Mobile Expense Management Service

January 3, 2015

SERVICE OVERVIEW

Expense MGMT chart SMALLIf yours is like most companies, it has more devices than ever out on the street. Moreover, those devices run the gamut from classic cell phones to smart phones to tablets to air cards. The number of units is often in the thousands, and keeping track of them is becoming a serious headache.

MindWireless’ Mobile Expense Management service addresses those challenges with a seven-layer service that covers all the bases. Beginning with a focus on how your program is structured, the service provides the necessary framework to gain control of your inventory, handle your invoice processing and chargeback, validate your vendor charges, optimize your rate plans, reduce services, and report all details to managers and users.

 

KEY FEATURES AND BENEFITS

MindWireless’ Mobile Expense Management service brings order to the chaos of managing a mobile environment. Elements of the service which most drive improvements include:

  • Reporting: Critical, timely, and relevant information is available to all stakeholders through a single sign on web-based portal. From individual employees to their supervisors, to your overall mobility program managers this allows better management and compliance by all users.
  • Inventories: Knowing who has what device (and who doesn’t!) is a foundational key for mobility management. A front end enrollment program, combined with existing inventory data and vendor data allows clients to build and maintain a cleaner, clearer picture than ever before.
  • Chargeback: Most companies want costs for wireless services to land in the correct departments. Tying together inventories with financial and employee data makes this possible, with greater accuracy than previously, and the visibility through reporting allows field managers to spot areas of concern.
  • Lower Costs: A number of financial activities support reducing costs. Rate Plan Optimization addresses the ability to align your actual usage with the most favorable vendor plans. Usage Optimization identifies the chance to reduce consumption across multiple areas from zero usage devices to costly features. In addition, billing validation corrects errors made by the carriers in their charges to you.

MINDWIRELESS’ PROCESS

MindWireless Mobile Expense Management is more than a software, it’s a full-on, technology-enabled service led by experienced team members with a passion to serve our clients. The service operates from a core foundation of seven integrated elements that work together for maximum benefit.

 

POLICY DEVELOPMENT

During the implementation stage, our team works with yours to ensure that all the policy bases are covered, putting in place the rules for how your program will operate. Of great importance are your cost policies, which frequently determine how you handle payment liability, qualifying vendors, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), and other program components.

 

ENROLLMENT AND INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

Until the inventory of lines, devices, users and other key information is assembled into a cohesive database, you cannot effectively manage your wireless environment. The first step is to build “order from chaos” through a structured program of enrollment and data collection that yields an accurate picture of your complete wireless portfolio.

 

INVOICE PROCESSING AND CHARGEBACK

All invoices are directed to Ecova where key attributes include unrivaled electronic data capture, multi-method cost allocation, cost estimation/forecast, consolidated vendor payments and more.

 

BILLING VALIDATION AND RESOLUTION

We believe strongly that our clients should pay what they owe, not what they’re billed. With the rich data set of invoices, inventories, and contracts assembled into our analytical systems, we can now perform the critical validation routines to ensure vendor billing accuracy.

 

RATE PLAN OPTIMIZATION

Using a three-month history of usage as the initial data set for analysis, analytical routines will be run to determine optimal pool size, whether any individual users are best served outside of the pool, and other criteria that will reduce the usage costs for both voice and data services.

 

SERVICE OPTIMIZATION

Using the inventory of lines, devices, and users in combination with usage data supplied by vendors, a wide range of optimizations are generated to eliminate unneeded zero usage devices, phones not belonging to current employees, features that are not desired under the policy and other costly elements of your wireless program.

 

REPORTING

Three separate user types will have specialized views of your wireless environment. Individual users will be able to view their own charges and usage, along with any procurement activity. Managers and supervisors will be able to view similar content for all of their reports that are in the wireless program. Administrators will have access to all wireless management data. Access can be via single sign-on with your systems.

 

IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS

Implementation and service launch will typically be completed in 30-60 days from contract signing. An initial kickoff meeting will be set with you immediately following contract signing to explain processes and introduce teams. Subsequent meetings will occur on a regular basis as appropriate for the timeline and services to be provided, typically at weekly intervals.

As part of deploying the service, we ask that you provide the following information:

  • List of vendors
  • Letters of authorization
  • Vendor contracts
  • Vendor account numbers
  • Vendor billing platform login credentials
  • Existing company wireless policy
  • Existing inventory with line number, model, carrier and employee
  • Cost allocation requirements (GL codes)
  • To properly support the maintenance of accurate inventory, cost allocation, procurement and other primary activities, a feed of regularly updated HR information is required. Primary information required in the feed includes:
    • Name
    • Email
    • Reporting hierarchy
    • Testing and training on reporting and workflow systems will be provided

 

SUMMARY

MindWireless’ Ecova’s Mobile Expense Management is not just invoice processing, but a broad-based, multi-faceted offering which accomplishes many important tasks to improve your mobile network management capability. From helping to define the correct policy for your company, to building a complete and accurate inventory, to properly allocating costs, to reporting and visibility, the benefits are expansive.

In addition, with IT departments taking the lead in merging their management efforts for Wireline and Wireless communications, there has never been a better time to get these activities under the same overall management program.