Group Data Sharing is the New Carrier Direction

There is a shift unfolding on the wireless landscape.  The Tier 1 carriers are providing new plans, not only to business, but to individuals and groups of individuals (families).  There is not an industry name yet, but we refer to this as Group Data Sharing.  AT&T calls theirs Mobile Share Value Plans, while Verizon refers to them as More Everything Plans.  Both carriers’ plans are similar for individuals, small family-like groups and for businesses.  What is different about these plans is that they are sharing data (data only); voice and text are included and unlimited.  For a group, the amount of data required is selected and then there is small access fee for each device that is a member of the group.   The carriers are interested in securing a new billing model that is centered on data rather than voice, and are making this new approach very worthwhile to new and current customers previously using voice centric plans.

Both Verizon and AT&T have previously announced their intent to deliver VoLTE (Voice over LTE).  When their engineering organizations have reached the required quality levels, the voice traffic will become part of the data usage.  How can businesses take advantage of these changes?  If your average data usage per device is modest and if your device population is not high (less than 3K total devices) you may find you can reduce your bill significantly with Group Data Sharing plans.

Last week, Verizon announced that their More Everything business plans now would support groups of 100 devices.  This is a significant step towards making this viable to business. What started as 10 for families grew to 25, then 50 and now up to 100 devices can pool their data with unlimited voice and text.

Because these plans are relatively new, Verizon initially announced their plans in the summer of 2012, not all organizations are familiar with the benefits.  AT&T announced Mobile Share Value plans at the end of 2013 and started with a maximum for each group of 25 devices, which matched the Verizon plans at the time.

If you haven‘t looked at these plans for your Corporate Liable devices, you will be surprised at the impact it will have on your monthly invoices.

Finally, Carriers are Providing Options

International wireless travel charges are one of the most frequent surprises on company invoices.  Whether it comes in the form of one rogue employee on vacation or from a steady flow of legitimate but unmanaged executive wireless travel usage, an increasing portion of wireless invoices are international charges.  There are no simple features to address international voice charges but there are ways to at least mitigate international messaging and data charges.  The most shocking charges we’ve seen on client invoices come from international data usage.  Recently one user managed to generate over $24,000 in international data overage charges – a situation that could have been controlled and substantially minimized if proactive action had been taken.

There are two ways in which international charges can accumulate unneeded costs on your invoice.  First, the most obvious and painful charges accrue from individuals using international voice, messaging, or data while roaming on pay-as-you-go rates.  The second often arises from overreaction to overage surprises, where administrators permanently place international add-on features on users that tend to travel frequently.   While these charges are usually smaller than the overage surprises, they continue to accrue month after month whether an individual is traveling or not.  A $120 international data option left on a device when it is not needed will more than double the monthly cost of that device.

Fortunately there are solutions and methodologies to limit the damage to your invoice from international charges.

Partial Month International Features – For some time now, U.S. carriers have not forced international data and messaging options to span an entire bill cycle.  Plans may now be turned on and off for periods of just a few days and the user only pays for that portion of the monthly fee when the option is enabled.  When using only partial month features make sure that you factor in the fact that the included feature amount will also be prorated – 3 days in a month will provide only 1/10^th of the indicated units included. Carriers are also permitting the ability to assign the option retroactively as long as the bill cycle has not lapsed.  If you received notification to add a feature after the traveler has left the country you can back date the effective start date to cover any use already incurred, an unusually generous carrier consideration.

Capping the Option Time Period – Carriers now permit a preset end-of-feature date when it will come off of the device.   If the employee has communicated their travel window, the options can be put into effect for only the days needed.  Leaving international features on devices that don’t experience constant travel needs can be expensive.  If your Mobility Management Solution doesn’t scan for unused features, you will be well served to always list an end-of-feature date when turning on international features in the carrier portals.

Provisioning Work Flow – The Best-in-Class approach to managing international feature additions and removals is to have the functionality to request these changes via an ordering portal that is available to end users.  End users will know best their travel schedule and giving them the opportunity to submit those requests themselves will be the most efficient.  Your provisioning system should support the ability to provide start and end dates to the travel schedule so that those fulfilling the request can preset the end date of the international feature.

These few simple tips can result in large savings on your carrier bills.

How Much Are You Throwing Away Monthly?

Every carrier bill is littered with forgotten or unnoticed features that are no longer needed or used. Carriers can’t know if a feature is no longer needed and are happy to include them in each monthly bill.  Because feature charges recur monthly, it doesn’t take long for wasted spending to add up.  The problem is that if your company doesn’t have a way to track or identify these unneeded features, they will continue to bill unnoticed.  Too often the benchmark of successful mobility management is to compare previous month spending.  If an invoice is consistent with previous month billings this is often deemed adequate.  An uptick in billings will draw immediate attention but stable spending becomes a false assurance that spending is under control.

There are two categories of feature expense that are deserving of attention.  First are the usage-based features.  These would include functions such as messaging, data, and international features.  Because overage charges can be painful, there is frequently a tendency to overshoot on the feature tier selected.  Rarely do companies have effective procedures to monitor these devices as usage drops below their peak.  They are often sized based on these peak usage months and, as long as peak usage is a recurring event, then this strategy may work.  However, some percentage of devices will return to a lower usage rate or even stop using features as the carrier invoice continues to bill at an elevated feature level and cost.

The second category of unneeded features includes those for which there is no usage tracking such as insurance and navigation.  There are also other monthly recurring services lurking where an employee may intentionally or unintentionally register by responding to a solicitation.  Some services like navigation may be sanctioned for certain mobile employee job functions although all smartphones today have spoken navigation as a base map application.  Others such as ‘Daily Horoscope’ are clearly not.  We usually recommend against carrier insurance because it is most often more cost-effective to self-insure.

Monitoring Usage-Based Features – Invoices are good at letting us know when feature levels are too low with overage penalties but they are silent in regards to under use.  Because messaging has become a more valuable business tool, some companies will include messaging on all company devices.  While this is simple to implement, it can result in monthly unneeded expense.  If you have 10% of your employees not utilizing messaging but paying an average of $10/month for that unneeded service those charges can add up.  For a company with 2000 cell phones that represents $2000/month or $24,000/year in unneeded carrier expense.  However, we would not usually advise dropping a messaging feature without several months of contiguous usage data indicating a pattern of non-use.  Mobility Managed Solutions (MMS) are oriented to monitoring monthly usage and tracking trends over time to permit easier decision making on removing or reducing features to lower carrier costs.

Non-Usage-Based Features – The most frequently identified savings opportunity here comes from insurance charges.  For families or small companies with a limited number of wireless devices, insurance can be cost effective because there isn’t a large base over which you can spread the risk.  One company with 150 devices was paying over $400/month in insurance fees.  Most of these insurance programs come with a deductible if the device is damaged or lost.  While this can reduce the sting of paying retail for a lost device, it also can add up over time.  In this scenario the company is paying nearly $5,000 a year to manage risk.  To break even on this proposition they would need to be replacing 8-10% of their devices annually – a number higher than the industry averages.  A better solution is to self-insure, particularly when making use of buddy upgrades or recycling used assets as a way to avoid paying full replacement cost when there is a need for a non-warrantee replacement.

Monitoring unneeded features can reduce the slow trickle of payments to your carrier that you shouldn’t be making.  While there are other savings initiative that can contribute a higher level of savings (see our previous tips on these topics), paying for things that you don’t need can present a proportionately higher degree of angst.  We find that a careful process of identifying and terminating unneeded features can reduce your invoice 1-2%.  For companies with 1,000 mobile devices and annual carrier bills of $800K, that would be $8,000, which is no small amount.