Case Study
University of Surrey
The University of Surrey is amongst the leading higher education institutions in the UK.
Having seen exponential growth over recent years, the Uni is now home to over 16,000 students across 3 campuses.
The Problem
With a rapidly growing mobile fleet, the Surrey University IT department were finding their time being pulled away from other important projects in order to efficiently manage their mobile estate.
Although a level of account management was in place from the network, the service they were receiving was no longer sufficient for the size of the university. On top of this, daily tasks such as sim swaps and temporary bars could only be actioned at network level meaning long periods on hold to their customer service.
With such a large base of users, controlling spend was also becoming an increasingly demanding task for the university. Vague billing summaries from the network didn’t help and there was limited visibility into usage breakdowns and additional charges.
The University is always under increased pressure to reduce spend and achieve best value for money. The increasing costs associated with the mobile fleet was a cause for concern within the IT team and an area for review – with the objective to reduce annual spend on the mobile communications.
The Solution
From first contact with Garnell, Surrey University were assigned a key account manager who would be their point of contact and subsequently conducted a detailed review of the mobile estate.
The review looked at everything from usage to equipment. Garnell presented their findings alongside a bespoke solution which would reduce costs and increase efficiency. The IT team were impressed by Garnell’s comprehensive plan, and once given the go ahead, Garnell set about implementing the process of change.
The university now benefit from detailed monthly usage reports complied by Garnell’s in-house Call Data Team. These reports cover everything from out of bundle costs, to usage and trends. Garnell are then able to advise and actions subsequent recommendations such as roaming and data bundles to keep out-of-bundle costs to a minimum. The IT team are able to call into Garnell’s customer service, where they are met by one of the team within just a couple of rings.
The university benefit from face-to-face review meetings every quarter, scrutinising everything from usage, costs and bundles are covered. This gives the University full visibility of the usage and trends, supported by Garnell’s recommendations and actions. These can be anything from applying a roaming bundle to a frequent traveller, to increasing data for a data hungry user.