
Founded in 2004, Saveutel is a Technology Expense Management (TEM) company that specialises in managing IT and telecom expenses. We spoke to Robert Benchetrit, President of Saveutel, to find out more about their company and how they have continually saved costs for their clients.
We only know one dance at Saveutel, and that’s to save our clients as much money as possible. We probably could make more money selling services or products, but we stick to what we know best and that’s to audit our clients wireless phone bills for savings. We achieve this by providing the most thorough wireless audit possible. We also help our client better understand their options and educate them on what to look out for in their billing before they pay it.
Saveutel understands companies don’t have the time, expertise or resources to make sure their billing is accurate. They certainly can’t count on their wireless provider to assist them. I often ask our client “when was the last time the carrier called you to review your bill?”, and the answer for most is never. We exist and continue to exist because most wireless carriers do a very poor job at making sure their clients are not losing money.
Alongside our TEM services, Saveutel also acts as a mediator for its clients between U.S. and Canadian carriers such as Bell Canada, Rogers Communications, Telus Mobility, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. This service is primarily offered to small and medium enterprises. We also get to work with major companies like Nike, BMW and Cisco, which certainly makes our job exciting. Regardless of the client, it is always rewarding when we see them save money as a result of our expertise and service.
Working with the carriers to clean up a client’s invoice is no easy task. It’s especially frustrating when they acknowledge an error has taken place and they still refuse to issue a full credit. Many times we are able to get around their 90-day policy by explaining the client was not aware that an error occurred.
In terms of my background, I have been in the industry since 1995. Having worked at Rogers for almost ten years, I have known from day one that most companies today are overpaying for cell phone services. We estimate that Canadian business are losing over 300 million dollars a year due to billing errors and not having the most cost effective wireless rates available with their current cell phone provider. In fact, our company has audited more wireless invoices than probably all our competitors combined. Our experience in working in almost every industry has taught us a lot. We in turn use our experience in helping our new and existing clients improve their bottom line. As such, we are now seeing many of our old clients’ coming back to Saveutel to have their wireless bills audited for a second time.
From my experience, we are working in an industry that is getting more confusing and complicated. The service providers are offering more and more services than ever before. In terms of billing, we see most carriers do a very poor job at making sure their clients are not losing any money. We have been in business over 13 years as a result of wireless companies making so many billing mistakes and over charging their clients.
Going forward, I would like to see the CRTC in Canada do more at protecting businesses in general. They have implemented many new rules helping consumers. However, many of the new rules do not apply to business accounts. As a result, businesses in Canada continue to have one of the highest cell phone bills in the world. However, we hope that more and more businesses will learn the value of the work we do, and we will continue to lower the costs of business across the country. With this recognition from Corporate Vision magazine, we are confident that we will continue to meet and exceed the expectations of our clients.