Mobile device allocations and contract structure can vastly impact your enterprise expenses. When a company looks at optimizing their mobile devices, it is traditional practice to monitor the past months usage, ensure that all of the users are on a sharing plan, add a 5-10% buffer and then monitor the usage throughout the month to ensure that overage does not occur. But – is this the most effective approach?
What if you were to learn that there is a better way to optimize your pooling account. Below we examine two ways to optimize an account and highlight the pros and cons of each optimization.
Shared Account Optimization with Direct Pass Through Charge Allocation
This is the traditional method organizations use to optimize their plans, as it is often promoted by the carriers. It is straight forward and is the easiest for someone who does not have automated software such as Tellennium’s Integrated Management System (MoT®), to allocate charges.
In this model, one simply puts end users on a rate plan that most closely matches their usage while ensuring that the overall account has an appropriate buffer. When it comes to allocation, the charges for the rate plan that the end user is on are directly passed back to the employee.
The good news about this type of allocation is that the chargeback to the business will mostly be consistent month-over- month. The bad news is that you will pay more to the carrier when you use this type of optimization.
There is also a lack of accountability for high users as they simply pull overage from other users at no additional cost to them or their business unit.
Shared Account Optimization with Usage Based Allocation
The difference is subtle so read closely. In this model, the traditional monitoring of past usage and adding a 5-10% buffer is the same, but the difference comes when you assign rate plans.
In this model you procure the highest data allowance plan available until your share/pool allowance is met, then you place the others on the cheapest share plan available. It is recommended that you negotiate a 0 GB Share plan in your agreements with the carriers.
With this approach, you utilize plans that have a cheaper cost per GB, allowing you to maximize savings. However, this only works well if a company has an efficient/automated way to allocate these charges back to the user based on their actual usage.
Along with the usage charge, end users also get costs such as international travel and other features passed directly back to them. This puts accountability back on the end user as they will only pay for their usage, which provides accountability.
The above said, a company needs to be careful about switching to this method without proper communication as it can quickly drive budgets over plan if a few high users over-represent the business unit.
Key Takeaways
Using smaller share plans may reduce your mobile spend significantly. This approach builds in better accountability in business units, and more accurately accounts for high use individuals. Utilizing plans that have a cheaper cost per GB, allows you to maximize savings. However, this only works well if a company has an efficient/automated way to allocate these charges back to the user based on their actual usage, and communication is critical. Check out how Tellennium helps organizations automate visibility and cost allocation back to your employees.