Case Study – Fixed Asset Field Audit Services
Major Texas Municipality achieves $3.5 Million annual savings with fixed telecommunications asset audit
The Challenge
A major metropolitan city in Texas has over 1,000 locations with approximately 6,000 fixed telecommunications assets. These telecommunications facilities provide voice and data services for internal operations and critical emergency service operations (i.e. fire, police, etc.). With a monthly recurring cost of almost half a million dollars, an intensive field audit of the City’s telecom spend was necessary. The audit mandate was to identify, verify, document, and recommend actions to eliminate unused or unnecessary telecom services, and identify opportunities for service transition where cost savings could be realized. The initial attempt to conduct the audit internally was not successful, due to a lack of the necessary telecommunications expertise and resources, so the City elected to outsource a physical audit of their entire telecommunication asset portfolio to drive this important cost savings initiative.
The Solution
Our team was awarded the contract to execute and complete the audit, evaluating all voice and data services to achieve the City’s cost savings objectives. We provided the telecommunications expertise, field technicians, and project management necessary to deliver the project. We introduced a web and mobile application which provided a cloud-based portal with all the City’s telecommunications asset inventory fields, costs, audit tasks, and project management data. Our App was the main tool used for both project execution and project management and allowed the City’s IT leadership access to dashboards with project status and cost savings “wins” in real-time.
The team responsibilities included:
- Physical verification of the actual use of a given telecom service
- Validation of the address for each location
- Tagging each active service or line at the demarcation (demarc) point per location
- Tagging and appropriately labeling critical emergency communication lines at the demarc
- Reporting on all services identified as inactive or “not in use” and providing recommendations for decommission with the respective vendors
- Corresponding with the City’s existing telecom vendors regarding customer records
- Documenting specific detailed data of telecom services per location, including diagrams
The Results
Approximately 5,500 circuits were audited. 51% were found to be valid inventory and 49% were identified as candidates for removal. Only 38% of the City’s current monthly inventory spend was confirmed to be valid, and 62% was identified for removal or optimization.
Site location addresses were validated and updated, stranded circuits were resolved, and new sites were identified, documented, and updated by the team. The value-added services our team provided were documenting any safety issues identified at locations visited so they could be addressed, and compiling an extensive city-wide telecommunications contact list for each location, which was made available to the City for future use.
The project completed 2 weeks prior to the targeted project completion date, and was delivered 30% under the City’s approved budget. The project yielded an annual cost savings of approximately $3.5 million.
