Wireless Support CEO Chris Kolar breaks down the steps that DSPs should take after peak season to optimize operational efficiency while getting lean and reining in costs in order to maintain profitability during lower-volume periods.
[Download Step-by-Step Checklist]
Seasonal Ramp-down Plan for DSPs
Coming out of peak season, you’ll want to prioritize reducing costs and ensuring the reliability of your wireless service and hardware. Achieving these objectives takes careful planning and execution as you ramp down your telecom infrastructure to align with your business’s normal operations. Chris’s step-by-step checklist is the perfect starting point for you to draft your own detailed plan, but first, read these critical pieces of advice he has beyond the checkboxes.
Route Counts
Your steady-state route count outside of peak season will drive how many devices and phone lines your company should have. We recommend keeping about 20% more phones than you're going to use daily as backups, giving you flexibility in case of issues or temporary increases in routes.
Phone Line Cancellation
You can waste a lot of money if you aren’t thoughtful about which lines you'll cancel and which you’ll keep. If you have devices on different rate plans, your instinct may be to cancel those that are most expensive. However, there might be device termination fees to take into account. Review the associated fees, make the calculations, and cancel those that have low payoffs or no cost.
At the same time, consider the state of the phones associated with these lines. “If you have a really good phone but it’s on a high-cost line, you're going to want to cancel the phone line but keep the phone,” Chris advises. “And so you've got to move a SIM card from a lower-cost line and put it into that phone.”
How mobile device management software (MDM) can help. Your MDM lists your devices and their phone numbers, allowing you to more quickly find associated fees and line payoffs to determine which to keep, cancel, or move SIM cards between.
Phone Line Ramp-down
Use your route projection to determine whether your phone line ramp-down can be fast or will need to be gradual over a period of weeks or months. We recommend making these cancellations as soon as you can in order to lower costs quicker. “It's generally good practice to cancel lines as your route counts drop rather than waiting until the end and doing it at once,” Chris says. “That'll save a little bit of extra money.”
How a managed service provider (MSP) can help. At Wireless Support, our dedicated account managers schedule client sessions with the specific intent of creating a ramp-down plan that covers the basics and more. Once the plan is drawn, we help you execute it over time, and even circle back at predetermined moments to ensure you’re ready to cancel particular lines.
Phone Inventory and Health Check
One of the most effective ways to check the health of your devices is to have your most-trusted drivers give you feedback. Here’s what Chris recommends: Let’s say you have 50 phones and 10 drivers who you can count on to help. Have each driver use a different device every day, and then ask them to score the phone at the end of their shift. In just five business days, you’ll cycle through all of your devices and know the health status of each. (An MDM and a good device numbering system will make it easy to stay organized during this process.)
If your drivers have identified phones that need to be retired or otherwise removed from your fleet, you can trade in those devices to an MSP like Wireless Support and receive monetary value in exchange. (Be sure to first perform a factory reset and remove the SIM card if you’re keeping the line active.) Any phones that function well but have external defects, like a cracked screen, should be sent in for repairs, which an MSP can also facilitate.
If you’ve rented any phones during peak, be sure that you're marking down when those are due back and return them ahead of the due date so you can avoid incremental rental fees if you don't need the phones.
Mobile Device Theft
Are there any phones you can’t physically account for? It’s common for there to be an increase in theft of company assets during periods when seasonal workers are hired. An MDM can help deter theft due to its geolocation and remote access capabilities. Chris explains: “The beauty of having MDM with someone like us is that we can see any devices that you can't physically account for and then tell you the last time they pinged the network and where they were. And because we have the ability to lock that device down and only certain apps can be on it, people are less likely to steal a device that they're not going to be able to use.”
Renumbering Your Fleet
As you retire phones or upgrade a portion of your fleet, you’ll naturally have gaps in your numbering system. “It’s best practice to renumber the fleet at that point and start the year or the post-peak portion of the year with a reorganized system that is cleanly numbered from 1 to X so that everything's back on track and organized nicely,” Chris advises.
Evaluating Network Coverage and Carrier Cost
Now is the time to consider a carrier switch for any areas where you experienced network service challenges during peak. And if you want to lower expenses and have the bandwidth to shop around, it’s also a good time to review current promotions. If the offers are attractive enough, it might be worth running the numbers for your lines that are on commitment or contract to see if it makes sense to cancel and buy out the lines, even if there’s a payoff.
Chris says: “We'll talk to clients who want to wait until the payoff is zero, but if there are significant savings somewhere else and they can save $10 a month per line, it makes sense to pay off a $30, $40, $50 payoff, which will pay itself out in just a few months.”
Having a managed service provider who understands how to minimize payoff fees and maximize promotions, whether it's with the same carrier or other carriers, can add significant value to this process and the outcome.
Emergency Plan Review
Although this isn’t required for ramp-down, this less-hectic time of year is when you'll want to revisit your emergency plan for communication outages. In addition to a general plan review, Chris advises that it’s best practice to regularly re-download Amazon Flex offline maps on each individual device. Since these maps change over time, even just a little, you should be re-downloading them on a quarterly or biannual basis.
Making DSP Seasonal Ramp-down Easier
Seasonal ramp-down planning is a complex task, balancing business needs with cost savings as workload and revenue change dramatically. Having a partner that specializes in ramp-down planning and supports you in executing that plan can greatly benefit the business’s operations and bottom line.
At Wireless Support, our industry experts work with Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile and related vendors on behalf of our clients day in, day out. Our deep knowledge of the carriers, their service, and their offerings uniquely position us to advise our clients on an optimal ramp-down plan specific to their business. All of our clients are assigned a dedicated account manager, and we pride ourselves on exceptional client service and delivering results. Reach out today and learn about our approach to helping your business ramp down efficiently and effectively.