Are you a Data Snacker or Data Hog?

1 Million bills later…

Over the last twelve months, we’ve used Corrata’s advanced billing analytics solution to examine over a million enterprise mobile bills. In doing this, we’ve helped our customers reduce their monthly mobile spend by an average of 30%. Along the way, we’ve uncovered a curious cast of characters prowling in your bills. In Part 1 of this series we introduced the Data Hog. In Part 2, we’ll consider his or her opposite – The Data Snackers.

Snacking on Data

Data Hogs are very much the exception – most employees could be considered data “Snackers” – using data for email, checking social media, light web browsing, and business apps. According to our data, 88% of enterprise employees use less than 2GB of data per month. And what’s more, our data shows that these employees data usage levels are pretty stable. They’re focused on getting the job done and on using mobile as a productivity tool for both their professional and personal life.

What are the implications of this for managing your mobile phone costs?

Single V.s Pooled Plan?

The most important is that you should avoid paying for volumes of data well in excess of what your employees are ever likely to need. Over provisioning is the most insidious way in which mobile service provider pump up their margin. This applies whether you have a pooled plan or individual device data plans. A pooled plan should be dimensioned to cover: (i) the relatively modest needs of the vast majority of your smartphone users, together with (ii) the high volumes required by specific job functions. If you are using individual device plans, these should be dimensioned in much the same way. In this case, the key is to have an appropriate range of well-priced plans available at different usage levels (e.g. 1GB, 2GB, 5GB, 10GB, and 15GB, etc.). A buffer of 25% in the case of individual plans and 10% in the case of a pool should be more than enough to cover short term spikes in usage.

Beware of the Hog!

One great advantage of the individual device plan limit over the pooled plan is that it sends a message to an employee as to what is a reasonable level of data use on the company dollar. We have come across enterprises who have moved from pooled plans to individual device plans for this very reason. The individual device usage limit is one way you can ensure that your data Snackers don’t inadvertently become data Hogs!