How BAZ Group Helped Brambles Recover $942K in Annual Savings

Multiple acquisitions and divestitures, inconsistent third-party connectivity policies, and decentralized wireless management had left Brambles without a clear picture of their global network. BAZ Group built that picture — and eliminated the waste hidden inside it.

The Challenge: A Global Network Without a Clear Picture

Brambles is a global supply chain logistics company with operations spanning multiple continents. Like many large enterprises that have grown through acquisitions and divestitures over time, Brambles’ network had accumulated complexity that outpaced its visibility. Multiple acquisitions and divestitures had brought different carriers, contracts, and connectivity configurations into the environment. Inconsistent policies for connecting to a broad ecosystem of third-party partners had added further variation. The result was a fragmented global network — one that Brambles couldn’t see clearly enough to manage effectively.

The problem wasn’t intentional neglect. It was the natural consequence of organizational change moving faster than the processes needed to track and reconcile the infrastructure those changes left behind. Data sources describing the network existed — but they were inconsistent with each other, and no single inventory reflected what was actually deployed and billing.

Brambles needed two things: an accurate picture of what they had, and a systematic process for removing what they didn’t need. They engaged BAZ Group to deliver both.

Engagement Part 1: Audit of the Worldwide Network

BAZ Group began by doing what Brambles couldn’t do internally: building a single, verified inventory of the global network from the ground up.

Building the Global Inventory

BAZ created a global inventory of more than 600 circuits worldwide. This required pulling billing and provisioning data from multiple carrier sources and reconciling it against what Brambles believed was active. The data sources didn’t agree with each other — a common condition in environments that have grown through M&A activity without a centralized reconciliation process. BAZ scrubbed those inconsistencies, resolved the conflicts between sources, and produced a single verified inventory that reflected the actual state of the network.

Identifying and Disconnecting What Wasn’t Needed

With a verified inventory in place, BAZ assessed each circuit against current business requirements. 21% of the circuits in the global inventory were identified as unneeded — services that were no longer serving an active business purpose, whether as a result of divestitures, connectivity changes, or services that had been superseded without being formally decommissioned.

Those circuits were disconnected systematically, with each disconnection tracked through to confirmed removal from billing. The result: $442K in annual savings from the network audit alone.

Engagement Part 2: User-Centric Wireless Optimization

Brambles had taken a deliberate approach to wireless management: empowering business owners to manage their own wireless services and user licenses rather than centralizing control. The intent was to give the people closest to the work control over the tools they used. In practice, waste had accumulated anyway.

Distributed wireless management creates a predictable pattern: individual business owners add devices and services as needs arise, but the removal process is rarely as disciplined as the addition process. Employees change roles, leave the organization, or stop using a device for its original purpose — and the service keeps billing because no one with authority to disconnect it has visibility into the fact that it’s no longer needed.

Identifying Unneeded Devices

BAZ conducted an in-depth analysis of Brambles’ wireless environment, reviewing usage data across the device fleet to identify devices that were active on carrier billing but not serving a current business need. 300 unneeded devices were identified for disconnection — a significant number that reflected how effectively the decentralized management model had obscured the accumulation of wireless waste over time.

Implementing Processes to Keep Waste Out

Identifying and disconnecting 300 devices resolved the immediate problem. But without process changes, the same pattern would recur — distributed management without a centralized visibility mechanism would allow waste to accumulate again on the same timeline. BAZ implemented new processes designed to keep waste out of the wireless environment going forward: governance structures that maintained Brambles’ preference for business-owner management while adding the visibility layer needed to catch unused devices before they become a billing problem.

The wireless engagement recovered $500K in annual savings — in addition to the $442K from the network audit.

Results

What Made the Difference

The Brambles engagement illustrates two patterns that BAZ Group sees consistently in global enterprise environments.

First: inventory is the foundation. Brambles couldn’t manage what it couldn’t see. The inconsistent data sources that described their global network were accurate enough to run operations day-to-day but not accurate enough to identify what was costing money unnecessarily. Building a verified inventory from primary carrier data — not from internal records that reflected the network as it should have been — was the prerequisite to everything that followed.

Second: process matters as much as the audit. Finding and disconnecting 300 unneeded wireless devices was a valuable immediate result. Implementing governance processes that prevent the same waste from accumulating again is what makes that result durable. A one-time audit that doesn’t change the underlying processes delivers one-time savings. A process-informed engagement delivers ongoing savings.

Does Your Network Have a Clear Picture? If your telecom environment has grown through acquisitions, divestitures, or distributed management, the gap between what you’re paying for and what you actually need is likely larger than it appears. A complimentary strategy session with BAZ Group is the right starting point.