Until then, Sodexho employees with handheld wireless devices had individual contracts with wireless providers. Managers in laundry facilities, warehouses and other locations purchased mobile phones from the local offices of wireless providers. They chose the phone, the plan and signed the contract, Ingalls says, thus gaining ownership of the number. Each month, those employees submitted paper invoices or an expense report for reimbursement to a regional manager. Managers would approve—or reject—the documents and mail them to Sodexho's finance division in Buffalo, N.Y., for processing.

The process was paper-based, Ingalls says. Managers had to sign off on invoices and expenses with a hand-written signature. "You had hundreds if not thousands of people sending in their individual invoices each month," he recalls. And with so many invoices, he says it was very difficult to identify errors and problems, such as overcharges or plans that were incongruent with usage patterns.

Sodexho tackled the invoice problem on two fronts. First, it asked all employees to transfer wireless ownership of devices and contracts to the company. Then it negotiated a single "pooled" plan with primary carriers Verizon Wireless, Cingular and Nextel so that workers could share minutes.

Today, the company receives a monthly invoice for each device with detailed usage, but the vendors consolidate the invoices and send them electronically—Verizon Wireless by e-mail, and Cingular and Nextel by CD via snail mail. Ingalls says the invoices on the CDs, written in the electronic data interchange format, include more account information than the carriers could provide in an e-mail version.

The electronic invoices get uploaded to Rivermine's Finance Manager, and their contents, such as the number of minutes allocated per month, are checked against the device and contract information residing in the Inventory Engine. If there is an error, like an incorrect rate plan, Finance Manager will flag those accounts in an "exception" report.

The system generates reports that are uploaded to a spreadsheet and e-mailed to finance managers who combine current and historical numbers to review metrics such as number of devices purchased and monthly changes in wireless spending. Finance Manager also analyzes invoices and generates reports suggesting more cost-effective plans for workers who use their devices significantly more or less than their current plans allow.

But the uploaded invoices are used for more than just checking and analyzing bills. In the past, it used to take several months and past due notices from the wireless provider before an idle account was identified. Managers in the field were responsible for making sure the wireless accounts of their departing reports were terminated, and there was no system for tracking whether an account was actually turned off. With Rivermine's Service Order Manager, Ingalls says he can quickly submit account deactivation requests directly to the wireless providers for employees who are no longer with the company. Payroll data, such as employee name and termination date, is uploaded to an Oracle table in the Rivermine software each week from Sodexho's human-resources payroll database and checked against active wireless accounts in the Inventory Engine. The software scans the data for recent termination dates and automatically generates text messages in the electronic records of the wireless accounts that need deactivation.

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