HOUSTON, Jan. 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- With wireless bills, even a technically savvy corporation like eBay experiences frustrations and difficulties. eBay is the world's premiere online marketplace and e-commerce service with more than 93 million active users. With its strong technology background, and growing need for wireless services, eBay's IT group, which is responsible for its wireless services, knew there had to be a better way to manage usage, enforce contracts, and control costs. As part of its overall initiative to rein in telecommunications expenses, eBay turned to the wireless billing experts at Validas to provide the only on-demand resource in the world for reviewing, analyzing and controlling its employees' rapidly increasing wireless bills.
Validas' Proactive Approach to Savings
eBay has more than 5,300 mobile devices managed across four different wireless carriers. Each monthly wireless bill includes thousands of pages and line items. Further, eBay adds new lines every month that increase expenses by an average of 3 percent month over month. With each bill including hundreds or thousands of pages, and more than 10,000 line items each, auditing bills, managing subscriptions, enforcing contracts, and controlling costs is essentially impossible to accomplish with any sort of timeliness, accuracy, or bottom line impact when using manual or semi-automated processes.
eBay's IT group is tasked with managing the corporation's communications expenses. It set off on a course to enlist a global Telecom Expense Management provider to help drive its overall processes. But the group saw that wireless is a unique animal with rapid expense growth, complex contracts and rating schemes and problematic bills. Without consistent controls in place, eBay's team knew it was paying for unused wireless services in some areas, racking up hefty overage charges in others, and not weeding out all of the lines assigned to any employees who left the company. The IT group had been relying on its wireless providers to offer guidance and help to identify both inactive lines and those users subscribed to ill-fitting plans. Jacque Milstead, Senior Manager of IT Global Support Services, wanted to cut through billing complexity, identify errors and resolve disputes, right-size subscriptions to match actual usage, and ultimately to reduce and restrain eBay's wireless expenses. What the carriers offered just wasn't effective.
Validas Delivers Full Transparency to Wireless Billing
Validas' automated and secure Software as a Service web platform made sense because it turns complex wireless bill audits into a painless experience. Validas processes PDF copies of bills using patented algorithms and produces powerful business intelligence reports. These reports enable a corporation to take action with carriers by right-sizing rate plan subscriptions; eliminating unwanted add-on services and inactive lines; enforcing contract terms like discounts and bonus payments; and identifying and resolving any disputes. It creates the leverage enterprises need to bring wireless expenses under control immediately.
Though Milstead saw value in Validas' approach, she's pragmatic and knows that things that sound too good to be true usually are. "Initially, I thought that there must be a catch because it sounds too simple, but Validas came back to us with some preliminary numbers that made a lot of sense for us to move in this direction." One appealing characteristic for Milstead was Validas' carrier independence. Some competitors in the expense management arena make money by converting lines and services from one carrier to another. Validas instead focuses on identifying the most cost-effective plans from existing carriers, based on automated usage analyses, to minimize any migration pain and still drive optimized savings. Validas also delivers cross-industry cost comparisons so that clients have the knowledge they need to benchmark their costs, drive better rate negotiations, or switch to more cost effective carrier offers if that's what makes the most sense.
Milstead and her team received secure and accurate reports with visual snapshots that identified savings and recommended the right plan based on each line's usage, effectively eliminating unnecessary charges and maximizing services for each dollar spent. The savings showed up immediately – in the first two months eBay saved just shy of 21 percent off their overall wireless spend. Fast forward, to the next twenty months, Validas was able to help eBay save more than 33 percent off its wireless spend. Though intuition might suggest that monthly savings would flatten over time, Validas' approach is creating increasing savings in the majority of months because it allows eBay to leverage new terms, new pricing and rating schemes, and to restrain costs on the new lines eBay adds every month.
"It was simple," says Milstead, "no consultants, almost immediate results that hit our bottom line. To me, it was a no-brainer. Validas was able to bring immediate savings to the table for my team. Validas works hard for us and are very responsive to our questions. They do what they say they will do." Going forward, Validas will help eBay create and enforce more stringent and favorable contract terms with its wireless providers. It will continue to automate bill analysis every month as well, driving continuous right sizing, and keeping wireless expense under control.
For more information visit: http://www.validas.com Sales inquiries: [email protected]
About Validas
Validas® provides consumers, businesses and government agencies with a simple, secure online service that cuts bottom line wireless costs by an average of 20 to 40 percent. Founded by wireless industry experts, Validas eliminates wireless billing and rate plan confusion to improve customer care for wireless users. The on-demand software platform leverages patent-pending algorithms, processes and PDF scanning capabilities to deliver powerful business intelligence in seconds.
SOURCE Validas
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