Probably no other industry that has gone through as much change recently as communications. Anti-trust activities forced break-ups, then cable and wireless companies entered the picture and redefined business structures. Mergers and acquisitions centered around the specific services provided - long distance, cable, wireless - have created entirely new companies with large numbers of moving parts, and disparate financial control systems. Couple all of the merger and acquisition activity with corporate restructuring and systems changes and the result is a very complicated business environment with a high potential for transaction processing errors.

PRG-Schultz has worked extensively with the world's largest communications companies. We have recovered hundreds of millions of dollars in overpayments caused by the dynamic nature of the business. PRG-Schultz has experience gathering procurement and disbursement data from legacy systems, remote divisions, acquired companies and suppliers. Last year we reviewed transactions which accounted for 25% of all category spending. What did we find? More than $30 million we recovered for our numerous communications clients.

Case Study #1
A large telecommunications company was integrating numerous acquisitions and formerly decentralized divisions into a shared service center environment. Because the client had data from different systems and sources, it suspected that there were opportunities for recoveries. PRG acquired data from all of the legacy systems, normalized it, and created a consolidated database. Using the consolidated database, PRG:

1. Recovered over $1.5 million in duplicate payments and over $2 million in overpayments
2. Established baseline processing metrics to measure the processing efficiency of the new shared service center
3. Analyzed the consolidated supplier master file and identified inactive and redundant suppliers so the client could start the shared service center with a clean master vendor file
4. Analyzed the spending patterns of the previously decentralized supplier base to assist the client with strategic supplier selection

For a client reference, please contact us.