Use BI to cut cell phone bills

Welcome to the last installment in our 5-part series on IT cost cutting.

BlackBerry, iPhone, cell phone, pager -- personal devices of every sort were rampant at Title Resource Group, a real estate closing company that's part of the US$6 billion Realogy Corp., which owns Century 21, Coldwell Banker and other franchises.

This time last year, Title Resource employees could use any cell phone they wanted for work, even personal devices that they, not the company, owned. Corporate calling plans for managers, sales reps and other employees allowed for a few hundred minutes per month.

Some employees used a personal plan, even on a company-owned device. Other employees submitted cell phone charges on monthly expense reports, says Nehal Trivedi, CIO at Title Resource.

As a result, the company didn't know exactly how much money it was spending on cell phone bills. But Trivedi had the feeling it was too much.

"A thousand dollars a month raises a lot of eyebrows," he says. "If it was your home bill, you would look into it no matter how affluent you are."

Trivedi needed data to make a business case for reining in cell phone expenses. So business intelligence specialists in IT worked with corporate finance to collect the data from invoices and expense reports. Armed with specifics, Title Resource then negotiated contracts with two preferred cell providers, AT&T and Verizon, that give the company better rates.

Employees were then categorized as minimal use, voice-only use and voice-and-data use, Trivedi says. Minimal-use employees are capped at $40 per month in usage. Voice-only people get plain cell phones, not smart phones. Those allowed voice-and-data plans can get BlackBerrys or other smart phones, he says.

Title Resource enforces the limits by sending spending reports to senior managers every month, detailing whose monthly bills were highest. "We started paying attention to the top talkers, and [their bills] are difficult to justify," Trivedi says.

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