TMNG Global Initiates An Audit Program For A CLEC's Vendor Billings

Challenge

The client, a communications service provider, did not have a comprehensive audit program or structured processes in place to deal with monthly billings from vendors that totaled approximately $1.2 million. As a result, service bills were paid without review. In addition, the client did not utilize electronic billing formats and was inundated with paper bills. Although the client had purchased a basic audit program, it only served to reformat electronic bills for inclusion into the billing system for call detail records. Additionally, the client had never terminated any service with its service providers and they were thus incurring significant costs for canceled customers.

TMNG Global Solution

The TMNG Global team began by initiating an audit program. We gathered all billings in an electronic format and began comparisons of the billings to services ordered on the internal customer database. We quickly determined that the database was outdated and inaccurate, and were therefore forced to begin using service billing as a primary source in order to update the internal customer catalog.

As a result of this assessment, our team identified $900,000 in billed taxes that were not applicable and $250,000 in billings for canceled customers. In addition, we identified $200,000 in paper billings where end customers accounts had been assigned to service provider and the call records had never been included in electronic interfaces as required.

The team subsequently initiated a crash cancellation program to remove customers from the master lists. We implemented provisioning processes to assure the cancellations occurred and followed-up these cancellations with an audit on credits due on future service billings.

Benefits to the Client

The recommendations provided by our team enabled the client to identify and cancel 40,000 customers who were producing false revenue and costing the client an estimated $3.5 million in expenses. TMNG Global also corrected over 60,000 customer accounts with correct rate plans, thus eliminating a large number of customer service complaints. Finally, our team improved the level of verified true billings per month by reducing it from $2.2 million to $1.3 million.