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Telecom Cost Management
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877.688.2200
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Telecom Cost Management is the key to controlling overall business costs. Telecom Cost management affects your bottom line.
It is widely accepted that communication costs are one of the top five costs of running a business. So it makes sense that any business occupied with the task of managing the bottom line should focus on telecom cost management.
However, this is not often the case. Why? In the case of most small and medium sized business, there are no mission-specific human resources. Telecommunications expense is handled by the IT Manager, Engineer, Office Manager, or in many cases, the Accounts Payable Manager. None of these professions have an emphasis on telecom cost management, which results in limited knowledge, experience, and expertise being applied against the costs of acquiring and operating a company's network.
For this reason alone, the adoption and implementation of our control techniques and disciplines could save the average company between 10% and 30% or more of its annual telecom spend.
We will examine some of the basic techniques used in the management.
Contract negotiation: Many astute business people use their significant negotiation skills and experience to haggle over price and create the best telecom deal for their company. But a telecom cost management professional brings certain qualities to the table that could not possibly be brought by a non telecom professional. For example, experienced telecom contract negotiators know that the devil is not necessarily in the rates, but rather in the terms and conditions contained in the contract. And when it does come to telecom cost (rates), who knows better than a telecom consultant or auditor who deals with hundreds of contracts in all regions of the US? Wouldn't you rather have an expert with a billion dollars of contracts under his or her belt represent you when negotiating with a telecom company?
Telecom audit: Your telecom auditor will perform a complete circuit and services inventory of your local, long distance, data, and wireless devices in order to fully understand what you have, why you have it, and how to use it better. Invoices will be compared to contracts and all details of your telecom spend will be broken down into the most minute subsets to ensure all telephone bill errors are corrected and that you receive not only refunds but also benefit from reduce expenses in the future. It is often said that the telecom audit is the foundation of telecom expense management. The telecom audit uncovers both recoveries of funds that were spent due to invoice errors, but also will help the enterprise lower its ongoing expense by following recommendations of the auditors. These recommendations will reveal techniques for improving or optimizing your telecom network, and these improvements have nothing to do with invoice errors. The first task is the elimination of phone lines that are not in use. The average company with 100 people or more has plenty of these lines, and the fault is not with the telephone company. For example, an executive may have a fax machine on his or her credenza. The executive gets rid of the fax machine in favor of e-fax but somehow, no one remembers to cancel the dedicated line to the now defunct fax machine. That costs $20 - $30 per month for a service you no longer require. This is the most basic example of creating telecom cost savings by auditing circuits versus usage. There many other examples of creating ongoing savings though the telecom audit, and therefore, the telecom audit is one of the most critical elements of saving money.
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