Royal Veterinary College – University of London

At a glance

The issue:
Little visibility and understanding over their mobile estate led to ​​​​​​escalating mobile spend and usage.

The project:
To gain better visibility and understanding of RVC’s mobile estate whilst optimising spend and usage making mobile easier for RVC to manage.

The outcome:
A refreshed cost effective mobile estate that has enabled RVC employees to be more productive and effective through the use of digital workplace technology helping them connect to their applications and data more securely.

The Background

Optimise spend and usage, control cost and make mobile easier to manage. Gain visibility and understanding of the entire estate.

As their existing mobile contract was expiring soon, RVC wanted it to be reviewed and to determine if it was still fit for purpose and to analyse if any more appropriate alternatives may be available.

As part of this process, RVC went out to tender to benchmark the best available tariffs, suppliers, and networks.

RVC’s objectives for this exercise was to:

• Obtain savings
• Receive a high level of service
• Evaluate alternatives for value for money
• Take advantage of added benefits from new tariffs
• Maintain reliable network coverage

The award criteria were to be based upon acceptance of the best overall value for money proposal in accordance with both overall quality and cost criteria.

The Challenge

RVC’s main objectives for this new contract were to ensure that they controlled their unnecessary spend and made it easier for the IT department to manage. They wanted to:

• Right size the estate, continually review their existing usage patterns on an individual level to ensure each user kept within bundle
• Reallocate unused connections rather than take out new connections
• Understand and control usage
• Audit the user base with up to date cost centres and usernames to ensure correct allocation of mobile charges to departmental functions
• Make overall savings

The Solution

The project consisted of two phases:

Phase 1 – Understand usage, reduce spend

Usage analysis determined that a new tariff would better suit the way they worked by providing increased individual data allowances as well as being more generous than the existing contract.

Users were allocated into one of three tiers based on their predicted usage:

• Tier 1 – for heavy users – unlimited calls and texts with 18GB of flexible data that automatically rolls over unused excess data to the next month – UK to EU calls included
• Tier 2 – for light users – unlimited calls and texts with 3GB of data
• Tier 3 – for mobile broadband – 24GB of rollover data

Phase 2 – Move to the new contract

RVC moved to this improved contract with Maintel and O2. By moving tariff, RVC made the required savings.

Highlights of these savings:

• The most appropriate tariff for each user type
• International calls included within bundle rather than out of bundle spend
• Rollover of data to cope with any spikes in data usage
• Signing on bonus
• Cash technology fund
• Ability to cap spend

What are the benefits?

Maintel successfully supported RVC throughout the project and all the outcomes that were sought by this project were achieved, namely:

• A smooth transition to the new contract
• Take advantage of tariff changes and commercial flexibility to move all users to new tariffs without increasing costs and still retaining control
• Continuity of account management and customer service to maintain RVC’s confidence that any issues are always addressed quickly and efficiently
• Consistency of reliable network coverage from O2
• Each month Maintel provide detailed reports profiling high usage, spend that can be controlled and recommendations for reducing cost. This has allowed RVC to highlight and bar unauthorised usage
• Align tariffs across the estate, making it easier to manage and designed to eradicate out of bundle spend
• A culture of continual improvement to ensure that best practice is always available, and that management is a continual process in conjunction with a trusted partner