Baseline Audit and Recovery

Posted on April 7, 2009

An audit is a logical starting point for lowering costs because it sets the baseline for accurate billing and service delivery, and allows you to quickly reclaim overpayments from your vendors.

The best audit is the one that returns the greatest retained savings for you, in the shortest time and with the least disruption to your daily telecom management efforts. Our authoritative approach, 100% vendor independence, and thorough processes yield the highest possible results for our clients.

To earn your respect, we know we must deliver a truly meaningful ROI. And to earn the respect and cooperation of your vendors we must be accurate and complete in our claims documentation, persuasive in our presentation, and persistent in pursuing results.

The impact of common errors such as these can be staggering, yet these are the types of errors we see over and over again, even with companies that work very hard at managing their telecom effectively.

  • Services not requested, but billed
  • Discontinued phone and data services still being billed
  • Unused or underused circuits and services
  • Variations between contractual terms and actual billing rates
  • Improper long distance vendor selection

A McMartin Engineering audit delivers much more than just savings. The progress of your audit is tracked and reported to you on a regular schedule from start to finish. Each audit finding is meticulously detailed, then presented to you for validation and acceptance.

Upon completion of the audit we present a comprehensive Service Inventory Report that details all of the vendors, circuits and services we have audited, providing a critical value-added tool. And our Telecom Savings Report will list every finding and outcome so you can see exactly how much you saved and how.

Every day that you allow telecom overcharges to continue you are adding to your losses, because not all errors will result in recoveries. And if a dollar in excess spending requires ten to twenty dollars in sales to even out at the bottom line, doesn’t it make sense to stop the losses sooner rather than later?

So, if your telecom expenses exceed $500,000 annually, and if you are interested in lowering your costs through our Baseline Audit and Recovery service please contact us today.

With the Telecommunications Deregulation Act of 1996, billing has fallen into disarray. The billing systems in use today evolved haphazardly from legacy systems designed in the days when one monopolistic phone company walked the earth like a giant dinosaur. That uniform standard is now a chaotic mess. The fact is that deregulation has created a billing minefield, and you are the target.

Each telecom invoice rolls up untold numbers of call details, rates, tariffs, discounts, charges, taxes and fees into a summary set of charges. Having multiple providers means you’ll get multiple versions of these bills. With no existing standard for billing platforms, companies are left to fend for themselves. So unless the background billing charges and codes are well understood by your staff, they may as well stand for “lost profits.”

Everyone wants a clear handle on costs, but few companies are truly capable of delivering on that goal when it comes to telecom. IT departments are great with technology and systems but the paperwork can overwhelm them. Accounting departments can track the overall expense but do they really understand all of the codes and hidden charges that make up a bill summary? The result is that most telecom expenses are not given proper scrutiny, and millions of dollars are wasted annually.

Overcharges and errors often date back years. Our team of telecom billing engineers can uncover tariff, billing and connectivity errors that even the well-trained telecom manager could easily be unaware of.

Our Baseline Audit and Recovery service is designed to help companies who want to find and correct potentially costly problems which have crept into their telecom billing and their service management efforts. Here are a few Q&A elements that help explain what we do and how we do it.

Typically, we allocate 10-15 days to assemble all of the client invoices, contracts and related source materials. Following that, we project a similar timeframe to assemble vendor source materials, although some materials can take longer. Audit analysis and client review of findings can be performed in about 30 days. Where we identify overpayments, requests are submitted to vendors, which will typically appear within 1-2 billing cycles. Some recoveries are more complex and may require escalation within the carrier. Clients with greater than $5 million in annual spending may require some sequencing of spend categories.

We recognize that you brought us in to get a quality job done without tying up your internal resources. As a result, we ask our clients to accept two key responsibilities. The first is to provide us with primary account information such as invoices, contracts and location lists. That allows us to gather additional materials from the vendor and perform the audit analysis. The second responsibility is to review the findings that we bring forward, and to accept or decline our recommendations on a timely basis. That allows us to efficiently begin generating savings for you.

Our Letter of Agency agreement with you is “information only.” While we can request refunds on your behalf, we are not authorized to make service changes. Instead, we provide you with the information and support you need to request any service changes that the audit demonstrates will lower your costs.

McMartin Engineering will take full responsibility for identifying overpayments and requesting related refunds or credits on behalf of the client, then insuring they are properly applied to the invoices.

We believe an audit should do more than just put money in your pocket. At the conclusion of our audit we will provide the client with a comprehensive Service Inventory Report that details all of the vendors, circuits and services that we have audited. This report becomes an excellent baseline for ongoing telecom cost management. We also provide a Telecom Savings Report that details each of our findings and the results of those findings.

Yes, but we are certain we can do it better and faster. There are so many nooks and crannies where overpayments can be found, that it is beyond the capability of most businesses to find them all. It’s no secret that slogging through stacks of invoices and rate codes is not “sexy” work, and it’s hard for companies to tackle this task, especially if they have tightened the belt on human capital. Our proprietary automated processes and tools make this detective work more efficient.

Some state tariffs are more favorable to consumers than others. Many states even have statutes of limitations that limit the requirements on issuing credits. But companies should beware that we are seeing more and more vendors attempt to add contract language which limits their liability to just 6 months, which TelAssess vehemently opposes!

For now, most carriers are comfortable granting refunds back two years. But the two year timeline can also be greatly extended in select cases. On a recent audit we secured a refund for five years and eleven months where the mileage being applied to a T1 span was inaccurate. That small error of just $55 per month returned over $3,000 back to the client.

If you are considered to be an important customer to a vendor, they may be willing to go back further than their standard policy provides for. The key to a successful recovery is to be accurate and complete in documentation of the claim, persuasive in the presentation, and persistent in pursuing the longest possible duration.

Auditing is neither easy nor glamorous. It’s a detailed, laborious activity that requires deep expertise with vendor billing, comprehension of network design, insight into current technologies, and more. McMartin Engineering prides itself on the diverse backgrounds our team brings, and on the tools and processes we deploy in support of lowering our client’s telecom costs.

McMartin Engineering provides Client with a full accounting of the audit including the Service Inventory Report (in both printed and electronic form) which documents all of the client’s circuits and services, and the Telecom Savings Report which details the individual audit findings.

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