Prime Advantage, an amazing industrial buying group we encourage our manufacturing clients to work with, did a great interview with O’Neal Steel. O’Neal steel is a leading large steel company (service center) with dozens of locations and thousands of employees, exactly the kind of company we like to work with. They’re family owned and have been in business for 90 years. Fantastic people.
Here is a link to the Interview. We’ll include the text below.
Berlin Pacific finds a six-figure savings for O’Neal Steel
The telecom expense line rarely becomes a priority for revisions and optimizations. These expenses can be complex and obscure in nature. Managing these costs can also be very resource and time consuming. Vendors have no incentive to be proactive and go through services line by line to identify unused services. This results in tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars in unnecessary recurring expenses annually that are simply impossible to identify and stop unless you do a full scale inventory.
And this is where Berlin Pacific, a Prime Advantage Endorsed Supplier, brings its incredible value. O’Neal Steel gave Berlin Pacific access to their plan information and, Berlin Pacific was able to bring O’Neal Steel a recurring annual savings of six-figures.
“Let decision makers make decisions and let us do all the research” has been Berlin Pacific’s approach. Berlin Pacific analyzed vendor data across all departments and locations and came back to O’Neal Steel with proposals that will save them roughly 30% in recurring telecom costs. O’Neal Steel’s savings are typical among customers that Berlin Pacific has worked with. On average, Berlin Pacific finds 20-50% savings in manufacturers spending telecom voice and data services, wireless, and IT support and maintenance contracts. Using their expertise on current market pricing for common telecom services, Berlin Pacific provides better information for decision makers to act on.
Please read our interview with Kenny McCrary, IT Technology Manager at O’Neal Steel, who was in charge of the project.
Kenny, what were your initial thoughts about bringing a consulting firm to look for savings?
I am usually hesitant about doing things like that. Generally, consultants are known for reiterating what you already know and charging for that. Berlin Pacific’s model is different and got me interested.
How did it go?
The value was tremendous – we have a lot of old telephone lines, land lines – active for 20 years that we continued paying for month after month. We didn’t have the manpower or time to go to each location, check every line, see if it was still active and disconnect it if needed. We got our initial savings back from there. That was phase I. What we are doing now is looking through voice lines and identifying more cost-effective options than what we’ve had in the past.
How difficult would it be to find those savings yourself?
We never would have looked at it! With 28 locations of O’Neal Steel, it would be simply impossible to check on that level of detail!
What advice or a tip can you give to people who are in your position in other organizations?
Start by checking your POTS lines – easy entry for Berlin to look into other things. Scam charges, re-negotiating the contracts, simple baby steps and look into those unused services.
What was the best thing?
Minimum involvement from myself and my staff! Berlin Pacific consultants did all the leg work themselves.
What was the biggest surprise?
Ease of use of the service. I didn’t know how much work we would have to do to pull the inventory, get the staff involved. Completely hands off for us. They did all the work and we just approved their recommendations.
And, of course, the savings, Berlin Pacific found much more savings than we expected!
Are the savings significant?
Absolutely so! Such a pleasant surprise! Found savings are so significant that we are already planning how we will be reallocating them and reinvesting into technology upgrades.
Going forward…
We are happy with the results of the telecom project and are willing to give Berlin Pacific an opportunity to look into our procurement side.
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