Saving money with existing suppliers

Case Study: Making the practice run more smoothly   (June 2010)

Our multiple physician client had a conundrum:   Re-sign the telecom services contract with their existing telecom supplier at a 40% discount and receive a few hundred dollars in signing bonuses, or let us do the research into better rates and plans to find if we could save them money.   When first approached, one of the five physicians indicated they weren’t paying that much for telecom and doubted it would be worth the work but they signed with us because of our no-risk opportunity.

After our analysis into their existing telecom infrastructure we found they were paying triple the then thought amount across all their services.   We quickly reduced their long distance rates with their existing supplier by more than 50%.   We completely eliminated their ‘pay for every phone call made’ plan with the local service (dial tone) provider saving them 100% of that cost.   Additionally, we doubled their DSL/Internet connection speed by switching to another provider (who was the incumbent for all the other services they have) for 20% less than they were paying for half the original speed.   It also turns out that their existing supplier’s 40% discount was just simply a disguise for ‘rack rates’ as since they were going to be out of contract in a few months their incumbent carrier knew they were going to jack their rates up by 40% because they would be ‘out of contract’.

Further, we were able to drop one of two unused phone lines (out of 15), and moved their credit card machine from the fax line to the line with the DSL, eliminating the often said but never understood “I’m sorry ma’am, we have to wait for the fax machine to stop before we can process your debit card for payment”.

And possibly the most ironic result:  all these new rates were negotiated with their incumbent carrier, saving over 70% from the previous rates.   The physicians are very secure in their knowledge that nothing had changed except the price!   Needless to say they are very pleased.   And now they really ARE paying what they originally thought before we began work for them.