#12 – Inventory Your Resources and Know Their Purposes
No one would argue that it makes sense to stop paying for unnecessary resources, but when was the last time you reviewed your service provider bills and confirmed that you’re actually using everything they’re billing you for? This technique is about taking some time to do just that. First, you need to start with a set of complete bills from your service providers. Whether you’re reviewing network services, mobility, infrastructure, app licenses, or your phone system etc., each bill will break down, to some degree, the components you are being charged for. List these components out, and create an inventory of your services. For network services, you’ll end up with a Circuit Inventory. For mobility, you’ll create a Device Inventory. Infrastructure will result in a Machine & Workload Inventory. Inventorying your phone system results in an Extension Inventory (and a Card/Module Inventory if you have an on-premise PBX) and so on.
The next step is to review each of these components, and determine what function they perform for your business. Obviously plenty of resources will turn out to be necessary, for any number of reasons. That’s perfectly fine. What we’re looking for are entries that have either A) no purpose or B) a purpose that does not benefit the business. A phone line that is not answered by anything. A mobile device that has not been assigned to anyone in over 90 days. A virtual server that was built to support a now-completed project. Voicemail boxes for an employee that left the company over a year ago. If the service doesn’t truly serve you, then it should be marked on your inventory document for removal.
The third step is to actually go through the process of notifying your service providers to remove those targeted services. If your services are under contract, it’s important that you understand whether you have a Business Downturn clause (and its specific terms, if you do), or whether there is an amount of flexibility inherently within the contract (is there a percentage of spend you can drop without triggering early termination fees?).
The final step (and this is where many fall short), request confirmation when the billing will stop, and make certain you get a confirmation number to follow up with later. Set reminders for yourself if you need to. If you continue to be billed after the stop date, the confirmation number will be the proof that you did your part, and should be credited back. If you do this periodically you’re almost guaranteed to find waste.
Given your other responsibilities, this may be more than you want to take on right now, but that doesn’t mean it has to sit and wait. Send us one month’s worth of invoices, and let us help you assess the purpose of your resources, and we can even deal with all the communication and follow ups with your service providers for you to ensure you eliminate the waste before you have to cut payroll!
