Air carrier saves $27,000 in annual telecom costs with Upland Cimpl

The airline needed visibility over its mobile devices and their costs. Cimpl helped them take control of their telecom expenses.

The Challenge

This airline knew its telecom expenses were high, but it was unable to take action to reduce them. The team responsible knew the company was being charged for lines that were no longer active, but it didn’t know which ones they were. New mobile devices were manually inventoried and assigned on acquisition. Over time, however, the records had become inaccurate and the team no longer knew which employees had which of the more than 600 devices. Another major concern was data consumption. Some employees were going over their data limits, resulting in additional charges, but again, the team could not track who was responsible for these extra costs.

The bills they received from their telecom service provider lacked the details the team needed. Additionally, they strongly suspected that payments made were not being correctly applied to their service lines.

The airline’s telecom team started looking for a solution that would give them visibility of the detail of their costs, and help them take back control of their mobile device inventory and usage.

Cimpl – visibility and control

Cimpl has a number of features that can help organizations improve management of telecom expenses.

Its inventory management module enables the airline to track an asset’s entire lifecycle, from procurement, to payment, to retirement. The ‘Confirm Inventory’ feature prompts employees to validate their assigned services and help clean up and improve inventory accuracy. This helps the airline keep costs down by giving the telecom team visibility on unused devices that could be reassigned, identifying services that are being paid for but not used, and flagging duplicated devices. It also helps them manage upgrade requests.

The ‘Top 25 Data Cost’ report identifies which specific employees are consuming the most data. The team can then help them reduce their usage by providing them with data-usage best practices.

At-a-glance dashboards and configurable reports help the airline understand its overall telecom environment. A potential cost savings report pinpoints where action can be taken. An analysis of billing discrepancies backs up their suspicions and enables them to investigate. All together, they help the airline better understand the bills they receive from their wireless operator, and identify ways of keeping costs down.

Finally, the airline’s telecom team attends monthly webinar training to fully optimize their use of the Wireless Expense Management (WEM) platform.

Benefits – expense and time saved

The Cimpl WEM platform has enabled orders and workflows to be automated, saving the telecom team up to eight hours per month processing requests, the equivalent of about $25,000 a year. With employees processing and confirming their own work orders, the device inventory is constantly updated and much more accurate. This in turn reduces wait time for devices, and increases the level of service of the department.

Data consumption is also now on a downward trend, reduced by over 15% in the first five months. Overall, Cimpl’s reports, coupled with airline employees’ diligent validation of inventory, have resulted in cost savings of 8% of annual spend, equivalent to $50,000.

And that’s an ROI of 144% in the first year.