Five Tips for Reducing Telecom Expenses
When it comes to business operating expenses, it’s no surprise that communication (aka: telecom lines, wireless, internet services) costs often are at the top of the list! And yet in our experience, so often these costs go completely unmanaged. Can you imagine $10M+ of telecom spend, with little monitoring or active management?
Forrester Research reported that 6-12% of all telecom invoices have some sort of error in them. Valicom’s 24 years of TEM lead us to believe that the number of invoices with errors is actually closer to 35%. What does that mean? There are major savings and areas for improvement lurking in your current telecom invoices.
We’re sure you understand. There is always so much room for errors, but how do you find it and fix it? Maybe you are screaming…’Thanks for the facts, but how do I control my telecom costs?’ … Engaging with a telecom expense management like Valicom can help you get your arms around your spend, achieve higher levels of control and efficiency.
Begin controlling your costs with these five initiatives.
Invoice Audit
During an invoice audit, telecom experts are combing through your telecom invoices…page by page, line by line. What are they looking for? Things like slamming and cramming, third party billing, and unauthorized charges (ringtones, Candy Crush, text promos). Really, they are looking for anything that doesn’t look quite right, things that you may miss when bills are being paid automatically and without reivew. Our team requests the credits on your behalf. There are two kinds of invoice audits, cursory and on-going audits. Learn the difference here.
Contract Review
Are you being billed the rate that you agreed to when you signed the dotted line? How do you know? A complete contract review is conducted at the very beginning of each of our client engagements. Why is it so important? Becuase it’s all about putting the best foot forward from the very beginning. We want to make sure that we have a complete understanding of your telecom environment before we can make recommendations for optimizations (but I’m getting ahead of myself…).
Optimization
Cut the fat! What within your environment is not being used, or is going mostly unused? You’d be surprised how often lines go unchecked for years before being noticed and disconnected. Is there a drawer or a cabinet in your office of old cell phones? Have they all been confirmed disconnected? Stop paying for the lines that are no longer necessary. With a complete invoice and contract review, Valicom can make educated and experienced recommendations for reaching a higher level of efficiency in your spend. More about optimization in this blog post.
Benchmarking
Are you paying what you should actually be paying? What are organizations with similar sized telecom environments paying? Access this information with the help of Valicom’s experienced telecom team. We’ve been there…done that, and can help you get an inside view into the most competitive rates. This data provides you with a clear picture of where your services could be from a pricing standpoint, and also helps you make RFP savings estimates by service type. This allows you to decide where to apply the most effort during the RFP and telecom contract negotiations to maximize strategic cost reductions. Learn more about benchmarking…
Bill Pay
Set it and forget it. Telecom bill pay is an time-consuming process, that when handled wrong can end up costing your organization even more. If you misapply a payment, or miss a due date – you’ll be slammed with late fees or an unexpected disconnect. Avoid these costs (both time and resources) with automatic bill pay, a telecom expense management service offered by Valicom.