Author Archives: admin

Lower Wireless Costs = Lower Wireless Taxes

Posted by admin on December 27, 2010   |   Comments Off

Welcome to the Exact Chargeback Blog!

I spent over 19 years working for Verizon Wireless in the F1000 space and I never had a conversation with an enterprise customer regarding the taxes associated with wireless services. The average tax for an account with national users is 16%. That is a significant part of the total cost of wireless service. This rate can be significantly higher depending on the location of your user population.

The tax rate by state can vary significantly. The highest is Washington at 23.64%, and the lowest is Oregon at 6.79%. You can visit www.mywireless.org to get the tax rate by state. In addition to these taxes, 10 states also charge a tax on wireless aircard service. Congress has passed legislation that prohibits any state or municipality from imposing additional taxes until 2014. Unfortunately, we have to deal with the taxes that are in place today which are a significant part of your wireless costs.

I usually do not highlight a specific offering our company has to an issue I am discussing. I am making an exception as we are the only company in the wireless industry to develop a patent pending solution that will  lower taxes. Our solution will lower a companies tax liabilities by 20-40% by deploying our advanced billing functionality. Our customers are blown away by our ability to drive costs lower in areas that they did not think were possible.

Please visit our website at www.exactchargeback.com to get more details regarding our unique offering.

Jim Breitzman,

President, Global Wireless Solutions

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Chargeback or Showback- driving savings with Accountability!

Posted by admin on December 13, 2010   |   Comments Off

Welcome to the Exact Chargeback Blog!

I continuously get asked by customers the same questions over and over. Why is wireless one of the top 5 fastest growing expenses? What can we do to lower or slow down the growth of this cost category?

I always tell them that it is critical to address what I call the “traditional” aspects of a wireless program- contract negotiations, RFP process, improved reporting, rate plan optimizations , and even reducing the # of users. These are all critical, but the # 1 reason for the explosion in this cost category is the lack of accountability end users have for their consumption.

If you want to reel in your costs in the wireless space, end users must be accountable for the costs associated with their consumption! End users will never change their behavior when companies charge back to their department budget the rate plan they are on from the carrier invoice. In a pooling environment the rate plan on the carrier invoice has no correlation to the end user consumption.

For example, two users are part of a 500 line pooling account. User A used 50 minutes and user B used 1500 minutes. All 500 of the users are on a 450 minute plan with $40 charged to their budget.  User A’s effective rate per minute is $.80 and user B’s is $.026. The 1500 minutes used by user B may be justified, but the costs associated with their consumption must follow the user to ensure accountability. Until end users realize that their company has finally figured out a way to charge them for their consumption they will consume more and overall costs will go higher.

The ability to chargeback or showback users for the cost associated with their consumption will drive accountability which will drive behavior change. I have never experienced behavior change resulting in higher consumption and costs. It will result in reducing the cost of wireless for your company.

Please visit www.exactchargeback.com to learn about how we can help drive accountability at your company!

Jim Breitzman,

President, Global Wireless Solutions

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