Why is it that we look at cutting costs only when we are faced with a crisis? This recession opened our eyes to some innovative ways to cut costs. Barring layoffs and salary cuts, there are several other areas where we can reduce expenses. One significant area is the telecom area. Most organizations today depend largely on their telecom services for their day-to-day functioning. If we cut costs in this area, we’ll be able to save a lot of money.

Reduction of telecom expenses, however, needs to be taken up proactively, not as a consequence of enormous bills. Let’s look at some of the ways to reduce these expenses.

• Procurement: Get the best telecom vendor and service. Look at what your business’ needs are, and then, look at different vendors and their service plans to see which one suits your needs the best.
• Usage management: You should know that your business is using the telecom services judiciously. Find out if the services are being over-used or misused. If the services are legitimately being over-used, you should look for another plan.
• Bill auditing: Make sure you have a dedicated team to check the bills for errors. Also, make sure that you are not paying for services that you never use.
• Regular monitoring: Your telecom needs may change after some time, making your current service non-advantageous. You should keep analyzing your business’ telecom needs from time to time, and see if the service still suits you.

Getting a professional team to deploy Telecom Expense Management (TEM) in you organization will help you reduce telecom costs significantly.

A friend asked if I would go for a product just because it is easy to implement, use, and does not cost much. I understood that he skipped asking me whether or not I need the product. I responded saying that the things he mentioned are additional advantages provided the product benefits me. He shot back with, “Why do you keep talking about easy set-up, low maintenance, and low installation cost of virtual PBX then? Shouldn’t it depend on whether I need it or not?” My friend was referring to the first few points of my last post on virtual PBX. This conversation got me thinking if I wasn’t highlighting the features of virtual PBX properly. Today, I bring to you the main reasons you should invest in virtual or hosted PBX.

• Virtual PBX helps reduce your calling costs significantly. Your business will pay only for what it uses.
• You no longer need to deploy people to handle calls on your private exchange. Virtual PBX provides automation.
• Even if your business is located in different places, you can function as one unit, thanks to virtual PBX.
• It also lets you create a local presence for your business in remote locations.
• Virtual PBX ensures a high level of business continuity.
• It is highly scalable, accommodating the growing needs of your business with ease.
• Virtual PBX helps improve the image of your business, making it more professional.
• It comes equipped with several features, most of them being customizable.

Virtual PBX does not dig a hole in your pocket. Also, since it is handled by a vendor, you don’t lose your peace of mind over its management. Get a telecom consulting company to find out if virtual PBX is right for you.

I am sure you would be reluctant to accept that you are not an expert at something. And if you did acknowledge it, you wouldn’t get into that job. However, you will be surprised to find out how most people take telecom audit to be a simple job and don’t bother to seek professional help. Are you also one of them? Do you also feel that professional telecom audit is not for you? Let’s find out if you have been doing a good job in auditing your telecom expenses.

• How often do you perform an audit of your telecom network? Is it only during times when a problem has been observed?
• Have you performed an audit after a recent reshuffle in your business that involved relocation of business units, services, and resources? More often than not, you will find that you are being billed for services that are no longer being used or have been cancelled.
• How structured is your procurement and payment system? You may want to look into the services being order by different departments and the expenses incurred on them.
• Have you had an audit after the induction of new technologies in your telecom network?
• Do you really understand each and every item in your telecom contract? Are you in the habit of assuming things instead of understanding the terms and conditions in the contract?

More often than not, organizations that perform audits internally go for a reactive audit, instead of a proactive one. A proactive audit helps you ensure optimization of the telecom services and maximum cost-savings. Only a professional team can help you reap these benefits. How? Check out our earlier posts on this blog.

Jack of all trades cannot perform like a master. In a business, you cannot expect to run everything on your own; you have to let professionals take care of certain things in your business. Telecom management is definitely one of such things. As I have said several times earlier, you should outsource the management of your telecom network. Why? Allow me to explain.

