The answer depends on a multitude of factors that will ultimately determine how much your organization can save.
Let’s start broad and then review the factors that influence savings derived from managed mobility services (MMS). Given your organization’s situation, the goal will be to give you a reasonable estimate of what to expect as you engage various MMS providers in the discovery process.
The helicopter-level estimate is anywhere from 9% to 30% savings over the MMS program investment for organizations that have not used MMS previously. For this article, we will assume that you have not used an MMS provider in the past. (At Tellennium, 28% is considered on the higher side within our expected norm, especially for organizations that have not utilized an MMS provider in the past.)
If you are moving on from an MMS provider that you are not happy with because of poor performance, then your results will differ as the prior provider may have performed at least some of its work satisfactorily, which would impact the savings target for any incoming MMS provider; the savings potential could be slightly reduced as a result.
Holistic Approach for Managed Mobility Savings
Savings can come from several MMS services or initiatives. In a well-run MMS program, savings will come from all areas of mobility support services. It’s ultimately about aggregate MMS program savings.
Managed mobility services take a holistic approach to expense management for your organization’s mobility devices. (It’s like TEM for mobility; it’s a larger umbrella for mobility service offerings.)
Therefore, a strong MMS provider will work to optimize all MMS service areas via the use of strong technology and skilled expertise within its staff. Both the use of powerful mobile applications and industry expertise help large enterprises scale effectively.
The days of using simple spreadsheets and hiring more internal staff to address management challenges and growth no longer work, especially if you want to maximize mobility savings opportunities.
Let’s review some of the support areas for managed mobility services that will help to generate savings for your organization.
Managed Mobility Services Savings Areas
1. A SaaS platform designed specifically for expense management and mobility support drives savings
When reviewing any new prospective MMS partner, have them do a deep dive into their platform so you can clearly see how things work. This is important because not all expense management applications are created equal.
Some will be designed to better serve your organization than others. And you will only know this by having any serious potential MMS partner get deep into the weeds with your team on how the technology platform will serve your organizational mobility requirements.
The MMS technology platform should possess:
High configurability and scalability:
The technology platform needs to adapt to your organization’s unique mobility needs. When going through a demonstration, be sure to inquire about how the system will handle your organization’s needs, especially your priority needs.
Some MMS platforms will be better suited to your needs than others so you will not want to move too quickly through the demo.
For example, if you are seeking device logistical support, are you experiencing issues in one area more than another? Common support needs may include staging and kitting, device asset tagging, device deployment support, device collection, wiping, storage, and recycling.
Aside from your immediate needs, as your organization changes and grows, a strong platform and MMS best practices approach will easily adjust, and this is what you need to scale effectively over the long term, which will lead to MMS program savings in terms of driving efficiency throughout the complete MMS lifecycle.
Powerful automation capabilities:
As the MMS team installs a program to your requirements, leveraging industry best practices as relates to workflow management and automating all that can be automated is naturally important. You want talented staff to work on higher-order challenges, not engage in repetitive low-value work.
Automated alerts assist staff in daily management. Automated report and email functionality can facilitate strong team communications, streamlining MMS support activities and reducing program waste, which adds to your savings and bottom line.
Robust inventory and data management functionality:
We tend to harp on the importance of inventory and data management. And we do so because it is critical. Effective MMS program management begins and ends with the integrity of its data.
If you have inferior data – whether incomplete or inaccurate – you are in trouble. You won’t be able to make sound mobility management decisions, and this will be costly to your organization, even if not immediately noticeable.
Great data is the bedrock that will support all processes and analyses that drive savings for your MMS program. (Bad data will not work so it’s imperative that your organization has a deep, comprehensive, and accurate mobility inventory.)
Strong reporting capabilities:
This may seem obvious, but the system also needs to be able to report information in an easily digestible way. Your team will constantly be involved in analytical work around billing expenses, usage analyses, and trend monitoring.
An effective MMS platform will also have powerful dashboarding capabilities as well as reporting functionality, all of which should also be highly customizable. This will naturally facilitate sound real-time decision-making and help drive savings for your MMS program.
2. Mobility services audit and optimization will drive material savings
A competent MMS provider will have the technology and industry knowledge to dig deep into the weeds with respect to watching over all your mobile carrier services, devices, and other IT equipment.
Analyses will first be focused on whether billing is accurate and per contracted terms. But even more importantly, the team will direct keen eyes toward evaluating how carrier and service selections may be further optimized for needed services at the most competitive rates going forward.
This proactive and ongoing approach will drive material and sustainable savings for your MMS program throughout the full MMS lifecycle. And this is where you want to be: always thinking in terms of organically managing the program in real-time and with forward-leaning positioning to stay ahead of the expense management curve so to speak.
Audit analyses are important but strong mobility optimization support will drive substantive savings for your organization over time. For larger enterprises, it’s reasonable to see savings range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions over the course of a standard 3-year agreement.
3. Mobility help desk support can keep employees productive by resolving issues quickly
It goes without saying, but there will be problems, many problems.
For example, applications may incur update issues. Mobile phones will become lost or become inoperable for any number of reasons. Issues will seemingly come out of nowhere, especially in our modern and highly technical enterprise marketplace.
An experienced and skilled mobility help desk team will be able to assist with typical mobility support needs such as executing service transfers, dispositions, equipment and service troubleshooting, as well as billing concerns.
Savings from this area will be more modest and less glamorous but quick issue resolution and keeping employees up and running saves money, especially over a period of years.
4. Optimizing invoice processing will save your organization significantly
We mention this a great deal but it’s so fundamental to a strong expense management program that it can’t be stated enough.
A capable MMS provider will leverage its strong technology platform (e.g., #1 above) along with its experienced mobility staff to centralize management and streamline the invoice management process, which will eliminate late payment fees and undesired service disconnections.
More is involved than this, but eliminating these two common invoicing issues alone can save your organization thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars over a few years, depending upon the size of the company.
5. Procurement and workflow support will facilitate smooth operations and assist with savings
Many MMS providers will offer an end-user mobility workflow module for mobility service issues. A well-designed mobile procurement and order management system will help save money over time by eliminating many common administrative miscommunication issues relating to, say, device replacement or upgrades.
This technical capability fully supports each point within the mobility lifecycle; it provides strong real-time support to your employees while giving management excellent visibility and control over the organization’s devices.
Like help desk support, this managed mobility services support area will not drive the bulk of realized savings for your program, but efficiencies gained here add to the overall bottom line.
Closing Thoughts on MMS and Savings
A strongly managed mobility program can save your expense management organization up to approximately 28% of your MMS program investment (e.g., a 3-year agreement or more). And a capable MMS provider should be able to demonstrate how a strong positive return on investment will be achieved.
Keep some of these areas top of mind in your MMS discovery process evaluations and you will be well served.
If you’d like to consider Tellennium in your TEM vendor comparisons, contact us to schedule a brief demo of our solution.
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