Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you.
(Operator Instructions).
We'll go first to Carter Malloy, Stephens.
Carter Malloy - Stephens
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. You had some pretty impressive cost saves in the period, but can you give us some detail, or some more detail rather, as to where exactly those came from, maybe like a head count figure? And then, the additional opportunity you've identified, I'm just trying to get a feel for how to look at your expense base run-rate going forward?
John Meyer
Yeah, we don't, Carter, we don't publish headcount figures. But it's fair to say that we have actually, over the past year, have been very cautious as we bring people on and are pushing the business because of the change in organizational structure to make sure that we get a maximum value for every person's part of the company today. And so we are down, but it's not something that, you won't hear us announcing a lay-off, it's just not hard. It's not how I like to run the business.
So we are looking at each person's job always on a continuous basis and people earn their salary and therefore are paid everyday based on their contributions. What we've been doing across the whole business is, in addition to salary costs, is to look at everything we spend, and in some cases have put programs together where we've gone back to renegotiate with various vendors that are big suppliers of us for reductions. We've continued to squeeze our existing technology infrastructure to make sure that it was giving us that everything was being utilized to the max and we were getting the maximum value we can gain from it.
On an SG&A perspective, we looked at some of the things that we had put into the quarter and decided that in today's economy it wasn't worth spending those types of marketing related things and we pulled back on them. So I'd just say, I don't think you could point at any one thing. I think you could point all across the board and see that we are managing the business reflective in today's economy.
Christopher Wolf
Just one thing I'll add to that, Carter. I agree with what John said, but just the one thing, as far as this data pass-through contract that we mentioned, you'll see our fourth quarter costs come down $13 million to $14 million because of that pass-through item. So that's probably a big dollar item that we can point out to you.
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