Courtesy of The Strategic Sourcerer, I recently learned of yet another futile attempt by a government agency — in this case a state government — to fully take advantage of a cost reduction opportunity. In the above-linked post, we learn how the NJ Transit RFP for “Telecom Bill Audit and Recovery Services” stops short of getting budget overruns back on the rails. It’s too bad, because as Source One, the company behind this particular blog opines, “Telecom audits, which typically include both a recovery aspect (getting credits for lines that should have been disconnected, as well as other mis-billings) and infrastructure optimization (disconnecting unused lines/circuits, changing services, etc) are a great way to reduce overall telecom costs.” I could not agree more. So where did the NJ Transit agency go wrong?
To start, the RFP took the form of a 100+ page hard copy document “that was mailed to us via USPS Priority Mail.” But the real kicker is the “extremely limited scope of work that NJ Transit establishes in the RFP: ‘Identifying services that should have been disconnected but are still being billed are naturally a part of this effort and credits or refunds to the consultant are eligible from the date the disconnect was proven to be issued. There is no compensation for future savings nor is this a ‘traffic engineering’ RFP.’
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