When corporate mobility isn’t tightly controlled, devices go from being powerful tools to ticking time bombs. Nowhere is this more evident than in mobile auditing and inventory management. A well-managed inventory should serve as a single source of truth – detailing every device, service, user, location, contract, and all associated costs – empowering IT and finance teams to optimize resources and spending. The reality is, it often becomes a web of hidden details, costs, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities.
- Wasted money on unused devices: Like one U.S. city that came under fire for spending over $300K on unused hardware.
- Lost devices, lost resources: Businesses spend $5M+ and 200+ hours annually just replacing lost mobile devices.
- Inaccurate invoices: It’s estimated that vendor billing errors can siphon away up to 20% of total revenue.
- Contract chaos: Outdated, mismanaged, and slow-to-negotiate contracts eat up an average of 9.2% of annual revenue.
- Aging hardware bloats the budget: One study found that the cost of maintaining old equipment skyrockets by 148% after five years.
If inventory chaos is draining your time and budget, a comprehensive audit is your first line of defense.
Your First Line of Defense: Comprehensive Mobile Audit
As a company that works with clients to tame hundreds of thousands of rows of spreadsheet data and recoup millions in savings, Tangoe has auditing down to a science. Here’s how to clarify your catalog and dig deep to uncover competitive new opportunities.
Step 1: Take Stock of All Your Mobile Assets
- Check for devices that are still being paid for but no longer in use (these are often assigned to former employees or they simply get lost in the shuffle).
- Don’t forget about ghost devices, a.k.a. assets that go missing and no one knows where they went (or who’s paying for them).
- Find unknown or unauthorized devices on your network. Shadow IT quietly consumes up to 40% of the IT budget and creates serious security risks.
- Look for older devices that should have been decommissioned but are still active in your service records.
Step 2: Comb Through Your Invoices and Contracts, Line-by-Line
- Check for outdated and unused services – you may be paying for legacy plans or features that no longer align with your needs.
- Ensure every charge aligns with contract terms and usage.
- Make sure you’re not auto-paying for unnecessary services.
- Carriers often roll over old contracts with outdated pricing – negotiate before auto-renewal dates hit (and remember that your provider may not offer the best available pricing, so be sure to benchmark against competitors)
- Look for patterns of charges that indicate misuse or an opportunity to switch plans.
Step 3: Analyze Service Utilization
- Which devices have little to no use? These are prime candidates for reassignment or deactivation.
- Find out which mobile apps or software licenses aren’t being used and cut them.
- Are employees exceeding or underutilizing their data plans? Find out and adjust accordingly.
- Employees who have left the company should not still have active, billable services under their name.
Step 4: Turn Insights into Action
Whether it’s correcting invoices, resolving vendor disputes, or automating service modifications, it’s time to turn potential savings into real dollars saved.
- If you find errors or overcharges, push for refunds or credits. Don’t just accept adjustments moving forward.
- Use your audit findings as leverage to secure lower rates, more flexible terms, or volume discounts.
- Implement automation tools to flag billing discrepancies, unused services, and contract renewals so it’s easy to act on your insights.
- Establish clear policies for device usage, upgrades, and offboarding to prevent future waste and inefficiencies.
Do You Have the Time to Manually Audit and Optimize?
Transforming your mobility program into a profit engine sounds incredible, but does your team have the time to do all this work?
Research shows that the cumulative effort required to manage, maintain, track, and monitor mobile devices consumes 34% of the IT organization’s time and productivity. It’s not crazy to think that this amount of time would double or triple when needing to backtrack through a minefield of missing information.
Why Companies Trust Tangoe
Expert auditors handle the heavy lifting – delivering a comprehensive, accurate inventory of your corporate mobile assets and services.
You’ll get complete visibility into your mobile landscape – every device, their status, locations, assigned users, services, contracts (terms, renewal dates, auto-renewal status, etc.) usage details, and all associated costs (invoices, costs per month/year, data plan types, etc.).
This is how we helped one global logistics leader streamline 110,000 devices, improve user satisfaction, and save $1.4M as a result. You can read their full story here.
We use this investigative process as a competitive advantage, uncovering inefficiencies and delivering actionable recommendations to help you maximize value.
- From unrecovered devices and misaligned data plans to billing errors and mismanaged contracts, we’ll find it all and start plugging the leaks immediately.
- We’ll establish a baseline of your current assets and spending and then compare those figures against industry-leading services and pricing from major carriers. We leverage a database of $34B in spending intelligence and market price insights to ensure you’re getting the best deals available. We can also handle negotiations for mobile contract renewals, delivering savings 3 months faster than a DIY approach.
Tangoe’s Managed Mobility Services (MMS) solutions offer end-to-end mobile management if you need it.
For ongoing optimization, we help manage everything from:
- Maintaining a complete, accurate mobile inventory
- Tracking your fleet management and monitoring usage patterns
- Ensuring compliance and lifecycle progress
- Managing devices from procurement to retirement
- Strengthening security at every step
Whether you need a one-time audit or full-scale mobile management, we ensure every dollar spent delivers value. Meet with one of our mobility management experts.