Case Studies

General Electric

Throughout its history, GE has always been well known for its dynamic style, but due its de-centralised structure all control of telecoms and telecoms costs had been lost in the UK.

With over 60 business units and 200 sites throughout the UK, GE spent £10 million per annum on telecoms across more than 20 suppliers. As part of its network, GE ran a voice dial plan which extended to 300,000 internal telephone numbers throughout the UK, part of a 10 million number dial plan globally and its voice and data network extended to almost 6,000 telephone numbers, 300 inbound non-geographic numbers, 500 leased lines and more than 4,500 mobiles.

GE had a small Corporate Telecoms team and some of the businesses operated their own Telecoms Departments in isolation, but due to the number of changes the business had gone through over the years, key people decided to create an internal bullet- train to establish how much could be saved by the organisation working more collaboratively together to understand the full extent of its telecoms landscape and harnessing its full buying power. Accordingly, Core Cost Management were brought in to assist and consult on this process.

Core Cost Management visited each GE business to review the telecoms infrastructure in place, establish the suppliers they were using and how much they spent on an annual basis.

This was no easy task, as with many companies of their size that have grown and diversified over time, supplier invoices were kept in a number of media formats and filed at multiple locations. Contractual and site documentation was non-existent in a number of cases.

Core Cost Management created a central repository and a database of all elements was brought together. An asset inventory was created of all the telecoms equipment in use and a supplier and expenditure audit containing a number of ways to look at usage patterns was developed.

This showed both a corporate view of the information and a breakdown by business, together with the ability to run queries on the amalgamated data that had been collected. This structure and analysis enabled GE to save £4.2 million on Telecoms costs

Fairview New Homes 

Fairview Homes are one of the largest new home builders in the South East and Telecoms costs at the company were seen as incidental until Segmentation Group identified and re-claimed a large refund from one of their suppliers.

Pat Yates, Office Manager at Fairview, is responsible for the bulk of communications services including the switchboard, the leased lines and the billing for normal calls and keeps a tight eye on overheads, “Like many firms, we can’t afford to employ a full-time specialist to manage our communications” says Pat, “and it’s even worse trying to keep track of it all when the supplier’s account manager keeps changing all the time!”

Pat asked Segmentation Group to come in and do a ‘spring-clean’ on Fairview’s telecom service to make sure everything was in order with their new service contracts. Segmentation’s Nick Cassidy discovered that the revised rates and agreed discounts had not been applied properly and having agreed with Pat how she wanted to tackle the issue, Segmentation prepared and submitted the claim to the network resulting in a substantial rebate for Fairview.

Segmentation Group has worked with Fairview over a period of years beginning with a review of landlines, which delivered a large reduction in costs by cleaning up the billing and giving costs greater visibility. The review led to a series of initiatives including cancellation of a number of unrequired lines, barring access to some expensive services, a big reduction in the cost of inter-site calls and calls to mobiles, and improving Fairview’s cashflow by changing the billing cycle and improving management information.

“The networks got away with it because we didn’t have the specialist resource and knowledge”, says Pat. “When it comes to materials costs, building regulations or health & safety, we have to be meticulous because that is what our business is about but, for services like telecoms and mobile, it makes sense to use an expert like Nick.” “I knew from his work over the years on our fixed line telecoms that he had the expertise and I could trust him to do a good job for us across the whole of our communications.”

The construction sector is by no means alone in asking non-specialists to take care of telecoms in addition to their day-job and Pat concludes, “If you haven’t got the expertise and the time to check everything yourself, it really makes sense to get Segmentation in to do a spring-clean. The bottom line is that we now must have some of the lowest communications costs amongst firms in our industry. We plan to keep it that way too, our business doesn’t stand still and neither does the communications sector.”

Hoare Lea

Hoare Lea initially started working with Segmentation Group to carry out a re-tendering exercise on its large mobile fleet. “We had been using Orange for a number of years and were very satisfied with the service we were receiving, but we didn’t have the time to go through a tendering exercise ourselves” said Tim Rathbone, a Senior Partner from Hoare Lea.

