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.

Case Study— Sharp Electronics reduces their Monthly telecoms by R 960 000.00 per annum

Description of business need

You do not know what you do not know. Without the correct guidance, monitoring, support, infrastructure and ongoing management, the typical organisation would almost certainly fail to achieve its strategic objectives. The same applies to the cost and infrastructure management of a customer’s telecommunications environment.

Technology in all segments of the market, does and will continue to advance at a rapid rate and as it does, so suppliers attempt to position themselves in such a way that they are most favourably aligned to on sell their solutions to their customers [often with no real business case that clearly and accurately defines the customer need].

The reality is that the majority of suppliers, however competent they may be in the marketing and selling of their products, falls short in the implementation, measurement and ongoing management of the customer’s infrastructure and telecoms expenses once the products are in place.

Sharp Electronics required a business partner who understood their unique business need, could identify the opportunities, would enable the company and its suppliers to manage costs and infrastructure efficiently and report on the objectives and results into the future on a national basis.

DataRoom provided Sharp and their suppliers with -

· An automated set of “Telecoms Report Suites” using a web based reporting engine
· The methodology, best practices and intelligent reporting required to reach their objective of optimal telecoms expenditure

DataRoom empowers its customers with the knowledge to make business decisions.

DataRoom ensures that all the roles players at both the vendor and the customer gain access to accurate reporting that ensures the objective of optimal telecoms costs and infrastructure is achieved.

Situation

In November 2005, Sharp was spending an average of R 220 000.00 per month on voice calls nationally. There were 3 incumbent suppliers of voice in the area of fixed line, Cell phones and LCR [least cost routing of cell phone calls].

Sharp was represented nationally by 14 branches with Johannesburg by far the biggest branch and a Cape Town head office.

Sharp had no single view into their call patterns nationally and apart from understanding that LCR was an option, they were unsure of the best option for their unique business need and wanted complete control of their costs, infrastructure and suppliers.

Furthermore Sharp had a requirement for a single view into their monthly telecoms environs.

Solution

Sharp chose DataRoom to deliver supplier independent telecoms reporting, the methodology and the best practices; to bring down monthly telecoms costs. More importantly the DataRoom offering was seen as a way to reduce time and resources required to deliver optimal telecoms.

Using supplier billing and call detailed records; a thorough analysis of all voice expenditure by supplier, branch and geographical region was undertaken using DataRoom’s Telecom Report Suite was performed. Once management had a thorough understanding of the current call patterns for total voice and infrastructure requirements; with DataRoom input suppliers were chosen who firstly could address their unique business requirement and secondly could deliver quality of service at the right price.

DataRoom recommended per second billing for all suppliers, low cost [free] interbranch calls, cheaper national calls, single supplier for national / GSM and inter-branch calls as a minimum requirement in choosing their supplier.

Benefits

Management at all branches and head office have a single view into their total voice expenditure every month. All regions and branches are held accountable for their own costs.

Expenditure reduced from a November 2005 high of R 223 000.00 to R 143 000.00 in June 2007. This reduction equates to an average reduction of 36% or R 80 000.00 per month less.

This equates to annual savings of 36% or R 960 000.00 per annum. Sharp now makes all their voice calls at the lowest possible rate for their specific business need and can effectively monitor these costs using the DataRoom Effective Rate report. Sharp has also integrated DataRoom's monthly reporting into their monthly business processes and sustained the savings to date [updated June 2008].

Peak and Off Peak rates for local / national / cell phone / national and interbranch calls are all down significantly in June 2007.

Sharp can now expect to reduce monthly costs further through the efficient configuration of infrastructure with service providers in conjunction with the “DataRoom Best Practices for optimal expenditure” guideline.

Case Study— Nashua Mobile tender to customer for VOIP services

Description of business need

You do not know what you do not know. Many VOIP service providers do not have an accurate picture of their customers [or potential customers] monthly call patterns.

For a service provider of VOIP services to put together a proposal on VOIP, the service provider must understand the customers business need 100%. This includes all TYPE’s of expenditure [Telkom/cell phones/inter branch] per branch, including

· Cost implications of inter branch calls
· Validating the business need for VOIP
· Monthly call patterns in Talktime, Billed Minutes and Rands.
· Number of concurrent calls per branch
· Effective Rates for Peak and Off Peak times

DataRoom provided Nashua Mobile and their customer with -

· A complete set of reports highlighting the precise business need across the group of companies and all its branches. The DataRoom “Telecoms Report Suite” was used.
· An accurate analysis of call pattern information that allowed
· the configuration of infrastructure per branch
· An understanding of call patterns per branch
· A detailed proposal to their customer for a nationwide VOIP solution over multiple companies and branches, over a large geographical area

Situation

In May 2007, Nashua Mobile approached DataRoom for assistance in tendering for a VOIP solution to an existing LCR client. The service provider was the incumbent supplier of LCR [least cost routing of cell phone calls] and cell phones.

Other service providers were offering their customer VOIP and Nashua Mobile wished to differentiate them against their competition, understand the business need accurately and ensure that they retained the customer. They ran a very real risk of losing their customer and the LCR revenue to a competitor if they did not address the VOIP requirement.

The service provider and their sales team did not have the capacity to perform the required call analysis and understood the importance of coming to grips with the customers business need. Furthermore, they did not have the skill set / tools to professionally analyse and understand the existing environment.

Solution

Using supplier billing and call detailed records, a thorough analysis of all call patterns by company, branch, region and all TYPE’s of expenditure was completed using DataRoom’s Telecom Report Suite.

Benefits

On completion of the analysis performed by DataRoom, the Nashua Mobile sales teams had a thorough understanding of the current call patterns for total voice and infrastructure requirements. The tender was put together based on the understanding of their customers business need.

There was no guess work involved in understanding the infrastructure requirements.

The sales team and the product manager understood exactly how many concurrent calls needed to be catered for each company, branch and TYPE of spend based on historical call patterns over the last 3 months.

Furthermore, by re-rating each call made over the last 3 months on the new VOIP rate, the service provider could accurately predict the RAND savings going forward and the resultant return on investment for his client.

Through the skills/tool set provided by the DataRoom reporting, this service provider was able to be viewed by the customer as specialist in voice communication [including VOIP] and no longer just a LCR / PBX supplier.

The customer knows uses Nashua Mobile for all their voice requirements and are expanding the initiative to other companies in the group.