She had a puzzled look on her face.

“Do you review for errors?” I asked.

“No” she responded

“What about tax strategy and classification for your clients?”

“Not really” she answered,

“What about fraud and waste review?  Are you focused simply replacing services or looking at the better technologies?  Do you account for all lines, services and circuits for your clients?  Do you actually do a line-by-line inventory for the client?”

“No, what we do isn’t that detailed” she replied acting a bit more defensive.  “We take their most recent bill, take a look at what services they’re using, and find an alternative product for them.”

Many companies that sell services such as phone systems and carriers claim that they will be able to provide you with a through audit, when in fact they’re simply do no such thing.  An actual audit for a small company can take 20 plus hours, larger companies?  Plan on months.

Vendors who want to sell you something take a look at your bill, tally numbers and push out a quote, by simply reviewing a client’s existing services, plugging it into a spreadsheet and spitting out a comparable service.  Those aren’t audits and it doesn’t help you one bit.

Companies need to take into consideration all aspects of business into account and factor those in when deciding to move to another carrier or vendor.  No carrier will be an advocate in helping you garner refunds for services you’ve paid for from rival company.  The need to reduce line count goes counter-intuitive to a sales person who wants to sell you bigger, fatter circuits so they can get the bigger and fatter paycheck.  How about your existing carrier?  If you’re happy with them and you don’t want to move but you’re being pressured because another carrier is offering savings that you can’t pass up, will they care to try and match it if your sales rep has NO skin in the game?

Get a REAL audit from an audit company that works for you, and has your best interests at heart.