River Island

The Challenge

River Island was finding it harder to stay in control of a complex telecoms system. Costs were increasing, and a lack of accurate data meant that subsequent contract negotiations were becoming ever more complicated and less effective. Trident has been helping the fashion brand reduce its gas and electricity costs since 2001, so when the time came to overhaul its telecoms in 2009, River Island trusted us to:

• Reduce spend
• Improve telecoms provision and management within the organisation

The Solution

River Island’s main issue was that as stores opened or relocated, landlines were added but none were removed. We rationalised the entire landline portfolio using our in-house Vertex system. Once we’d identified the lines still in use, we were able to remove the rest, cutting 20% from the retailer’s landline bill.

Buying your utilities at the right price is crucial if you want to keep overheads down. We appointed a new, lower-cost provider for the newly cleansed landline portfolio, managing the entire process to ensure a smooth and risk-free transfer.

Next, we implemented a comprehensive invoice verification process. Unless you’re an expert in telecoms tariffs it can be extremely difficult to spot billing errors. Our experts looked at six years of telecoms charges on behalf of River Island’s accounts team, identifying numerous errors. We then managed the resulting claims to secure River Island the refunds it was owed. Since then, we’ve taken charge of the verification process for all of the company’s telecoms bills. Unless each one is 100% accurate, we won’t approve it for payment.

The Benefits

As River Island continues to grow, its telecoms must keep pace. We help keep the store-opening and relocation programme on track by streamlining and managing the telecoms installation process for new sites, to meet shopfitting deadlines. As River Island’s Shopfitting Director Carlo Lambi explains, “Trident now manages the installation process and interacts with the numerous parties, ensuring that we can get on with the important job of opening stores on time.”

When a store relocates, we ensure existing customers can stay in touch by rerouting existing numbers to the new store. And we’ve helped the business make better use of technology by managing the upgrading of data networks and removing unused ISDN lines. 

Management reports now give River Island closer control over its estate’s connections, and call traffic monitoring has highlighted potential areas of misuse, enabling the company to take action to keep costs low.