Mobile phones are a routine part of work across UCSF, but how they are managed can have a significant impact on cost, efficiency, and visibility at scale.

Through a data-driven spend analysis conducted as part of SCM’s Strategic Sourcing Portfolio Reviews, the IT Category Management Team identified mobile services as a key category with significant opportunity for improvement. In response, IT Category Manager Jose Padilla conducted a comprehensive review of UCSF’s wireless environment and partnered with Associate CIO Susan Tincher and cross-functional Campus and Health stakeholders to take targeted action. These efforts reduced costs by over $1.4 million annually and improved visibility into mobile phone usage across UCSF, generating meaningful savings over time while enhancing transparency.

Historically, mobile services at UCSF have been managed in a decentralized way, with purchasing, billing, and account management spread across departments. This approach has limited visibility into total spend, usage, and pricing consistency across both Campus and Health operations.  

One of the first steps of the review involved analyzing usage data across accounts, which revealed approximately 1,400 unused phone lines. These lines were subsequently disconnected, eliminating unnecessary recurring costs and improving overall efficiency.

In parallel, Sourcing and IT engaged with wireless carriers to strengthen UCSF’s pricing position and improve rate competitiveness. The existing agreement with AT&T has been optimized, capturing a 20 percent discount over previous rates, and recent discussions with Verizon have shown promising progress toward more competitive rate structures.

Strategic Sourcing’s work in this category highlights the value of combining data-driven insights with cross-campus collaboration to deliver measurable results and underscores a broader opportunity for work to centralize procurement and account management, streamline processes and local policy, and improve governance to better support Campus and Health.