Mobile phones or cell phones for US friends. We are about to start on a specific piece on mobile phone usage and costs across the business. Complication is that the end users ONLY want to see and use mobile phone data (devices, numbers and usage) at the moment though, I can see they are likely to extend this to networking as well in the future. So my questions are on the approach as I am pretty new at this.

I am going to start a new CT base project. The data I can get is essentially bill summaries for the organisation for each phone provider by phone number (e.g. the monthly cost per phone from 4 diff providers), I believe I can get the list phone devices the org thinks they have, the people the org thinks has the devices and which bu to which the phone numbers are assigned (not necessarily a 1:1 match with devices).

The phone device and the phone number may be difficult to match and there may be more devices than numbers (or the other way round) - strategies to fix/allow for?

Voice is in the Network IT Tower (where I expect that usage would go) and mobile devices are in the End User Tower. As they want to see the device (mobile) and the usage together, will this require a custom report?

I would like to split the data into phone (device) cost and usage cost if I have the data. Will this complicate the report(s)?

The organisation wants to use this to audit the phones from a few angles as they appear to have lost control of phones overall. The second two (below) seem ok but the first seems more of an asset mgt issue but Apptio should be able to help though? 

• Devices - what is out there and what is being used
• Numbers - top usage, over/under usage
• BU spend

Any ideas, comments would be great. Thanks in advance

Hi Mark

Interesting use case; some answers and follow up questions below. I think your use case is achievable with the right data.

General question; are you going to be doing this within an existing CT project or as a completely separate project?

To answer your specific questions:

The phone device and the phone number may be difficult to match and there may be more devices than numbers (or the other way round) - strategies to fix/allow for?

Some data manipulation to put the data into similar format would be a start, so you remove all '(' and '+' characters, remove all spaces, make sure the number is a 11 digit number etc. Then link on this normalised field. If there is still fallout.....

Don't fix it! Report on the differences. Allocate the cost you can using the relationships, and produce some simple reports showing numbers that don't appear in the company's inventory, or numbers that appear in the inventory and can't be assigned to a BU. This is a classic CT use case for improving the data, as the data owners will then know the gaps.

Voice is in the Network IT Tower (where I expect that usage would go) and mobile devices are in the End User Tower. As they want to see the device (mobile) and the usage together, will this require a custom report?
- Yes, you will need a simple custom report.

- You can append the provider's bill summaries to the IT Resource Towers object to increase the granularity of the Network tower so you know all the phone numbers and their cost.

- Do you have the phones themselves listed in your asset register, with their value? Do you buy the phones outright or are they included in the contract monthly cost? You will need this to understand the costs in the End User Tower...

I would like to split the data into phone (device) cost and usage cost if I have the data. Will this complicate the report(s)?
- Your report would be a drill from BU to IT Resource Tower, so any ITRTs with cost in them can be shown on the report. I wouldn't say this is a complication.

The organisation wants to use this to audit the phones from a few angles as they appear to have lost control of phones overall. The second two (below) seem ok but the first seems more of an asset mgt issue but Apptio should be able to help though?
Devices - what is out there and what is being used

- Yes, while I agree this is an asset management issue, if the phone numbers in your asset inventory can be linked to the BUs using them, then we can report on this.
Numbers - top usage, over/under usage

- Again, shouldn't be a problem with the data you allude to.
BU spend

- Again, not a problem