Case Study—Logistics company controls expenditure between their fleet of trucks and operations using LCR call back

Description of business need

A national logistics company had a requirement to ensure that their fleet of 130 trucks was cost effectively communicating and making use of the most efficient technology available within their existing telecoms environment.

The company was highly dependent on telecoms for day to day business needs and was running 2 branches in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Their telecoms costs were escalating year on year due to the following:

· An expanding business
· A dependency on telecoms as a critical business tool
· Increases in the size of the fleet
· Annual supplier increases

Managing the drivers and their costs was proving problematic and confrontational. Management required a solution that was reliable, manageable and cost effective to use for daily communications within their fleet

Situation

There were 3 incumbent suppliers; namely Telkom, a LCR supplier and a cell phone service provider. The costs of telecoms were escalating month on month and cell phone usage in the trucks was proving difficult to manage.

Whilst LCR was being used from the offices to the trucks, drivers were calling the offices from company owned handsets and costs were difficult to manage. Furthermore deducting costs from wages every month was causing friction between management and the employees, whilst being difficult to administrate.

Driving down costs, monthly reporting and financial budgeting / forecasting was problematic at best.

Solution

The customer selected DataRoom as its supplier independent advisor with a clearly defined set of objectives:

· Ensure all calls were at all times at the cheapest rate for their business need
· Ensure reliable infrastructure with seamless usage
· Take away the “pain” of managing the costs and reporting

DataRoom performed an analysis on call pattern and infrastructure. The reporting revealed that the opportunity lay with the optimisation of the existing LCR suppliers and managing the call patterns and packages of the cell phone handsets.

DataRoom recommended installing cell phone call back [to the offices] for the drivers and each drivers cell phone number was to call the LCR instead of the Telkom line. The LCR then called the driver back automatically. Furthermore, the cell phones were programmed to limited phone numbers and locked to avoid abuse issues.

The company chose a supplier with digital LCR equipment and a strong track record of good service to support their 24x7x365 requirement. Once the LCR call back was in place the next step was to optimise driver cell phone packages for their low call volumes.

Benefits

No more disgruntled drivers. All the drivers could still phone family, clients and company offices, but the onus on cost reduction was no longer their problem. No more deductions from wage bills either. As a added benefit the monthly fixed costs of subscriptions dropped dramatically.

Cell phone costs and LCR costs reduced significantly and management were confident in their ability to communicate efficiently. Management are now empowered through DataRoom’s “single view” into their telecoms costs and in a position to effectively validate and justify CAPEX and OPEX relating to all telecommunication needs.

Communications between their fleet and the operations were at the lowest possible rate and operating smoothly 24x7x365.