The Challenge

The client is a $657bn healthcare company based in the United States but operating worldwide.

Ayudar was recommended to them by another global business after we completed a pan-European telecoms audit for them.

The client believed that they may be being overcharged by several telecoms providers but did not have the specialist knowledge to assess the billing. We were commissioned to carry out a recovery audit across the fixed and mobile estate.

The Response

The contracts and billing were requested from the healthcare company. It soon became apparent that the organisation was dealing with many local BT franchises rather than BT corporate. This resulted in:

• Poor contracts being signed (e.g. 5-year telecom deals on a building with only a 2-year lease)
• Poor account management resulting in cancellations not being applied
• Poor rates being offered
• No response to billing queries raised, multiple employees within the company casing issues and an inability to locate the right BT accounts
• We took the unusual step of working directly with BT Corporate to clear the overcharging problems.

These included:

• Failure to cancel lines when requested by the customer
• Failure to cancel equipment on lines when line cancelled
• Incorrect charging for ISDN circuits
• Failure to cancel telemarketing contracts at end of term

BT was not the sole source of billing errors. Another telecoms provider was clearly overcharging for calls and had been doing so for three years. They responded to our investigation by telling us that they only kept records for 6 months. Thanks to our good relationship with Ofcom we were able to access specialist telecoms lawyers and work with them to supply audit data and agree a settlement of 75% of the disputed account.

The mobile contract was also audited with some minor errors identified.

The Result

The result of our work has been a claim for £96,000 which was paid back within 2 months.

In addition, we consolidated all of the BT services under BT Corporate with a new contract. The previous terms that had been signed with some of the local office meant that consolidation on BT was the only option at this stage. With this new contract and other changes, the healthcare company’s annual bill will be reduced by £72,000 per year.

This project is still ongoing and the projected recoveries are well in excess of £100k. There are many other benefits from the project including:

• Single account on a OneBill for all telephone numbers
• Single account manager for all accounts
• Structured billing
• Tools provided to enable a complete the ongoing management and asset register of all services.
• Procedures provided to enable the client to manage their billing services