The Business Phone Line & Bill Consolidation Process

If you work for a large company with many locations, spread across a wide geographical area, your company’s business phone lines (POTS) lines are probably supplied by a number of different carriers.  The result of that could be a slew of phone bills.  Managing those bills could wreak havoc on your company’s accounts payable department.

The simplest way of addressing this issue is to approach a POTS Aggregator. POTS Aggregators have relationships with the various incumbent phone companies that service different regions of the country.  They’re able to supply all your POTS lines on one bill and offer one point of contact.

Why Consolidate Your POTS?

Consolidation of POTS might require some effort in terms of time, money, and resources, so it is a valid question to ask, why go into that kind of trouble. The answer is that this one-time trouble can reduce all your future costs and management efforts to the minimum. That is a lucrative offering when it comes to avoiding the hassle of managing hundreds of phone lines and a massive pile of phone bills.

Consolidating your business phone line billing streamlines the entire process, making it easier to manage and significantly reducing administrative overhead. This approach not only simplifies your telecom management but also aligns with the goal of minimizing future costs and efforts, providing a clear answer to why consolidate business phone line billing.

Below are some benefits of POTS consolidations and working with a Business Phone Line (POTS) aggregator:

Cost Savings:

Several factors contribute to enormous savings through POTS consolidation. These can be grouped into three major sources:

• Business phone line aggregators get discounted carriers base rates
• After consolidation, the accounting and administration costs get reduced.

Bill Consolidation:

A national company, with thousands of locations, could receive hundreds of phone bills. This can cause several management issues such as:

• Hundreds of bills from multiple providers is a massive workload.
• With so many bills, it is challenging to catch every billing mistake or erroneous charge.

With a business phone line (POTS) aggregator, you’ll receive one bill for all your lines across the country. Further, not only POTS but the company’s DSL and wireless accounts can also be consolidated into one single bill

Single Point of Contact:

This leads to overall ease of management as one provider simplifies billing, customer service, ordering, disconnects, and trouble reporting.

Electronic Billing:

Business Phone Line (POTS) aggregators are electronically bonded to major networks so they can provide real-time reporting. They offer detailed site billing and reporting capabilities.

Eliminate 3rd Party Billing Charges:

Incumbent phone companies provide billing services for various organizations, legitimate and not.  Third-party billing charges are typically the result of Cramming, the placement of charges on your phone bill for services you never requested, authorized, or received.

If you’re dealing directly with an incumbent provider, you need to monitor your billing to prevent erroneous charges proactively. This is not the case when you work with a Business Phone Line (POTS) Aggregators.

Business Phone Line (POTS) Aggregators don’t have 3rd party billing arrangements, so that you won’t see any of those types of charges on your billing.

Prepare for Telecom Expense Management (TEM):

If a company is considering deploying telecom expense management, business phone line bill aggregators can help simplify the process by significantly reducing the number of bills that need to be logged into a TEM system.

To sum up, POTS consolidation not only reduces costs, but also brings ease of management, eliminates unnecessary charges, and brings transparency when it comes to your phone line recurring costs. These are benefits enough to go for the consolidation.

Also, when you hire an aggregator, he brings to the table his vast industry experience and immense bargaining power to fetch you the best services and rates as he bids the providers against each other. So, by hiring an aggregator, you are the one who ultimately benefits.

Now that you know the benefits of consolidation, we have also chalked down the process for you.

Business Phone Line Aggregation Process

If you’re considering moving your business lines to a Business Phone Line Bill Aggregator, you’ll want to understand the migration process.

Below is a generalized series of steps that we’ve experienced helping clients through the transition:

Aggregation LOA Signing:

As the first step, you sign various carrier and POTS Aggregator LOAs (Letter of Authorization) to initiate the process of aggregation.

Securing CSRs:

Aggregator secures all your CSRs (Customer Service Records). This is when he gets to know all the services you are receiving and the amount you are paying for these services.

Service & Billing Analysis:

Once the service and billing data is collected, it is analyzed for duplicate services, excessive rates, and other such anomalies. Through this analysis, a spreadsheet is developed that details all of the customer’s active phone lines and what improvements can be implemented through the consolidation process.

Line Conversions:

Over the years your business has been running, you have had various services installed for the phone services. All these need to be converted to a single type for consolidation. For instance, Centrex and trunk lines need to be converted to standard POTS lines before transitioning to an aggregator or POTS consolidation company.

Lines Requiring Special Attention:

Lines are under contract, in hunt groups, or with DSL have to be addressed.

Minimizing Excessive Inventory:

• Single location POTS inventories can be analyzed to determine if PRI or SIPis a better option.
• In and outbound call traffic studies can be completed to determine which lines are unused and can be eliminated.

Client Review:

Once the action plan is developed, the client reviews it and provides his input and go-ahead. This could be in regards to any of the previous steps; however, most times, it falls into below two categories:

• Bill coding requirements are determined with the customer’s input.
• Customer call with Provisioning, Billing, and Reporting Departments to review and complete the implementation checklist and set the reporting frequency.

Execution Timeline:

• The provisioning process begins.
• A weekly call is conducted to review order progress.
• The process requires 60 to 90 calendar days to complete.

Post-Implementation Review:

When you consult CarrierBid, we work end to end to provide you the best services. Our work ends when you are completely satisfied and not just after a successful implementation. After completing the consolidation process, CarrierBid assists the customer in reviewing the first bills to assure they are accurate and in the correct format.

Conclusion

Although you can consolidate your bills internally or through any other consultant, however, when you work with CarrierBid, you can leave everything to us and focus on the critical working aspects of your business. You can delegate everything to us, and we will ensure you the best results. So, if you’re considering business phone line bill consolidation, contact CarrierBid.

CarrierBid offers a one-stop shop since we work with all the different aggregators.  We have the experience and know-how to make the process as smooth as possible and help you avoid potential pitfalls.  CarrierBid does not charge a fee or add to the cost of the POTS service.  In fact, typically, we bring the costs down through our RFP (Request for a Proposal) process. For any queries, fill our web form or give us a call today!