Organizations spend $1.5 trillion dollars a year, globally, on fixed and mobile telecom services.
To support a business’s goals of reducing costs, enhancing efficiency, and boosting profitability in 2019, we are offering a five-part series exploring best practices based on transparency and modernization for evaluating your communications spend and practical ways to reduce costs. When implemented across the board, organizations can regain visibility and control for all of their telecom assets across the enterprise, enabling them instead to direct their efforts towards driving business transformation and growth initiatives.
Best Practice #4: Get a Handle on Mobility
As complex as telecom environments are on the desk phone and networking side of the house, managing mobile usage for most organizations means processing separate monthly payments for different sets of users, and/or coping with bring-your-own-device (BYOD) or company- owned devices, and personally enabled (COPE) strategies that may involve individual monthly reimbursements to employees. This rapidly becomes administratively burdensome and inefficient—and it opens the door for waste.
The trend of allowing the integration of personal mobile devices such as smartphones, laptops and tablets has highlighted the need for the presence of a holistic system for monitoring and managing usage and costs of these mobile resources. In addition to incorporating mobile into the telecom audit and billing/contract reconciliation process, there are mobile-specific approaches to managing this cost silo on an ongoing basis.
Enterprise mobility management (EMM) software can centralize the tracking of mobility expenses, particularly for companies with traveling salespeople or telecommuters, and for larger companies with multiple branches and locations. Each user will have an EMM app on their devices to tracks corporate vs. personal usage and that automatically populates an expense management system with the portion the business is responsible for. Many of these packages also provide analytics and reporting, so if a particular individual or department’s mobile spending crosses an acceptable threshold, they can be flagged and addressed.
Switching carriers or consolidating onto a single provider can also eliminate waste and take advantage of volume discounts that come with bundling and pooling lines. Most carriers are now offering unlimited data plans as well, which can save thousands of dollars for a company willing to switch providers or upgrade employee devices. Examine the service options and gather quotes from the Big Four carriers—AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless—but also consider regional options for small business applications or solutions that your voice or data provider might be offering as a bundled suite of services, similar to the “quad play” in the residential market. The opportunities for cost optimization, especially for businesses that haven’t updated their mobile contracts in more than 18 months, can be significant.
To explore the various options that can benefit your business, utilize professionals, like independent telecom agents, who will help you conduct a mobility audit and can present solutions at no cost to you. In addition, a telecom agent or consultant can assist with the procurement of your technology, as well as ongoing care and issue resolution with the selected provider.
About Simplicity
Simplicity VoIP, based in Richmond, VA, provides hosted PBX, VoIP and business telephone solutions nationally to small, medium, and enterprise-level businesses for a comprehensive unified communications experience. It’s Class 5 geo-redundant VoIP platform is offered in addition to fax-to-email, phones and equipment, and managed services. Named as Richmond’s 11th fastest growing company by Richmond BizSense in 2018, Simplicity VoIP’s key to success is its on-site service, installation and training supported 24/7/365 by a world-class client services team.