1. Outsourcing telecom management will help you recover money that you lost because of errors in billing and other areas.
2. A professional team will analyze previous and current bills to identify the errors in billing and stop them from occurring in future.
3. It will analyze usage and bills to ensure that you don’t pay for what you don’t use.
4. It will check misuse and over-use of your telecom services.
5. It will help you organize your inventory in such a way that it offers you maximum benefits.
6. It will provide you information about different vendors, their plans, and their tariffs to help you pick the best offer.
7. It will help you make sense of the telecom contract, simplifying terms and conditions for you.
8. It will provide for continuous monitoring of the network’s performance and will ensure that the downtimes are minimal.
9. It will offer efficient and timely troubleshooting support in case of a problem with the network.
10. It will ensure that the telecom plans align with your business’ telecom needs.
11. It will help you reap the maximum benefits of the network.
12. It will analyze future needs and make strategic planning accordingly.

Outsourcing this service will not cost you a fortune. A telecom management team will offer you services based on what your business’ needs are, thus fitting within your budget.

If you have been keeping up with the times, you must be thinking of deploying VoIP in your organization or have already deployed it. That’s great, but like many others, are you also worried about managing the network on your own? Some organizations, I am surprised to find, are extremely confident about managing the network, in spite of having no prior experience. If you ask me, VoIP management is not everyone’s cup of tea. Let me explain.

VoIP is a relatively new technology, and complex too. You should get into managing it on your own only if you think you understand the technology really well. And don’t trust a team of internal and newly hired resources to handle its management for you. If you haven’t worked with VoIP before, you definitely don’t have the expert knowledge to understand it. The first-time deployment should really be left to the professionals.

Dedicating a team of people to VoIP management is good, but in getting people from other departments, you may be causing some other important work to take a backseat. Professional VoIP management will rescue these resources, helping you to focus on your organization’s overall utilization and optimization.

More often than not, organizations leap up to the VoIP technology without assessing their current telecom network. If the current network is managed poorly, it will not be able to accommodate the VoIP technology. You have to begin with rectifying current problems before you even get into the deployment of VoIP.

You may wonder if outsourcing VoIP management is a wise decision in terms of cost. You will be surprised to find out how the benefits make the cost look trifle.

Choosing the telecom management company for your business is a very important decision. A lot if things get taken care of if you make the right choice here. However, choosing telecom consultants is not an easy task. You have to take into consideration several factors before you decide to take the services of a company. Let’s look at what these factors are.

• Tenure of the company: Not all old companies can necessarily provide you satisfactory service but learning about their tenure is important, especially if yours is a large organization.
• Ownership of, or compensation for, products:  This is something you should be wary of. More often than not, if a company has an allegiance to a product, it will try to sell it to you irrespective of whether or not it meets your telecom needs.
• Real savings: Find out from the company instances where it helped realize savings for its clients. This will give you a fair idea of the company’s potential.
• Previous clients: If the telecom management company has served businesses of your size successfully, it is more likely to serve you better. Find out the kind of clients it has served and look for the testimonials by the previous clients.
• Consulting services: Inquire about all the services the company can offer. Go for a company that caters to your different needs. You would not want to use different companies for different services.

Don’t go for the first company that comes across as good. Compare different consulting firms before making that final decision.

The world today cannot function without wireless technology. Businesses are no longer location-specified; they are increasing becoming global thanks to the convenience offered by emerging technologies. While all businesses understand the importance of the wireless network, several are wary of investing in it. This is because of the challenges in managing such a network. Managing wireless services is not everyone’s cup of tea. That is why it is recommended that you outsource it.

Let us look at why organizations are not equipped to handle wireless management.

• Complex network: Not everyone can understand the complexity of the wireless network. Unlike the conventional wired network, this network puzzles people with non-tangible things like protocols and topologies. Most businesses lack the expertise to handle the wireless technology.
• Difficult to modify: It is not easy to upgrade or accommodate changes in a wireless network. Again, the problem arises from the lack of knowledge about the technology.
• Difficult to track: The wireless network makes it difficult to keep a track of all the devices on the network and their respective usage. This makes it difficult to analyze needs and control expenses.
• Difficult to optimize: Wireless services are not depended on the functionality of physical connections. Environment factors can affect the performance of the wireless network in a big way. This makes it difficult to reap the maximum benefits of the system.

