As the beginning of the new year is upon us and U.S. companies continue their relentless cost cutting initiatives in order to survive this recession, CEOs, CFO’s and accounting professionals everywhere are scrambling to find ways to reduce their company expenses. Most professionals don’t give their telecom bills a second glance even though telecom expense is now characterized as the third largest expense among large U.S. Companies. Not auditing each and every telecom invoice is a huge mistake, notes Mark Evans, a telecom audit industry expert and a hired auditing gun who has waged a one man war against excessive telecom costs being passed on to American businesses by their telecom service providers. According to Evans, “there are over 100 ways to cut costs on a company’s phone bill, but what follows are a few common ones that I want to share with you.” In addition, Evans shares his findings on the biggest problem for large companies and wasted telecom spend after telecom savings suggestion number 10.
1. Practice telecom cost savings. Check your long-distance rate for each minute of interstate, intrastate, and international calls. Ensure your rates are competitive. Is your carrier billing you in 6, 18, 30 seconds or full one minute increments? How is the first minute being charged? Is it rounded up to the nearest half minute or minute? Remember this, billing increments matter and the carriers most often round up to bring in extra revenue! All of these things can be negotiated to your advantage. Finally, be sure and get three bids for all of your phone services.
2. Get extra discounts with a long-term agreement (normally 24-36 months in duration) for your business long distance, local, and cell phone services. The ideal phone contract is for no more than 24 months, although the longer the term, the higher the service discount. Be prepared to re-negotiate your contract for new lower rates after 12-18 months. Ensure that your agreement gives your business additional discounts for high-volume usage for your phone services. The more calls you make the higher the service discount should be. You would be surprised at the benefits of practicing solid telecommunications expense management techniques can accomplish in the way of cost reduction for your company.
3. Ask your phone vendor to offer a proposal for bundling of your wireless, local and long distance phone services for even more discounts.
4. Look for cramming on your local phone bills. Cramming is accomplished by companies that place unauthorized charges on your phone bills. They offer and deliver nothing to you other than they are able to pass on bogus charges on your telephone bill. Crammers were able to exploit the telecommunications act of 1992 to invade the phone bill process and pass on charges based on made up services that are never actually delivered. For more information on cramming, see our cramming description page at http://www.bottaboom.com/2008/11/19/fight-phone-bill-cramming/
5. Here is an old telecom audit trick that still works great: Directory assistance savings: Did you know that you do not have to use your phone company’s expensive 411 information lookup services? Often their pricing is as high as $1.50 per call! Multiply that by 100 calls a month or 1,200 calls a year! Check the internet for free or discount 411 service options and save money. Then re-program your company phone system so that when users dial 411 for directory assistance information, the digits translate on the phone system to instead dial: 1800free411 or you can call google for business listings at 1800goog411..its free or 1800FREE411 for Business or residential. Also, AT&T offers a free service 1-800-YELLOWPAGES (1-800-935-5697) or from your pc, get quick directory assistance info at: http://www.att.com/Common/1800yellowpages/product_description.htm
6. Prevent fraud: Have your phone system vendor check for vulnerabilities in your phone system. For example, ensure that the remote call forwarding feature is turned off. This inherent phone system feature can allow hackers to access your phone system remotely and forward their calls to wherever in the world they want at your expense. You need to ensure that this and other features are turned off unless specifically needed.
7. Shop the internet for cheap pre-paid calling cards and hand them out to traveling employees. Calling cards are available that cost less than two cents per minute for calls placed to anywhere in the U.S.
8. Document your telephone service changes as you make them with the phone company, particularly cancelled services. Telecom audit pros will tell you, “if it is not in writing it does not exist.” Email everything and get verification. Be persistent and realize that five years down the road the phone company may ask for written verification that you canceled a telephone line. And just because the charge disappears from your bill, it can always mysteriously pop up again. Telephone company billing systems have a tendency to undergo updates that somehow add old services back onto the bills! I have seen this happen a number of times. Get an order number from the phone company and again, insist on e-mail verification of the order. Write down the agent’s name you speak with and note the date and time of the communication. Without this documentation you will have difficulty proving you canceled the lines if you continue to be charged for them. Keep a detailed excel spreadsheet with your ordering activities handy and easily accessible to you and your staff.
9. Don’t automatically pay Yellow Pages invoices that come to you in the mail without investigating the actual advertisement. Carefully examine Yellow Pages invoices; they are often from fraudulent companies masquerading as the real Yellow Pages Company. Have the company send you a copy of the actual ad and call and ask the company about their distribution areas.
10. Do an inventory of all of your phone lines and services. Compare what you pay to what you use. This phone inventory will also assist you in disaster planning and emergency preparedness. If this task it too daunting, consider hiring a professional phone bill auditor.
So what is the number one problem that telecommunications audit consultants find that causes companies to bleed the most expense according to Evans? He says, “the greatest and most devastating of all of the expense issues that we’ve historically found during phone bill audit projects is the missed delivery of telecom services and rates according to the executed formal telecommunications contract between the vendor and the customer. Quite simply, that means that telecom service providers very often miss the mark badly by overcharging when providing formally agreed to pricing and services. Somehow the sales order never gets passed on correctly or is wrongly entered into the telephone company’s billing system. And, Its interesting that in 99% of the cases of misapplied contract terms, the carriers over-bill their customers. The carrier billing systems are set up to overcharge by default to protect the carriers, not us.” The fact that the carriers most often do not under-bill the contract rates is no coincidence and this kind of activity certainly warrants further investigation as to who benefits most from this process. “The bottom line is that we as company owners must take responsibility for what is paid out for telecom expense each month so my advice is to be sure to check your telecom services and your invoices carefully and match them up, You might be amazed at what you discover in the way of cost savings with a thorough telecommunications audit project,” says Evans.
BottaBoom Consulting LLC. is a Tucson, Arizona based national contingency-fee-based telecom audit firm that’s been saving large businesses and government organizations considerable money for years. Call 1-888-487-5326 for more information regarding their industry leading telecom auditing services.
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Tags: phone bill audit, Telecom Audit, telecom cost savings, telecommunications audit
