Midland Telecom | Preparation for Transition

Contract paperwork

There will be some simple paperwork to complete but once you have done this, and agreed your timetable, you will be ready to go. Your Bid Manager will contact you after the successful tender is agreed and we will electronically (e-sign) swap the contract and agree the relevant dates. The Bid Manager assigned to you will be consistent right through the entire process and act as the primary contact, so you have a familiar contact throughout the process from contract signing to training on the billing platform, right through to the allocation of your field-based Account Manager at the end of the process.

Audit and catalogue the fleet

Our experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic shows people favour a process where a simple table (excel spreadsheet), is shared between us, with a column for each field of data. This focusses the need to audit the current fleet and catalogue the users. Columns include the user’s name, address for delivery, mobile number, handset choice, data allowance, spend allowance and more.

Then it is a simple matter to add further columns covering features such as the data use warning level and any other initiatives we might introduce. With this shared spreadsheet, we can pre-load your information into the billing platform and set your preferences in advance of transfer. An additional benefit is we can tick off the ones that are completed, so none are missed.

Jagged edge contracts

Many clients have an issue with this, where several contracts have differing end dates and to avoid high settlement charges, they might stage a transfer of groups of phones, so their budget is adhered to. We will synchronise these for you, to a single end-date, called co-termination. Hereby, any incidence of overlapping charges between the old contract and the new one can be avoided.

Your current Monthly billing cut-off date.

Each network or supplier will have a date from which they will re-bill you a full month’s rental costs in advance. Our Account Managers will agree this date and prepare a transition model to avoid overlapping charges. We have our own billing platform, so we can provide a flexible start date for each month, billing you for a part month, until calendar month-end, this avoids overlapping charges, exceeding budgets and questions from your accounting team. You will be pleased to know, we bill month-end to month-end, simplifying your accountancy.

Fulfilment - Consider using our ‘Zero touch’ mobile fulfilment service.

Our £6 fulfilment cost per user, adds only 25p a month to a contract rental over a two-year term (and the cost includes £3 worth of MDM rental).

Our helpdesk team will do the work for you:

They put the phone in the correct MDM profile
Unbox and prepare the phone
Insert the correct SIM with the correct number
Re-box it for shipping
Tick it off the list v
Prepare inserts to guide users - How to set up your new phone, Backing up your old phone and what to do with it and What to do on the day of transfer.
Help users having problems with their new device

To put this in context, it might cost £35 in overlapping charges if a smartphone enrolment is delayed.

One we have done all this, it just leaves the user to enter their e-mail username and password and the phone will self-configure to their requirements – which we have noted in advance on the shared spreadsheet (and MDM where involved).

MDM’s role in fulfilment

Device Enrolment programs (DEP) by Apple and Android, are a convenient way for us to load your new devices into your chosen MDM (Mobile Device Management) platform. From here you can make light work of the fulfilment, dropping the listed devices into pre-prepared profiles for each type of user. If you do not have a preferred MDM, we will give you a free trial with the excellent Sophos version, which allows our helpdesk team to guide you through the fulfilment process. After 30 days, you can then decide to drop the service or keep it on. It refreshes every 30 days, so there is no long-term commitment. Budget for around £3 per user but this includes endpoint protection (antivirus). Users then tend to make a return on their investment in lower consumption of data and less unauthorised use of premium services such as Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Personal Social Media accounts, Sky Go, Bingo, Betting and others.

The role of MDM in permissions of use and fair use policies.

Your MDM platform can obtain digitally signed copies of fair use policies as the user enrols the device.

The role of MDM in permitted use and restricting devices to authorised levels of company use.

MDM through its user profile and permissions, can offer more granular access to some services, for example, you can only permit social media access after 5.30pm or before 8.30am, except weekends, bank holidays and lunchtimes and only where Wi-Fi is available. So, it can help you to enforce the company fair use policies and keep costs lower.

Barring and permissions

In the spreadsheet audit, we will insert your network preferences and permissions for each user. This normally includes permissions to:

call international numbers from the UK
use the phone while roaming internationally
use premium SMS, calls
set a spend limit (suspension level) to provide a fraud or stop loss
set a data use limit (suspension level) to prevent runaway data use
multimedia use (picture messages, video calls, etc)

Alerts

We bill the entire bill each day, so we can provide alerts to departmental managers, users or the admin team, during the month as it progresses. We can set these up with you during fulfilment, so each user gets notified of their data use if near their usage limits, for example, 75%, 90%. This is particularly useful if you have a shared data plan, telling users to take it easy or else face suspension.

Your resources at the time you renew your mobile contract

Think carefully of how much time it will take your team to process each connection and if you have this time available? We can build these minor fulfilment costs into your monthly Opex rental and leave you free to do your normal duties.

It does not make good business sense to process an entire fleet without extra resources. In many cases we witness overworked ICT staff having to process the connections, piecemeal over several months, while paying for the old higher contract costs, long after a contract has expired.

Remote access

Our helpdesk fulfilment team can access the device remotely (with your consent) take control of it (like a remote desktop feature), diagnose and fix the issues for you.

Further benefits are gained next time your contract refreshes

In your next contract refresh, all the fleet will be catalogued and pre-entered into the software, so the helpdesk team can simply drop in a new device once they call to confirm receipt. Most steps in fulfilment are avoided.

Training on the billing platform

This will occur at the end of the process and is simple and straight forward. We will arrange as many video conferences as you need to complete your training programme. The Ebillz billing platform is linked to our HALO help desk support system. It has a familiar Excel spreadsheet-style of use, with a single log-in and a five-minute walkthrough to show people how to use it. Further training for any individual is free throughout the contract process.