PR NEWSWIRE:  June 5th, 2007

Optelcon Teams with Ernest Communications on Telecom Cost Management for Mobile Spend

SUMMARY: Telecom cost management solutions provider Optelcon recently announced a strategic alliance with Ernest Communications (ECI) to develop and deliver a mobile communications service.

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 Telecom cost management solutions provider Optelcon recently announced a strategic alliance with Ernest Communications (ECI) to develop and deliver a mobile communications service complying with ECI's "No-Line-Left-Behind" offering for nationwide, multi-location enterprise accounts.

This service is being developed to give enterprise customers with the ability to significantly lower their monthly spend on mobile phone assets. It offers tools to manage assets more efficiently by automating rate change selections.

Customers already using ECI's No-Line-Left-Behind local service now can reap the benefits of bundled rate plans. New customers can lock in ECI as a single source for nationwide and local phone service-both wireline and wireless.

ECI senior vice president Jay Morris said that his company has spent 22 years building a reputation as a telecom services provider focused on large, multi-location accounts.

"Our service model stands out as one that allows companies to focus their telecom resources on more mission critical IT applications rather than auditing and tracking basic dial-tone and other telecommunications services," Morris said in a statement.

Morris continued: "We are known for listening to our customers and ECI EnCompass will allow us to continue to deliver what customers need; the freeing of precious IT and accounting resources shackled to audits, inventory analysis, expense tracking along with daily adds, moves and changes."

The new service, dubbed EnCompass, differs somewhat from ECI's traditional, local offerings, for which the company acts as the phone company. EnCompass for mobile is, instead, carrier-agnostic. The result is that enterprises can obtain excellent savings on their mobile phone spend by optimizing existing carrier plans-it isn't necessary to change providers or even consolidate to a single carrier.

Optelcon and ECI decided to team up on this new service after they researched one another. In the case of Otpelcon, the research involved looking for best-in-breed local phone services. In the case of ECI, the research involved looking for a software company capable of designing and delivering features needed to manage thousands of devices and possible rate plans.

"Optelcon, while working with a large multi-location retailers on Mobile management opportunities identified a need for a comprehensive national solution for local telephone service similar to what ECI was proposing for mobile with a client," explained Optelcon president and CEO Robert Pommer, in a statement. "ECI was the only company that met both our standards for quality, and truly understood the mutual gains achieved by marrying the two services."

At the same time, ECI was evaluating several potential partners in its quest to deliver additional value to customers through telecom cost management services and technology. ECI concluded that only Optelcon would do.

"This type of service is not new, but ECI understood that Optelcon is first and foremost, a software development company delivering telecom solutions, not the other way around," Morris said. "I believe we are both very optimistic and excited about the opportunity to work together and the products we will jointly develop."

For those not familiar, ECI is a privately-held, nationwide competitive local exchange carrier with headquarters in Norcross, Georgia. The company delivers a single-source, one-bill solution with dedicated customer service for nationwide, multi-location accounts throughout the U.S. ECI's customers include retailers, insurance industries, quick-serve restaurants, and financial institutions.

Optelcon Launches Telecom Cost Management Channel on TMCnet 

 
(Norwalk, CT - [7.20.07]) Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) today announced that the Telecom Cost Management channel, sponsored by Optelcon, has been launched as the latest addition to the TMCnet channel program.  

The Telecom Cost Management channel promotes Call Accounting and expense management solutions and includes an overview of Optelcon's products. In addition, visitors can find valuable resources such as white papers, free product trials, e-demos, feature articles and industry news. 

The channel can be found at:

http://www.tmcnet.com/channels/telecom-cost-management.

TMCnet's channels are micro-targeted information portals where readers can find topic-specific news, articles, feature stories and product reviews. TMCnet has created over 100 channels covering important topics in the IP Communications, VoIP, IP Telephony, CRM, Call Center and Information Technology industries.  

"Optelcon is pleased to join forces with TMC, the leader of communications and technology media," commented Bob Pommer, Optelcon CEO. "Taking advantage of TMCnet's credibility and expertise in driving laser focused traffic will reinforce our branding and distinguish Optelcon as a telecom cost management market leader."

Optelcon serves the business market with a variety of telecom cost management software and solutions. These include call accounting solutions, expense management software, invoice management, and mobile device management. These solutions are used by professional expense management firms, mid-size enterprises and Fortune 100 firms alike.