“After carrying out a full assessment of our needs, Segmentation produced a tender document and worked with us through the exercise to answer questions that the suppliers had”. “They evaluated the tender responses and prepared a simple evaluation which detailed all the offers received on a like for like basis”.

“They negotiated a new deal on our behalf which gave us a full technology upgrade in addition to a 30% saving and we hardly had any involvement, so I was very pleased with the return on investment we achieved after taking their fees in to account” concluded Tim.

“Since this time, Segmentation have carried out a full investigation in to all areas of our telecoms are we are currently looking at their managing all our estate as telecoms specialists for the future.”

Fibi Bank Ltd

“Segmentation came to us via a personal recommendation and we have been delighted with what they were able to achieve” said Steve Clowes, Finance Director for FIBI Bank.

“They first carried out a thorough analysis of our infrastructure and suppliers, then recommended ways to rationalise and improve current arrangements and finally assisted us with the implementation phase.

As a result, we were able to dispose of a large amount of redundant infrastructure, greatly reduce the number of suppliers we deal with and in addition, achieved a very substantial reduction in our monthly telecoms cost.

Following the successful completion of the project, we have maintained a close relationship with Nick and Segmentation Group and will certainly use them for any future telecoms requirements.”

Bank Leumi

“In these challenging times when stability and profitability are under threat, there are increasing needs for Operations Management to achieve more with less: more transactions with less staff, more business with lower costs. However, complexities within the market are constantly threatening our ability to achieve the goals we have been set. Regulation requires ever increasing controls and reporting. The pressures upon us make it difficult to identify where our priorities should lie.”

“Technology has made enormous advances in recent years and there are now new opportunities which enable us to think very carefully about how we can improve efficiency. However, this is also an area where costs have to be prudently managed.”

Nigel Brigden engaged Segmentation Group to conduct a full financial and systems audit of Bank Leumi’s telecoms which covered suppliers, costs and billing as well as a review of key operations. This identified savings of 30% as well as a number of priorities for improvement. “By engaging Segmentation Group, I now know our telecoms costs will be managed and problems be kept in check, the bank will keep up to date with technology and market changes and at the same time I can release some of my own and my staff’s time for more main stream responsibilities, so it is actually more cost effective too.”

Deutsche Postbank

“We wanted to reduce cost by making better use of our existing assets rather than looking at new technology to compound our current problems.” says Clarel Sookun of Deutsche Postbank. “Segmentation Group looked at our systems, our lines, suppliers and our costs and worked with us to optimise every element of our telecoms operation and most importantly from my point of view, keep us informed all along”.

“Although we knew that we had issues, there was always more pressing items to attend to. Outsourcing the task to Segmentation has resulted in reducing our lines by about 70% and substantially reducing our costs. The configuration of our telephone system was streamlined and our dealerboards were reconfigured to fit our current needs rather than those of 4 years ago. New maintenance contracts were negotiated at a much lower cost and Segmentation also worked with our current suppliers to obtain much lower rates for the destinations we call.”

“Overall, we reduced our costs by over 50% and now fully understand all elements of our telecoms infrastructure and we decided to retain Segmentation Group as our part time Telecoms Managers for the bank going forward and would thoroughly recommend them to anyone.”

Penningtons Manches

“Penningtons Manches have worked with Segmentation Group for a number of years and during this time, seen a lot of changes together, including office moves and changes, people changes, complete technology replacements and rationalisation exercises.

During this time, Penningtons Manches and Segmentation have worked on a steady programme together to reduce telecoms costs by 25%, whilst improving the technology Penningtons Manches have been using and significantly increasing bandwidth between sites, to allow for Voice over IP and Presence technologies across the business. This is allowing Penningtons Manches to introduce new methods of working that increase efficiency and productivity.

“Over the past 3 years, Segmentation has been able to deliver significant telecom cost savings by finding products, packages and suppliers that have given us better services at lower costs. Their indepth knowledge of the industry continues to prove invaluable”, stated James Rushton Penningtons Manches IT Director.
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