Posts Tagged ‘IMF Reports’

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Report: Find Out How Managing Telecom In-House Can Lead to Huge Cost Savings

March 4th, 2013

Philage Shadow

Best Practices for Conducting In-House Telecom Management is based on a Web Forum presentation given by Jennifer Philage from Quanta Services. Jennifer is Quanta’s Wireless Carrier Program Manager. Mobile communication devices (cell phones, aircards, mifis) are necessities of everyday business. Without monitoring, the expense associated with these devices can prove to be much greater than originally budgeted. Ever changing usage patterns, employment status, outdated plans, and the management of such a program can overwhelm an office manager already burdened with a multitude of responsibilities.

With TEM (Telecom Expense Management) vendors calling daily, Quanta opted to pull away from their third-party consultant and bring this management in-house. The company has experienced tremendous success over the last 12 months with their new in-house telecom management program. During this time, the program has helped the company save over $1.5 million dollars in cost prevention and reduction. To put that kind of success in perspective, Quanta’s average monthly cell bills amount to roughly $600,000.

This report identifies best practices used to develop a centralized in-house telecom management program created to support multiple office locations. Read and discover the following:

  • Structure and approach of establishing the initial program
  • Preventative measures that can be taken to minimize and avoid high overages
  • Types of carrier provided data (exported from the carrier websites) that can be analyzed monthly for potential cost reduction

Members can download this report, and hundreds of others, by logging into TheIMF.com and visiting our Reports page. Here’s a piece from the report talking about the benefits of line and account consolidation:

Consolidation is beneficial because it improves the voice of your account both internally and to the carrier. From an internal perspective, you now communicate updates and issues to the company which allows you to be preemptive on problem resolution and  issues. In terms of the carrier, consolidation means they can offer you improved support. Problem resolution will also be greatly improved. Once you resolve an issue affecting one line, you can extend that resolution to all lines affected by that same issue, opposed to waiting for each effected line to call individually seeking help. 

 

There is also an accounting benefit associated with consolidation in the form of credits. Having everything in one place provides affords you the ability to easily identify, apply, and/or transfer credits,  improving the execution of this sort of  request, that in the past could take months (if not years) to complete.  In the past these credits have tended to linger for days, if not years. 

 

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Posted in Financial Management, IMF Updates, Member Identified Trends, Strategy

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Report: A Simple Approach for Optimizing Your Environment to Save Costs

February 13th, 2013

IT Benchmarking IT Consulting

A Simple Approach for Optimizing Your Environment to Save Costs is based on a Web Forum presentation given by Caleb Masland. This report focuses on leveraging quantitative data to save money in your environment but it’s really more about how to approach measurement in general. This is something a lot of companies struggle with and we perform on a daily basis. Here you’ll learn about an approach you can take back and use in your own environment.

The report covers three major areas. First is a general framework for measurement in the IT organization. The second part highlights choosing effective measures. Finally, you’ll find out how to leverage your collected data for improvement. The ultimate goal is getting actionable information to improve costs in your IT organization. You can use data and metrics for a variety of reasons in the organization. However, as a frame of reference for this report, they are used for cost optimization.

Members can download this report by logging into The IMF website and visiting our Reports page. Here is a passage from the report looking at a common problem many organizations face when they first implement a measurement program…

“When considering a measurement approach, companies tend to take either a very high level or very detailed approach. An abstract concept to think about concerning this scenario is the “Goldilocks Zone.” This   concept, in astronomical terms, refers to a planet’s habitable zone as being neither too close or too far away from the sun. For our purposes, this Goldilocks Zone means metrics shouldn’t be too detailed or so high level that they don’t provide you with actionable data.

 

Ideally you want measures that give enough detail for specific decision making activities. However, you don’t want them so far into the weeds where the data analysis process takes up so much time, thus making it difficult to focus on follow-up steps. Having worked with a lot of companies on benchmarking engagements, we’ve witnessed some measurement approaches that were clearly too high level and others that are far too detailed. When measurement programs are implemented in an organization for the first time, there’s a tendency to side with one extreme or the other. Companies don’t necessarily think about a “middle of the road” approach, which tends to derive the most value for the time investment.” 

 

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Posted in IMF Updates, IT Workforce, Strategy

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Report: Rural Sourcing As IT’s Onshore Alternative

January 3rd, 2013

Rural Sourcing: IT’s Onshore Alternative is based on a Web Forum presentation given by Monty Hamilton. Mr. Hamilton is the Chief Executive Officer of Rural Sourcing Inc. Rural sourcing is quickly picking up steam as a cost-effective alternative to offshore outsourcing.

This report takes a look at some cost comparisons and how using an onshore resource helps your bottom line. Learn about the rural sourcing market in terms of size and what companies are involved around the country. Find out what IT, consumer, and global economic factors are contributing to this growing trend. Discover some additional domestic sourcing benefits, on top of lower costs, like quicker times to market, time zone advantages, and reduced compliance risk.

Members can download the full report (and hundreds of other reports on a variety of IT topics) by logging into The IMF website and visiting our Reports section. In this brief passage, Mr. Hamilton discusses how IT’s changing landscape has made rural and domestic sourcing a more attractive option:

“The way IT projects are being approached these days is making a profound, long-term impact on the outsourcing market. Many companies have already invested a significant amount of time and resources implementing some kind of ERP package. With larger, multi-year initiatives like ERP out of the way, those companies have now moved onto smaller, more niche software investments. These projects have shorter run times, quicker times to market, and more collaboration between the businesses. Agile methodology has become very popular with those projects. A waterfall methodology just doesn’t adapt well to more market-driven, consumer-driven systems. Think about a traditional waterfall approach where you have to collect requirements, document them, send them off to someone else for development, and in a couple of years you receive something your users will hopefully appreciate. Most of that work has disappeared and we’re moving into an era of new buying patterns and products with SaaS models and cloud delivery.

 

When I speak with CIOs, one issue that is top of mind for them is the decentralization of IT. We spent the last couple of decades centralizing the IT function and having CIO’s own that function. They put a lot of processes and standardization tools in place. However, now we’re beginning to see the marketing and sales departments swipe their credit cards, buy new software tools, and implement them on the spot. There’s no arguing this kind of “Shadow IT” is influencing the IT landscape.”

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Posted in IMF Updates, IT Executive Management, IT Outsourcing, IT Workforce, Member Identified Trends, Strategy

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