mobile networks.

It’s no surprise that the mobile networks rarely talk about, or offer their customers “managed mobile services”. It’s simply not in their interests.

Instead, they provide you with an “unmanaged” mobile service. They’ll connect you, bill you, and react to service failures.

The rest is up to you to manage.

What impact does the continuing use of an “unmanaged” mobile service have on your business?

If you’re still using an “unmanaged” mobile network service, then ask yourself whether you’re suffering from any of the following seven most common symptoms:

• Are mobile bills regularly or always exceeding the projected costs that your mobile network promised?
• Is your IT team spending a growing amount of time on mobile administration with little or no support from your mobile network?
• Is your mobile data usage increasing at a significant rate along with excess data costs?
• Is your Finance team struggling to process, validate and reallocate mobile invoices and charges to cost centres?
• Do you have a constant level of inactive connections that are generating excess monthly recurring costs?
• Have you experienced one or more instances of “bill shock” in the last 12 months?
• Are you tied into buying overpriced mobile devices using a network “tech fund”?

Telecom Expense management

Most businesses resign themselves to these issues – unaware that there are real and effective alternatives.

Telecom Expense Management (TEM) services can go some way to helping to manage these issues.

However these services still rely on processing mobile invoices and data provided by the mobile networks.

As these invoices are produced many weeks after the costs were incurred, the TEM provider is constantly playing catch up when it comes to managing mobile usage and costs.

And when it comes to making changes to remove costs, the TEM provider also has to rely on the mobile supplier to physically implement any changes and correct errors.

This process takes significant time and resources to manage, and it requires customers to pay for third party TEM services on top of their mobile costs.

Perhaps it’s time to consider a “managed mobile service”?

There are however a small number of fully “Managed Mobile Services”.

You’re able to keep your chosen mobile network (e.g. Vodafone or O2), but have every element of the services proactively and transparently managed.

These managed service providers (MSP’s) have direct access to your mobile network usage data, and full control of all provisioning, billing and administration processes.

This makes it much simpler for the MSP to streamline mobile administration and quickly identify wastage and excess usage throughout the month. This lets the MSP act long before these issues turn into significant over spending, and long before the bill is raised.

Importantly, much of this work can be completed without any need for resource from the customer’s in-house IT team.

Finally, the MSP can often blend together a range of more flexible wholesale contract terms, to deliver a more tailored contract that better meets each customer’s requirements.

Enabling the MSP to deliver improved support to your users and business, greater contract flexibility and long-term cost savings.

Often, amounting to a “total cost of ownership” (TCO) saving of 20% or more from your total cost of providing and managing mobiles.

Conclusion

There are often a lot of hidden costs that your mobile network won’t tell you about.

Roaming charges, breached usage allowances, and unused services can all mean extra profit for them. And most organisations are simply resigned to accepting these costs.

They aren’t even aware of the existence of alternatives that can save them money, like Telecom Expense Management services.

But even these are only effective up to a point. And still rely on processing mobile invoices and data provided by mobile networks.

However, managed mobile services can proactively and transparently manage mobile services, allowing you to:

• Streamline administration
• Identify wastage and excess usage
• Deliver improved support
• Greater flexibility
• Long-term cost savings of 20% or more

Next steps

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