Success Story

Food service company improves telecom expense management efficiency with Upland Cimpl and sees 249% ROI

This large company’s devolved organizational structure had led to difficulties in managing their telecom environment. They needed a solution that fit their structure and enabled them to control costs. Cimpl was the perfect fit.

This large company’s devolved organizational structure had led to difficulties in managing their telecom environment. They needed a solution that fit their structure and enabled them to control costs. Cimpl was the perfect fit.

Customer-story_Food_EN

The Challenge

This 69,000-employee company managed its telecom assets department by department. With an average of 1.54 devices per employee (over 100,000 throughout the company), each department was responsible for ordering new devices with approved suppliers, tracking who had what, and reconciling invoices with plans and usage. This was not easy for them to do, since they did not control the contracts with the telecom service providers, and there were no clear processes or tools for them to correctly audit their inventory, costs and usage. Understandably, getting to the bottom of their usage and costs would have taken time away from other priorities, and so the task was neglected.

The company had no real idea of whether it was being fairly treated by its service providers or whether its employees were using their company-provided phones responsibly. The existing system was clearly not working, and there were no resources available to centralize telecom expense management. The company needed a turnkey solution.

How a Company Reaped an ROI of 249% with the Help of Automation

“Automation accounted for 47% of savings!

Cimpl – a flexible solution that fit their organization

The food service company chose Cimpl for two reasons. Firstly, it centralizes all information, while enabling efficient devolved management through configurable workflows, fitting perfectly with the company’s organization. Secondly, it allows many aspects of the workflow and approval processes to be automated, eliminating the need for additional resources.

All telecom information is now easy to locate. There is one place for service details, including contracts, plan information, associated hardware, cost and usage. And one place for assets and who they are assigned to. Each manager now has a complete view of their team’s telecom environment and can take the right actions.

Automation has been implemented wherever possible. The processing of orders for new assets is now streamlined, as is loading of invoices onto the platform, and invoice verification. More than 15 different reports, configured to the requirements of the company, are automatically generated. These highlight potential areas of action, for example billing discrepancies or zero-usage devices, or they simply provide general information to management. Clear workflows help with the tasks that cannot be automated, facilitating verification and approval of orders and invoices for example. Managers can also initiate internal workflows for billing or hardware issues.

To help get the situation under control initially, Cimpl’s telecom experts provided monthly recommendations based on trends and patterns and created a watch-list to identify end-users who would often go over their usage limit.

Benefits – cost control and efficiency

By putting all its telecom information in one place, the Cimpl platform has enabled the company to start taking action to control its telecom costs. It is now possible, for example, to find and cancel unused services. The platform also gives each department – and individual – visibility over their telecom usage and how much it costs. This has helped the company create a culture of accountability, as each individual can see how they are affecting the company’s budget and rectify their behaviour on their own. The initial telecom audit and end-user visibility have brought the company’s annual spend down by 9% in the first year.

Efficiency savings, due to automation and streamlined processes, have provided the company an ROI of 249% in the same timeframe. Over the course of one month alone, 2,967 invoices were loaded onto the platform automatically, saving a human resource from days of work. The configuration of predetermined approval workflows by department or types of service requests has also led to time being saved, and an appreciated reduction in email exchanges to process the requests. It is now much easier to take action on orders and tickets.

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