The Challenge
A residential solar power company managing a mobile ecosystem of 5,000 devices was plagued with data overage charges due to significant and rampant data abuse by end-users. This habitual data abuse caused the company to reactively and continually increase data pool sizes in an attempt to avoid being hit with overage charges, but the company had no long-term mobile solution as to how to get the data usage under control and within company policy guidelines.
The Solution
This solar power company connected with brightfin, a leading provider of mobile expense management software and services. brightfin, in coordination with the solar power company, implemented a data threshold notification plan. The plan established a data threshold notification process where an end-user and their manager each received an email alerting them of unacceptable data use in violation of company policy. In this case, a customizable threshold triggered when users exceeded 15 GB of data use within a given billing cycle. Notifications were sent out weekly, which brought visibility and education around the cost and consequences of data abuse by end-users. In most cases, end-users were simply unaware of the fact that their use of streaming services without a wi-fi connection was causing extreme overages.
The Outcome
Within the first month of implementing the data threshold notification plan, the company was able to increase awareness around data use. The impact of awareness led to a substantial reduction in data use, which in turn resulted in smaller data pool needs and lowered costs. When it came time to renegotiate rate plans with their carriers, smaller data plans had lasting positive effects on their mobile expense management.