Telecom Auditing Practices Page 2
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Cut the Cost! A Guide for Telecommunications Expense Management
By Jack Bogle
I have advised financial managers to remember that telephone company service providers are not in the business of making competitive rate comparisons or saving you money. They sell telecommunications services and are not really interested in decreasing their own revenues through reducing customer costs. I believe that financial officers should treat telecommunications as a commodity rather than a service. If businesses can put aside the technology and the lingo and concentrate on the fact that they are simply buying calls each month at a rate, it will help them better understand how they can reduce the costs of those calls.
I recently completed a telecom audit of a large North American business and found that overcharging by telecom providers was a chronic problem for several of the business units, in various regions. Even the most reputable telephone companies experience problems with their billing platforms leading to consistent overcharging of their corporate clients. While this is a common problem, customers remain unaware of overcharges because bills are complicated and difficult to understand. The person responsible for corporate telephone expenses often lacks the knowledge and understanding of the company’s system to understand if charges are accurate. While over-charging is not necessarily the willful intent by the carrier to take advantage of their customers, errors are often made between the carrier’s sales/marketing arm where the rates get negotiated and their operations where the service gets provisioned. Unfortunately, mistakes get made – some benefit the customer and some don’t. More ...