| A large pharmaceutical company based in Europe conducted an RFP to procure global web conferencing for all of its 80,000 worldwide employees. The company received proposals from a number of service providers, but lacked the technical knowledge to fully analyze, compare, and understand the proposals.
Because AIQ had worked with this company on a variety of telecommunications projects for over 25 years, they approached AIQ to perform the analysis of the proposals and provide them with the decision support information that they would need to make an award. Finding additional cost savings was not part of the scope of the engagement, and the client had no expectations that any savings would result.
AIQ then analyzed the bids, and determined that they were not comparable offers. In addition, AIQfound that the original RFP had omitted certain important questions that are critical in supporting a firm award decision....Read More
It seems like only yesterday when we used to debate when and if data would "pass" voice, in terms of which one companies spent more money on. At the time it was inconceivable, but fun to speculate on. Data spend passed voice spend a long time ago, however, now it’s clear that wireless will pass data in the not-too-distant future. There also appears to be another wave of rapidly growing expense: IT Subscription Services....Read More
Our clients must maintain competitive price advantage and consistent high shareholder yield returns. This creates a business imperative to continuously take out operational costs. Growth and investment in Telecommunications and IT services continue to outpace most other business expense categories because they produce the kinds of capabilities and efficiencies that businesses need to compete and profit. These services represent two of the very largest expense categories a business incurs. In other expense categories, executives can typically visualize, manage, and track expenses quite readily. Using established processes along with the expertise of their personnel progressively bends the cost curve down in order to gain greater efficiencies and continuous improvement. However, in telecom, it’s not quite the same.
Alternatives to Downsizing in a Poor Economy
- Or, Letting Suppliers Pay Some of Your Company’s Expense
Cutting expenses is not as exciting as increasing gross revenues, but it is more effective in improving the bottom line. If your company returns one dollar of profit for each ten dollars of revenue, you have to grow sales by $10 to gain $1 of profit. However, if you cut one dollar of expense, that one dollar is directly reflected as one more dollar of profit on your bottom line...Read More
A Passion for Profit:
Improving Your Career by Delivering Remarkable Savings
How do you go from being a useful employee to being indispensable? Somebody who does a good job for a
company is valued. They are part of the bricks and mortar of a company. But are they indispensable? The reason for the existence of most companies is to produce the maximum possible profit for their shareholders. At its most basic level, profit is, of course, revenue minus expense. Hence, the only ways to increase profit is to generate more revenue, or reduce expenses; either or both of which will improve profits...Read More
Carriers often offer a “technology upgrade” clause in their contracts as an inducement for companies to choose that carrier. The argument for the upgrade clause is that, at the end of each year during the long-term contract period, the carrier will offer to upgrade all or part of the customer’s service or equipment to the fastest circuits or the most modern equipment available. Unfortunately, most technology upgrade clauses in contracts written by telecom carriers are of little or no value to the customer... Read More
There was a Twilight Zone science fiction story released in 1959 entitled “To Serve Man.” In it, aliens come to earth and begin to do all sorts of wonderful things for humanity--they end war, cure disease, advance technology, etc. When asked why, they invariably say that they wish to serve man, and point to their handbook, which has that title. As the story ends, a human linguist translates the handbook and finds that it is really a cookbook.
The moral, of course, is that the obvious is not always the real.
So it is in negotiations with telecom carriers; if you do not understand how carriers behave and operate, they will eat your profits... Read More
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