Company evaluates effectiveness of cellular plans

Enter Bolivar-based Starnes Wireless Consulting and a fairly new business concept.

Owner Ken Starnes said he takes on the headache of evaluating a company’s cell phone needs and establishing appropriate plans for individual businesses.

After working for Alltel Communications for eight years, Starnes began Starnes Wireless Consulting in 2004 in response to a need he observed in his last position with Alltel.

“One of the things that I would notice was that a lot of businesses had never really had anybody look at their account objectively,” Starnes said. “Likewise, they had never looked at it to see if what they were paying for matched up with what they were actually using.”

Starnes said he thought “it would be a good service to some of these businesses if somebody could be on their side of the table and objectively help them.”

Starnes Wireless Consulting does 99 percent of its work in Springfield. Starnes’ clients tend to be companies whose employees work outside of a central area or whose jobs involve traveling. Clients include Environmental Works Inc., John Q. Hammons Hotels and Lowther Johnson Attorneys at Law LLC, Starnes said.

LeeAnna Thessing, controller at Environmental Works, said company officials knew they needed to change their cellular plan, but no one on the inside had the time to investigate.

Last summer, Environmental Works engaged Starnes’ service.

“We were so busy that no one had the time to deal with the problem,” Thessing said. “We just thought it would be worthwhile, instead of us spending our inside personnel time to deal with it, just to hire somebody who actually was experienced who could probably figure out a great solution in half the time that we could.”

The first thing Starnes typically does for a job is look at the historical invoice to determine the company’s needs, which was how he began his time working for Environmental Works.

From the historical invoice, he said he can see if there are any trends in number of minutes used and which features are used. After analyzing the company’s usage and determining its needs, he presents his client with a list of recommendations.

Thessing said that once Starnes completed his recommendations for Environmental Works, the company further engaged his serves to negotiate an agreement with the cellular company Environmental Works had chosen.

Starnes said he charges an hourly rate for determining a company’s needs and renegotiating a new cellular contract, and that rate varies depending on the scope of the project and whether there’s travel time involved. Although his business is based in Bolivar, Starnes doesn’t charge Springfield companies for travel expenses.

For the other aspect of his work – examining historical billings for clients and remedying improper charges, such as if roaming fees were charged and shouldn’t have been – his fee is a percentage of the amount recovered from the cellular service company.

Thessing said hiring a professional consultant was worth the added expense.

“We recouped the money we had spent with him in probably two or three months,” Thessing said.

Although Thessing and Environmental Works found the service of a professional wireless consultant to be worthwhile and even beneficial, Starnes said it is difficult to get people to understand the value of his service.

Starnes hopes to someday expand and bring on a full-time employee once his client list doubles. Later this year, Starnes plans to offer a series of seminars to educate both business owners and regular commercial users on trends in wireless technology and related information.