The following is a step-by-step way for you to get your arms around your telecom expenses. These are the steps we perform for our clients and how we help them get the most for their money.

1. Contact your local phone company and request a copy of your Customer Service Records or CSRs. This is a detailed listing of all the phone numbers you have on your account, the features that are provisioned on the line and the charges for each line.
   
   
2. Audit the CSRs to make sure that you are using all the lines in service.
   
   
3. Verify the charges and features are what you ordered.
   
   
4. Order a Trunk Utilization or Busy Study from the local telephone company. This will show you if you have enough phone lines for your local calling or you may find that you need more or have to many. Getting rid of a couple of lines that go un-used can save you around $100 per month or more.
   
   
5. Audit your long distance bill. Find out the cost of an Interstate call, and Intra-state call and an Intra-LATA call. Either call or e-mail sprunky.com with the rates and we will tell you if they are competitive with today’s market.
   
   
6. Audit your audio conferencing bills. Determine the rate per minute per participant you are paying.
   
   
7. Audit your cell phone bills. If you are on plan that is over 6 months old it may make sense to try to renegotiate with your service provider.
   
   
8. Audit your Internet bills both dedicated and dial-up. Are all the accounts you are paying for still active? If the dedicated Internet pipe has been in for over a year, you are probably paying more than you should.
   
   
9. Audit your Data network. Are you getting charged for what you have installed. Do the sizes on the bill match the size of the ports, PVCs, lines etc.
   
   
10. Once you have done all of these audits, determine where you think you can save money.
    

The next steps in the process involve selecting a vendor to provide you new services or renegotiating contracts with the current vendor.

You can either work with a direct sales rep that will sell you the branded products that their company has to offer.

Or you can work with a Telecom Agent, such as sprunky.com, who has multiple providers that can design a custom solution to fit your needs and provide a single point of contact regardless of the carriers chosen.

You can also develop, publish and evaluate a Request for Proposal (RFP) for your telecom services. This will put carriers in a competitive situation and may save you money depending on the amount of time it takes internally to make a decision.

Keep in mind that if you chose to do this yourself, you can contact sprunky.com for advice and guidance through the process. We want to work with better-educated and informed customers, so we are willing to do the education. It makes for a solid longer lasting relationship for us.