With its team of telecom and software veterans, Optelcon is very well-qualified to provide companies with the tools and services they need to effectively manage their telecom resources and expenses.

"TMCnet welcomes Optelcon's Telecom Cost Management channel into our program," stated Rich Tehrani, TMC President. "They are a well-respected telecom cost management company that shares our vision in the advancement of new technologies. Our channel program is a community-building vehicle assisting our partners in building their brand, while contributing to the vast array of valuable content which drives traffic to TMCnet, the most-visited communications and technology Web site in the world." 

TMCnet is ranked among the top 0.003 percent of the most visited Web sites in the world by alexa.com, an amazon.com company that monitors Web traffic. TMCnet is viewed by more than one million unique visitors every month representing 18 million page views, according to WebTrends, and saw nearly two million visitors in January 2007.

For information on TMCnet's channels program, please contact John Sorel at (203) 852-6800, ext. 229 or e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

About TMC

Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) publishes four print publications: Customer Interaction Solutions, INTERNET TELEPHONY, SIP Magazine and IMS Magazine. TMCnet, TMC's Web site, is the leading source of news and articles for the communications and technology industries. Ranked in the top 0.003 percent of all sites in the world by alexa.com*, TMCnet serves more than one million unique visitors each month, according to WebTrends. TMC is also the first publisher to test new products in its own on-site laboratories, TMC Labs. In addition, TMC produces INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO, The Communications Developer Conference, IMS Expo and Call Center 2.0 Conference. TMCnet.com publishes more than 15 topical online newsletters. For more information about TMC, visit www.tmcnet.com. (*alexa.com is an amazon.com company that ranks Web sites by their traffic levels. Neither alexa.com nor amazon.com is affiliated with TMCnet.)

About Optelcon
Optelcon is a global expense avoidance and resource management software and services firm. Our next generation "On-Demand" Web based software and solutions are used by professional expense management firms, mid-size enterprises and fortune 100 firms alike. With our team of telecom and software veterans, Optelcon will provide your company with the tools and experience needed to more effectively manage your telecom resources and expenses.

Optelcon goes way beyond traditional auditing and invoice processing solutions. The solutions Optelcon provides are for companies who want to create both short term cost benefits, as well as implement permanent long term telecom management solutions. Optelcon helps your company put "Vision Into Motion..."

TMC Contact:
Mae Kowalke

TMCnet
Tel: 203-852-6800
Fax: 203-853-2845
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

www.tmcnet.com

Optelcon Contact:

Robert Pommer

Tel: 847-501-5026

Fax: 847-574-7566

Email  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it     

Web site: www.optelcon.com

TITLE: Tackling the Communications Expense Beast with Telecom Cost Management

SUMMARY: How can a company avoid losing track of the telecom forest for the invoice trees? The answer is to employ the services of a telecom cost management provider.

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For both Fortune 500 firms and small businesses, managing telecom costs can be a daunting task. Companies often use many different telecom and network services and receive hundreds or thousands of invoices each month. How can a company maintain visibility into all these business expenses? In other words, how can a company avoid losing track of the telecom forest for the invoice trees?

The answer is to employ the services of a telecom cost management provider. Not only will doing so greatly simplify management, but also will save the business as much as 25 percent in telecom expenses.

How are these savings realized? In many cases, simply by correcting billing errors. By some estimates, more than half of all telecom service invoices contain some type of error. These errors can result in companies paying 7 to 12 percent more than they should. Finding and correcting these errors alone, though, often is not worth the time spent on the task when businesses try to tackle the problem on their own. A telecom cost management company can make correcting errors cost-effective through a process called validation.

Effective telecom related service and equipment inventory management is another important key to most Telecom Cost Management Solutions. An enterprise is not a static entity. In fact, most changes to an organization require some change in telecom services i.e. office, staff, organization, location or business changes, without a TEM system which can automatically identify each line item of the invoice against your inventory. I.e. if operations or H.R. removes a service items such as a cell phone, conference bridge, calling card, circuit, data element etc… it should reflect on the invoice. Only a good Telecom Management System can track these changes effectively. The over spending caused by unneeded services, averages between 12-15% of a company’s entire telecom budget.

