How To Control Corporate Wireless Costs
If you operate like most organizations, then you probably pay your cell phone bill on time every month without a decent scrub because the bill is simply too long to review and too complicated to make heads or tails of all the charges. The fact of the matter is that most companies lack the internal resources to properly manage their wireless assets. IT departments charged with wireless oversight typically lack the knowledge and experience of dealing with complex wireless invoices, contracts, plans and handset options. Furthermore, the IT and accounts payable staff do not have the time to review wireless invoices for billing accuracy. Spiritel Wireless is a consulting firm offering insight on how to control wireless telecom costs.
The recent economic downturn has helped companies to realize the importance of managing their telecom assets more closely. Now that cash flow is tight, enterprise companies are looking to tighten the belt and find lost profits in their telecom expenses. Saving on discretional costs and indirect spend helps enterprises to realize quick savings that can accumulate rapidly. Did you know that telecom costs currently rank among the top 3 expenses for corporations? With enterprise telecom and wireless costs rising every year, it is time to take control of wireless costs and get a grip on the services that enterprises are paying for but may not be using. To help companies realize wireless cost savings, Spiritel, a Wireless Expense Management consulting firm, offers a few key insights on how to control and reduce enterprise wireless expense immediately.
A few key insights on how to control wireless expense
1. Gain insight into wireless costs
The first step of any plan to gain control of telecom and wireless expenses is to gain valuable insight into the telecom usage and costs of all the users in a company. While this may sound obvious many businesses are simply unaware of how many devices and services are being billed to their accounts. Understanding wireless usage and overall spend; by department, by location, by cost center, by user, etc. helps to identify potential areas for savings. A typical organization can decrease the wireless usage costs by 15% – 40% by implementing proven wireless expense management procedures. One of the main advantages wireless expense management is that it makes it easier to enforce corporate policies centrally and automatically. This enables organizations to develop and enforce customized policies for employee groups.
2. Better ongoing management and forecasting
Wireless expense management services help companies to better stretch tight telecom budgets; it helps to be more prepared to accurately predict future budget requirements. It also helps to keep the employees aligned to the telecom business objective of the enterprise and to detect abuse.
3. Enable your employees to get access to personal telecom cost
Private use of the company mobile is common representing 30% of costs. Enhancing cost awareness of employees is a major step; as insight into personal telecom costs helps employees to make smart decisions on how to use telecommunications. Especially using mobile phone or data cards internationally contributes heavily to the enterprise telecom expenses. Understanding cost enables employees to make informed decisions about which in-country mobile telecom operator to use and can help an employee to choose using a local Wi-Fi hot spot rather than a mobile broadband data card. This is especially important as data costs are growing 100% every year as the use of data cards and Blackberries is becoming more mainstream among employees.
4. Negotiate with telecom operators based on your corporate profile
Many companies do not routinely examine their bills and find that when aggregating their total services, they are spending much more than planned. Understanding your telecom profile in terms of amounts spent on wireless voice, data, and roaming enables improved contract negotiations with carriers.
5. Make informed decisions on telecom innovations
Decisions on technology innovations are often based on gut feeling and not on a rational assessment of current telecom usage and traffic streams. Wireless expense management services offer the right telecom usage information for the business case. For example, detailed reporting helps companies select the proper rate plan for a specific employee group or job. After implementation the uptake and cost can be monitored. And this is just the start. Once you are in control of your costs and usage, you will be able to reap the benefits of improved staff productivity and efficiency and will be able to make more informed decisions on what new technology and services you should be investing in to gain a competitive advantage.
Most organizations do not have a clear understanding of their telecommunication usage and cost; this lack of visibility often results in significant over spending. Excess cost comes from issues such as misuse, billing errors, lack of management etc. In today’s economic climate, Telecom and Finance Directors need to focus on long-term telecommunications management strategies rather than using an ad-hoc approach and one-time price reviews.
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For the past seven years Spiritel Solutions has been dedicated to helping our clients reduce telecom expenses. Our team of experts have successfully helped companies reduce their annual telecom spend by an average of 30% or more. Spiritel also provides telecom analysis and consultation that is guaranteed to lower costs for all types of voice, data and Internet service. For a free consultation, please visit http://www.spiritelsolutions.com or give us a call at 866-770-0300.
