Government of Alberta Case Study

This case study will review the challenges one particular governments experienced and how Simplify Wireless changed everything.

Large provincial governments operate in silos (Ministries) for all their operations. It is the equivalent of operating several businesses under a single parent company. These ministries have separate IT departments, finance departments, policies, procurement processes, and management teams. They do however, share a vendor contract with their wireless carrier. This contract is developed as a one shoe fits all service. The thing is each ministry is vastly different from one business units to the next. The ministry of health has different business requirements than the ministry of transportation.

Before SimplifyWireless, the Government of Alberta was challenged with supporting a wireless services contract efficiently. Each ministry had their own processes, rules, and wireless coordinators to manage their needs. There was no consistency on how Wireless Services were delivered and caused extreme inefficiencies and cost overruns. The thing is, since there was no centralized management system the government had no idea how big of a problem they had.

SimplifyWireless has dramatically changed the way large governments manage their wireless services. Each ministry still operates as their own business unit however, each ministry uses a single methodology and unified process to manage their wireless operations. This case study will review the challenges one particular governments experienced and how Simplify Wireless changed everything.

Customer Bio:

This particular provincial government operates over 20,000 subscriptions across 23 different ministries. They operate a decentralized support model that meant that they had over 700 wireless coordinators scattered throughout the province. Since they had 23 ministries, this meant 23 different IT departments, 23 wireless policies, 23 different billing accounts, and so on. There was considerable waste in this environment.

Wasted Resources Eliminated

This provincial government operated over 700 wireless coordinators to support over 20,000 wireless subscriptions. This was extreme. This worked out to one wireless coordinator for every 30 wireless subscriptions. Since the launch of SimplifyWireless, the customer was able to dramatically reduce the amount of wireless coordinators required to support the fleet. This customer now employs approximately 100 wireless coordinators to support this complex fleet. With simplify wireless you can do much more with far less people. This saved the customer hundreds of thousands of dollars each month.

Better Support

Managing wireless is complex and requires a deep understanding of the technology, the internal process, and the vendor process to do the job right. With fewer resources meant that wireless coordinators can be better trained in the wireless process. This allowed the wireless end user to receive better and user support. As technology evolves, training needs to adapt. With fewer people to train the quality of training is much better.

Better Hardware Resourcing

Since a customer operated in siloed business units, it was difficult to source unused equipment. Ministries continued to purchase new hardware while other ministries sat on a surplus of spare inventory. With simplify wireless ministries are able to see and transfer unused hardware to their business unit. This dramatically reduced the amount of new purchases each month saving the customer tens of thousands of dollars each month.

Faster & More Accurate Business Decisions

Traditional enterprises required several systems to track procurement, changes, Inventory, and monthly airtime expenses. Simplify wireless provides a single pane of glass for all wireless activity. This means the decision makers have in one place to collect and analyze their wireless fleet. No longer are they required to stitch the data together from multiple sources. This saves them several hours each month reconciling the multitude of transactions that exist in a large wireless fleet.

Transparency

Large wireless fleets are often billed by the wireless carrier in large consolidated invoices. This makes it difficult and time consuming to share an individual’s billing with them. Because of this, it is common for the end user to never receive a monthly statement. Only when there are drastic overage charges does the enterprise share with the user their monthly expenses. Simplify Wireless slices large wireless bills in order to share an individual’s usage and costs with them. Regardless if the bill is high or low, the employee sees that their monthly expenses are being tracked and often than just their habits to ensure there is no future cost overruns.
Managers in certain business units are also able to see their portion of the wireless bill. This promotes good practices and guidance to all employees allowing the manager to coach their team on how best to manage their usage and costs.

Workflow Automation Saves Time

Today there are several different types of processes you and your wireless vendor needs to perform. Each one of them have a different workflow and different data sets to collect. This process is traditionally manual, and requires phone calls and emails to usher along the workflow. Simplify wireless automates this process so you and your vendors do not have to usher this manual process anymore. This significantly reduces the amount of time spent on day-to-day orders for everyone. Since simplify wireless controls who does what and when, it can measure the service level standards for everyone. This gives decision makers for these large wireless fleets full transparency on vendor and wireless coordinator performance. Never have wireless customers have this type of visibility before. Customers can pinpoint challenges in the process before they become a much larger problem in the future.

One Management Process for All Wireless Providers

Customers with large wireless fleets often rely on their wireless carriers change management process and systems. If you have multiple wireless carriers, this doubles or triples the amount of systems, people, and processes required to support the fleet. Simplify wireless provides a single methodology for all wireless carriers. Large enterprise customers no longer needed to learn how to use a carrier’s portal, support process, or procurement process.

Carriers Change, you don’t have to

Simplify wireless has been developed to support all wireless carriers. This means your wireless management team does not need to train each time you change wireless carriers. The process stays the same. This significantly reduces your change management costs when shopping for the best wireless rates. No longer are you required to rely on your wireless carriers reporting and systems to properly manage your wireless fleet. Simplify wireless is stays with the wireless fleet not with your wireless carrier.