Savings can also be realized through optimization processes. This involves examining all the different services and providers used, and selecting the most cost-effective rate plans. Most companies do not have the internal resources needed to perform this optimization process. Instead, it makes sense to assign this task to a telecom cost management provider. This provider will take into consideration all communications-related services—including mobile/wireless, long-distance, local phone, conferencing, virtual private network, PBX, e-mail, voicemail, and so on—and advise the company on the optimal business decisions needed to minimize expenses.

Finally, companies can save money on their communications spend by outsourcing the management tasks involved to a telecom cost management provider. Outsourcing non-core business processes makes sense from a return on investment (ROI) perspective, since a variety of telecom-related tasks have become quite burdensome. Some of the processes that a company may choose to outsource include pricing and contract negotiations, service level agreement (SLA) enforcement, and dispute management.

Taken together, these three ways to save on communications expenses—validation, optimization, outsourcing—constitute what’s known in the industry as ‘total telecom cost management,’ or TTCM. This holistic approach to communications expenses focuses on the bottom line by determining the best way to trim expenses without sacrificing functionality. In fact, trimming expenses through TTCM offers the advantage of helping companies become more nimble and competitive.

Considering the fact that a mid-market enterprise spends about $26 million each year on telecom services (figures from a recent Optelcon white paper, cited from Aberdeen Group research), and the average Fortune 500 company spends $116 million each year on these types of expenses, it seems clear that the time to implement TCM is now.

To learn more about how your company can benefit from TCM, please visit Optelcon’s Telecom Cost Management channel on TMCnet.com.

Mae Kowalke previously wrote for Cleveland Magazine in Ohio and The Burlington Free Press in Vermont. To see more of her articles, please visit Mae Kowalke’s columnist page. Also check out her Wireless Mobility blog.

Mobile, Mobile cost management, mobile expense management, mobile procurement, mobile helpdesk, blackberry, blackberry i.t. support, invoice processing, telecom, telecommunications,  telecom expense management, telecom cost management, telecom audit, contract negotiation, benchmark, benchmarking, inventory, inventory management, utilities, shipping, pots line management, multi-location management, voip, network optimization, process engineering, blackberry helpdesk, Call center, charge back, hospitality, hotel, billing, enterprise management, software, ASP, outsource, optimization, call optimization, least cost routing, mobile gateway, redundancy, disaster planning, disaster avoidance, disaster planning, hosting, telecom consulting, best practices

Taken from an article written for TMCNET. A leading technology research and marketing firm. 

The top 7 misconceptions about mobile cost management services, and how they lead companies to overspend an average of 25% on mobile costs.

There are many myths and misconceptions which lead many companies to believe that they are powerless against this exploding use and expense of mobile phones and devices. In this article, we are going to try and clear up some of these misconceptions and show enterprise companies how they can effectively manage, what is believed by many, to be an unmanageable situation.

Misconception # 1 – I have already negotiated a great corporate contract.
Answer: Having a corporate contract provides companies with a number of benefits which include; no early termination penalties for devices under the contract, Volume discounts and other assorted terms. They also provide the enterprise with a false sense of security as well. These volume discounts are almost always based on the total dollar volume spent and not on the individual rate plans underneath its umbrella. By optimizing the individuals rate plans the discount will applied against a smaller gross number thus significantly reducing your cost. Typical corporate contracts provide between a 12-20% discount off of the total bill. Optimization can yield an average of an additional 25% savings. In short even companies with the best large corporate contracts can benefit from optimization services.

Misconception # 2 – We have a pool of minutes and thus we don’t need to optimize.
Answer: Pooling plans can provide companies with significant benefits however they can also provide a false sense of security in cost of use. Pooling is incredibly complex. Carriers do not just provide you with one big pool of minutes. In actuality a pool is made up of the sum of the individual contributing plans. This means each user either gets a plan which has a certain number of included minutes which other people can share or they get a “bolt-on” plan which does not contribute minutes, but they can take from the contributing minute plans. There are hundreds of different variations of pool plans which have different rates for data, night/weekend, roaming, international etc… If you company has 1000 users, the collective pool plan will have 1000 individual plans which make up the total. In addition as your company’s usage grows or contracts, having the wrong pool plan can actually cost you significantly more than if you were on individual plans. Using a professional mobile optimization company with access to the thousands of rate plans and the algorithms to systematically analyze these different variations and combinations will assure you are getting the lowest cost per minute overall. On average, even companies with pooling plans can cut their usage costs by over 25%.

