Cellphone RFP/Selection

Title: Enhancing Efficiency and Reducing Costs: Centralized Cell Phone Service Consolidation

Submitted By: Hemant Trivedi, Director of Technology and PMO

Introduction:

The project focused on centralizing the cell phone and service procurement process for 24 US sites. This consolidation aimed to streamline device provisioning, service management, and cost reduction while ensuring efficient onboarding/offboarding processes and hierarchical approvals. The history of Sprint’s acquisition of Nextel led to performance issues, including dropped calls and inefficient Push-to-Talk features for drivers.

Project Objectives:

• Centralization and Standardization: Unified procurement and management processes for devices, services, plans, and upgrades.
• Efficiency Enhancement: Streamlining employee onboarding, approval processes, and Push-to-Talk features.
• Cost Reduction: Targeting a reduction of $30k/month in monthly expenses.
• Vendor Consolidation: Working with a single vendor to manage services.
• Enhanced Coverage: Ensuring adequate coverage across the US, Mexico, and Canada for all employees.

Project Limitations:

• Push-to-Talk Coverage: Inconsistent coverage.
• Geographical Coverage: Ensuring robust cell phone coverage across multiple countries.
• Maintenance and Management Costs: Expense involved in vendor-managed device maintenance.
• Device Training during Transition: Training employees during the transition to new services/devices.

Approach and Required Actions:

• Centralization Opportunity Identification: Identifying prospects for centralized procurement and management.
• Comprehensive RFP Creation: Creating a detailed RFP for cost comparison and negotiation.
• Vendor Selection and Rollout Planning: Choosing a vendor and planning phased rollouts.
• Cost Management: Overseeing monthly expenses and managing the service, plan, device, and upgrade processes.

Anticipated Benefits:

• Efficient Procurement Process: Streamlined procurement of devices, services, plans, and upgrades.
• Enhanced Employee Onboarding and Offboarding: Efficient processes for employee transitions.
• Hierarchical Approval Streamlining: Smoother approval processes from employee to CFO.
• Improved Service Quality: Ensuring diverse service types with improved coverage.
• Cost Savings: Targeting a $25k/month reduction in monthly costs.

• Centralized cell phone and services procurement process management for 24 sites across US
• Provisioning device, service, and plan process
• Onboarding and offboarding employees to the plan & service
• Approval – employee to manager to VP to CFO
• Upgrade (old phone to new devices, phones, etc.)
• Types of services (Data, text, Voice, GPS, Hotspots, etc.)
• Limited Plans & type of available for Devices by level (catalog)
• Device management & maintenance (Lost, stolen, broken, etc.)
• Single Vendor
• Push to Talk features for Drivers
• Reduce monthly cost ($30k/month)

Request for Proposal (RFP) Summary:
The RFP seeks to consolidate wireless technology across 800 units from four providers, aiming for standardization, centralized management, detailed billing, quality service, and nationwide coverage. Expectations include evaluating providers for creativity, cost-effectiveness, and account management structure. The proposal outlines the evaluation process, including proposal acceptance, reference checks, conference calls, evaluation period, and final selection criteria.

By categorizing and structuring the provided information, the blog format emphasizes the project’s objectives, limitations, approach, anticipated benefits, and the RFP’s crucial components, providing a comprehensive understanding of the proposed cell phone service consolidation initiative.

REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP) – Cell phone service consolidation

Summary:
Company has a substantial investment in wireless technology with an estimated 800 active units provided by four different service providers. Over the years the number of users has increased as our business has increased more than 20% each year. We anticipate cell users to keep growing at a rate of about 10% a year.

Objective:
The primary objectives of this proposal should at least encompass the following:

• Standardization 
• Hardware
• Services
• Plans 

• Centralized purchasing an management of cell phones
• Detailed billing by cost center information for ease of accounting
• Quality service/transmission 
• Nationwide coverage 

• Services should include at the minimum:
• Voice
• Data Services (BlackBerry, iPhone, etc.)
• Messaging
• Texting
• Direct Connect / Push to Talk / etc.
• GPS Tracking
• Broadband

Expectations:

• Each provider will be evaluated based on their creative solution to the overall problem that Performance Team is facing today. We expect each provider to show creativity and demonstrate their ability to provide the best quality service at the lowest cost possible.
• Each provider needs to clearly explain their account management structure and how it supports and more importantly provides value to the Company.

Profile and Process:

• The Company will accept proposals from those carriers that want to participate between now and MM/DD/YYYY. All proposals received after MM/DD/YYYY will not be taken into consideration. 
• Each proposal should include a list of 10 references that the Company will select 3 to contact. At least half of the references should be of “like” clients to Performance Team. The Performance Team can arrange contact of references through provider if necessary.
• The Company will conduct conference calls with each provider to ensure all questions are answered and allow each provider to have as much information as possible. Please forward all conference call requests to Hemant Trivedi at (XXX) XXX-XXXX or email at htrivedi@company.com 
• All bids will be evaluated between MM/DD/YYYY and MM/DD/YYYY. Each provider will be given the opportunity to come to our corporate offices to present its solutions. The provider we end up selecting, will be notified shortly upon selection.
• All bids must have bidder information: The Company name, local address, Contact person name, position or title, phone number and email address.