Your mobile telecom operator and service provider probably has a pooling plan all lined up for you. Perhaps, you have already accepted this offer, egged on by huge promises in savings. But is this plan really a viable solution for your company? Before buying into a pooling plan, it is necessary to understand its impact on your business and how the expected benefits will be achieved. The purpose of this article is to throw light on pooling plans so as to enable you to make an informed choice.
What is pooling?
Since the introduction of digital technology in Canada by mobile telephone service providers, the number of subscribers across the country continues to rise sharply. At the end of 2011, more than 25 million cellular phones are in use in Canada, that is a subscriber penetration rate of almost 50%.
Such a high penetration rate has a ripple effect on customer loyalty. To stem the tide and enlarge customer base, major telecom operators and service providers have created a wide range of service plans or programs.
This marketing strategy has also been directed at business clients, in fact, since the spring of 2001 when Canadian telecom service providers introduced the concept of pooling. Today, most of them offer this plan, however fewer businesses have opted for it. If pooling plans are as advantageous as touted, why have businesses been so slow to subscribe to them?
Pooling plans are based on a simple concept. Cellular phone users under a same account share a pool of allotted minutes. That way, when frequent users exceed their quotas, they can obtain additional minutes at lower costs based on the number of minutes still available to other users. Pooling plans seem all simple and logical. However, when applied to a business environment, the devil is in the details as clients seek to cope and overcome obstacles.
First obstacle, Centralized billing
There is, as the saying goes, no free lunch. The savings promised in pooling plans are no doubt significant, however, when implemented, they create new administrative headaches because these plans inevitably require centralized billing. For companies where cellular phone users are required to report billing charges as expense account items, centralized billing means profound changes in business processes. In fact, the task of validating and authorizing cellular phone expenses may soon befall a single employee either in the accounting department or administrative support unit. Account analysis becomes all the more tedious and error prone since a single person is responsible for combing through extensive billing records which, for 100 business users, may amount to 500 or 600 pages. Given that this administrative process is repeated every month, it will soon become obvious that centralized billing is neither efficient nor productive for your business.
Second obstacle, How should detailed cellular phone bills be interpreted?
Centralized billing is normally a requirement under a pooling plan. As such, users no longer receive individualized billing items, unless a person is assigned the task of mailing photocopies of current statements to respective users. Even if that were the case, users would not have a true accounting of their cellular phone costs, thus calling into question the very principle of billing on a pooling basis.
To illustrate this point, lets consider the following scenario. Dez is allotted 200 minutes in a pooling plan with more than 200 users. Lately, he has been tallying at least 600 minutes a month, exceeding his allotment by 400 minutes, which was made up by drawing from the pool of shared minutes. Unless the pool is completely exhausted, Dez's descriptive billing will show no dollar amounts against the additional minutes used as provided under a pooling plan.
If the company wishes to assign budget accounts per user or even user groups, it will have to go through a complex rebilling process whereby cellular phone costs are prorated in order to determine with some accuracy the expenses incurred by each user or group.
Third obstacle, Billing errors
In a perfect world, there are no billing errors. Unfortunately, in the North American telecom market, such errors are common. Who will pay for them? Businesses in the dark. How can a single person be able to check every month several hundreds of pages in cellular phone bills? How can you tell whether certain users really need the options billed? In the first place, who was responsible for adding those options? Have all the expected credits been received and recorded? Was a line actually deactivated as requested? Over time, this monitoring activity will become overwhelming, tedious and frustrating because it will require an in-depth knowledge of telecom operators business practices and the options they offer as well as a proven follow-up process to ensure that adjustments have indeed been made on the previous month's billing charges.
A solution that has its rewards
Pooling plans may in the final analysis prove advantageous. To reap the rewards, businesses must review their contracts with their telecom service provider and agree to pay roughly a five-dollar monthly fee for each user. A complete review of each user's plan must be carried out before implementation, because pooling does affect the way available minutes are used. The goal here is to secure minimal charges for all minutes required by all users, though, under this scenario, additional minutes will be billed at a higher or often twice the per-minute rate. In other words, the successful implementation of a pooling plan requires rigorous management, analysis and review of all cellular phone bills.
Moreover, businesses must put in place control procedures to ensure that:
- service options are validated and billing errors are referenced and corrected
- user plans are reviewed on a monthly basis to determine levels of need
- users comply with the existing or new policy
- real costs per user are rebilled and debited from designated cost centers
- users are kept informed of existing policy aimed at limiting abuse
- requests to add or retrench users are closely monitored to prevent needless expenses associated with inactive lines
maestriaweb A real option for Canadian companies
Mobile Maestria has developed an online solution called MaestriaWeb to enable clients implement pooling plans with optimum results. Designed for Canadian businesses seeking to achieve significant savings as well as curb the rapid growth of their cellular mobile telecom expenses, this service delivers the tools and monthly management reports based on consolidated billing data provided by telecom operators, thus allowing clients to enjoy maximum benefits from all the options and pooling plans available in Canada.
MaestriaWeb, an intelligent choice for businesses ready to regain control.
About mobilemaestria
Mobile Maestria is the ideal partner for businesses seeking to considerably reduce their wireless telecommunications expenses as well as streamline the management of their wireless fleet including cellular phones, pagers, personal organizers, laptop computers with wireless network adapters and calling cards. MaestriaWeb, an innovative solution designed by Mobile Maestria, provides clients with a set of powerful, seamless tools to manage wireless telecommunications services from both ends: use and billing. For more information on Mobile Maestria, visit our web site at www.mobilemaestria.com.