Misconception # 3 – I don’t have to worry about it since I have my employees own their own phones and expense their business calls.
Answer: Due to the speed in which mobile phones have taken over telecom, many companies still allow their employees to own their own phones and expense their charges. This equates to waiving the white flag and believing it can’t be managed effectively. Although this removes the burden to manage it, it creates a number of problems including: 1. Individuals are paying rates which tend to be 20% higher than corporate plans. 2. Very little visibility and accountability. 3. Often miss allocation of expense. 4. Management does not have the time, or tools to manage effectively 5. Corporate liability, if your employee leaves the company, they take with them the number, their phone and quite possibly your clients. Just as you would not allow everyone in your company to buy their own computers, desk phones, internet access, local phone service, 800 numbers etc… and just expense it, cell phones are no different. Quite often the reason for this behavior is that management feels they don’t have the experience, resources or tools to manage this growing problem. In the past several years, there have been new breeds of firms, with new technology, processes and expert advice which can allow you to manage a very large expense just as you would others. Everything from procurement, helpdesk, reporting, and policy management is available. Typically for just a few dollars per month per device your company can get control and reduce overall costs by more than 25%.

Misconception #4 - My vendor takes care of that for me.
Answer: “The wolf is guarding the hen house”. Although there are some good account managers and well meaning people, asking your vendor to reduce the revenue they receive from you is an inherent conflict of interest. Ask yourself if your company would train each of your account managers to contact every customer monthly and tell them how to spend less money with your company? In most cases even the best account managers only have access to the same rate plans and web interfaces that you do. Using a truly objective mobile management company which is not compensated by the carriers is the only way to know for sure that you are getting the best deals. Using a professional mobile management firm, will enable you to keep your vendors honest.

Misconception #5 – I don’t want to have to change carriers and phones and coverage areas to save money.
Answer: By utilizing a professional mobile cost management company you do not have to. Optimizing your rates based on your specific usage patterns by using the latest computer algorithms allows you to keep your existing provider. Stay away from any firm which advertises optimization but recommends switching all your phones to another carrier. Chances are they are getting paid by that vendor. If you use the right company to do this, the only thing that changes is the lower bill the next month.

Misconception #6 - I have a department which handles that.
Answer: Even companies with the largest telecom staffs can benefit from bringing in an outside professional Mobile Cost Management company. Most companies manage the costs on excel spreadsheets and are doing it along with many other jobs. A professional management company uses rate plan algorithms which compare your usage patterns against over the 10,000 available rate plan variations and pool plans. The combination of the technology and industry insiders will provide your existing telecom team the tools to do be more effective.

Misconception #7 – We manage it pretty well, how much savings could there be?
Answer: A lot. On average each user spends approximately $100/month on mobile service. On average, a professional management company will reduce this cost by 25% or greater. This means: Monthly savings = $100 x .25% = $25/month per device or $300/year savings per device. 1000 devices equals over $300,000/year in savings with relatively little effort by the company. If a company operates on a net profit margin of 10%, every dollar saved is equal to $10 in new sales. 1000 devices = $300,000/year in savings or the equivalent of adding $3,000,000 to the top line. Is it worth spending an hour of your time to look at this? You bet. In closing, getting control of both your spend and your processes is a very attainable and relatively quick and easy solution. By using a professional Telecommunications/Mobile Cost Management company, you can take advantage of lessons learned by others, use proprietary technology, dramatically reduce your costs and improve your processes. Thinking this challenge going to go away is simply denial. There are several firms which provide these services in a similar competitive manner. Our recommendation is to find one that you like and just go with it. Developing and managing and closing an extensive RFP, can take 3-6months. Every month you put this off is costing you an average of $25,000/month/1000 devices. The extra couple of thousand dollars you save by doing the RFP will end up costing you significantly more at the end of the day. 

To learn more about how your company can benefit from TCM, please visit Optelcon’s Telecom Cost Management channel on TMCnet.com.

Mae Kowalke previously wrote for Cleveland Magazine in Ohio and The Burlington Free Press in Vermont. To see more of her articles, please visit Mae Kowalke’s columnist page. Also check out her Wireless Mobility blog.