The above-mentions points are reasons you should outsource wireless management. Telecom consultants have the requisite know-how of handling wireless services and they know how to optimize their performance.

Managing expenses is difficult, irrespective of the kind. The expenses of an organization become all the more difficult given the proportions of people, infrastructure etc. Now, imagine managing the expenses of something that very few understand – the telecom network. Now, how would you approach managing the telecom services of an enterprise? Common sense says that you will go for the best plan, ensure that usage is restricted to what is needed, and get optimum benefits of the telecom services.

You would think that all organizations approach the management of telecom expenses this way. That’s pragmatic, isn’t it? Most businesses will tell you that is how they manage their expenses, but if you ask them if they are happy with the results or if they have been able to optimize the telecom services, you will catch them thinking. Internal management of the telecom expenses is not always the best management, not because the intention is not right but because organizations are not equipped with the technical and the managerial know-how to handle their telecommunications.

What organizations need is a structured approach to the management of their telecom-related expenses. Telecom Expense Management (TEM) is one such structured approach that has gained favors with several organizations and telecom consultants. TEM has proven to realize significant savings for businesses.

TEM not only looks at reducing expenses and recovering costs but it also looks into other aspects of the telecom network such as procurement, inventory, invoicing, and usage. TEM encompasses auditing along with looking into other areas that contribute to increasing telecom expenses. Different consulting companies approach TEM differently but the intention is the same – to look into every aspect of the telecom network in order to bring down costs and optimize performance.

The management of the telecom network is important, but how do you go about it. A widely accepted and structured way of telecom management is the Telecom Lifecycle Management (TLM). Simply put, TLM refers to the management of the entire lifecycle of an organization’s telecom services.

TLM essentially covers the following phases of the telecom lifecycle:

• Procurement and contract negotiation: TLM employs order management to take care of these.
• Inventory Maintenance: Inventory management forms an integral part of TLM.
• Invoice Processing: TLM introduces automation in the processing of invoices.
• Audits and Analysis: TLM continuously monitors the performance of the telecom network. It also keeps a track of the telecom expenses and usage.
• Reporting and Documentation: TLM releases reports to help analyze the current usages and the future needs. It helps strategize plans for the future.

TLM offers not only a structured management of the costs and expenses but also the management of the technical aspect of the telecom network. This way of management helps you understand your telecom network better. It looks not only at maximizing the cost savings but also at optimizing the performance of the telecom services.

TLM is implemented by following the best practices of the industry, the most-effective software, and expert knowledge to deliver comprehensive management of voice, data, and wireless services to a business. As of now, TLM seems to be the best method of telecom management. Most good telecom consultants offer services based on the TLM structure. You can opt to hire one or more of their services.

If your business has a telecom network, you need a structured way of managing it. The internal telecom management often ignores several aspects of the telecom services. Expense management is always at the helm of affairs in any form of telecom management but procurement, inventory, and usage are not typically looked into. One of the biggest reasons that makes professional management of the telecom network important is because it looks into every facet of the telecom services and goes on to reap optimum benefits of them.

Are you sure you are handling your business’ telecom network well? How well do you know your network? Let’s find out.

• Do you understand the telecom needs of your business?
• Do you know if your current telecom plans meets your needs?
• Are you aware of the current status of the telecom inventory?
• Do you have thorough knowledge of the usage of the telecom services?
• Are you aware of the changes, if any, in your telecom plans and bills?
• Do you have knowledge about the errors in billing, and are you aware whether or not the errors have been repeated?
• Are you aware of each and every item in your bills?
• Are you sure you are not being billed for an unused service?
• Are you aware of the downtimes of the telecom services and their frequency?
• Do you have information on the problems in the telecom services?
• Can you foresee your business’ telecom needs in the future?

If your answer to one or more of the above-mentioned questions have been in the negative, you should consider outsourcing your business’ telecom management to professionals.