4TelecomHelp’s 2018 Company Retreat
After an exciting, and quite frankly exhausting 2017, we here at 4TelecomHelp looked back at all our growth and accomplishments and decided one thing was clear. We needed a vacation!
This past week, the employees of 4TelecomHelp got together at our West Coast office in Carlsbad, California for 4 days of sun and fun. Mother Nature brought our staff on the east coast some travel issues, but thanks to the efforts of our fearless leaders we were able to get everyone on a flight a day early to escape the Nor’easter that was about to bring some heavy snows.
Once we arrived, we filled our days with presentations and team building activities, sightseeing and excursions.
To kick us off, Jill Plouffe and Chad Parnis, the owners of 4TelecomHelp, shared the 20-year history of our company, going back to our first office over a local brewery in West Chester, PA. Since founded in 1999, 4Telecomhelp, Inc has expanded to be a bi-coastal corporation. With three ever growing departments, we now have two sister companies, 4T Enterprises and LightMyFiber, as well as our own TEM platform, 4T-Titan.
Our Director of Client Relations, Chris Bradley, shared some tips on how to successfully use LinkedIn to showcase each of our individual skills, along with the reputation of 4TelecomHelp to gain exposure and grow our followers. Chris also shared with us how he uses LightMyFiber’s proprietary Fiber Locator Tool to help new clients save thousands of dollars and hours of problems on new fiber installs or updates. He shared an example of how we helped one local casino & resort save over $10,000 on their fiber install by being involved with their Verizon negotiations. Working with Verizon he was able to create one coterminous contract, cut costs, upgrade and add new services while saving money for the casino & resort. Chris explained how clients could save money by investing in having 4T conduct an inventory audit done to locate telecom services at multiple locations that are no longer in use. Services identified as no longer in service are then disconnected to reflect on the billing. This 4T service has saved our clients hundreds of thousands of dollars and assist with giving them an infrastructure map which can help when new services are being put out to RFP.
Eric Januszko, who came onboard as our Virtual CIO in May 2017 to help us with the launch of 4T-Titan, reviewed with the employees some of the more technical details of how our platform was developed and what makes our system unique. For example, he explained that 4T-Titan is a very current and cutting edge platform, being one of first cloud-based TEM systems available. This is important because more and more companies, including 4T customers, are looking to move to cloud-based SaaS solutions and, by migrating to a cloud-based platform, 4T is aligned with their IT strategies and goals.
Our TEM Director, Liz Viveros, reviewed in detail our proprietary procedures for how we conduct audits for our clients. She explained how to review and verify inventory, how to have line tests completed, and how to investigate unknown billing codes. Liz shared with us past cases of how our specific audit procedures have saved our clients millions of dollars in different situations. She showed us an example of a leading Healthcare provider that we performed an audit for in which we found $155,667 in savings the first year, and over $330,000 in savings the second year. Additionally, we were able to save them an additional $24,000 annually by renegotiating their carrier contracts. Another client we support who was happy with their existing TEM company we did an audit for and found over $631,000 in savings the first year, which represented a 32% reduction on telecom spend.
Kristen Nicoletti, the Wireless Department Manager, and Jessica Robinson ran a session focusing on the key responsibilities of WEM. They shared the intricate functions of 4T-Titan’s Device Order Portal and how it makes device ordering easy for the client by manage and maintaining the work flow along with all other Wireless Helpdesk related tasks. They explained how wireless invoices are processed to create both AP batches for our clients Accounting departments, and Actionable and Analytical reporting for IT directors on the status of their wireless accounts. An example they shared was of their newest client who had an average spend of just over $11,000 a month, and in the first month was able to drop their invoices to just over $6,000 for an almost 40% reduction in spend.
Two of our newer employees, Laura Kapral and Kelly Madero worked together on a presentation to show how their processes are different when they are working with a client that uses one of their department versus working with a client who uses all our services. We determined that when our Provisioning department can manage the negotiation and installation process of new services, it better enables our TEM department to know exactly what to expect on the invoicing. The TEM department is then better equipped to catch errors and pass them back to the Provisioning department to get any problems fixed while still working to get credits for misbilled services. Concluding that we work better as a team between departments to find savings for our clients efficiently.
The trip was not all work though. While we were there, we had plenty of fun in the area. Some of the activities we enjoyed included a Beer Tour, provided by Scavengers Beer & Adventure Tour that took us to three local breweries where we tried a variety of craft beer and sampled some amazing BBQ. Who knew you could find such good brisket in California! We enjoyed a beautiful array of flowers at The Flower Fields at Carlsbad Ranch where we got to see everything from ranunculus to roses. We even stopped by Carlsbad’s Gemological Institute of America to check out some incredible jewels and geodes.
One evening at sunset, we strolled past the waves down to the end of the Oceanside Pier where we devoured burgers and shakes at Ruby’s Diner before going to the Sunset Market. On our final night in Carlsbad, the Bluewater Grill hosted us for our farewell party. We shared our favorite stories from the week and bonded over the memories we made while enjoying our amazing dinner.
