Telecom Expense Management innovator Ezwim offers five key insights on how to control telecom cost.

The recent economic downfall has been more profound and long-lasting than people thought. The economic conditions faced by enterprises around the world force companies to be more cost conscious.

Saving on discretional costs and indirect spend helps enterprises to realise quick wins; telecom costs has traditionally been a top 3 expense category. With enterprise telecom costs rising every year and annual bills per mobile user in excess of 1,500 EURO it is time to take control of what enterprises are paying for.

To help enterprises realize savings Ezwim, the European leader in Telecom Expense Management (TEM) services offers five key insights on how to control and reduce enterprise telecom cost immediately.

5Five key insights on how to control telecom cost

1. Get insight into telecom costs

The first step of any plan to gain control of telecom expenses is to get insight into the telecom usage and costs of the organisation. While this may sound obvious many businesses are simply unaware of how many devices and services are being billed to their accounts. Understanding telecom spend: per country, cost centre, per user etc. helps to identify potential areas for savings.

A typical organisation can decrease the telecom usage costs with 15% - 40% by implementing TEM practices, commented Ron van Valkengoed, CEO of Ezwim, one of the main advantages of TEM is that it makes it easier to enforce corporate policies centrally and automatically. This enables organisations to make and apply tailor-made policies for employee (groups).

2. Better ongoing management and forecasting

Telecom Expense Management services help enterprises 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 WiFi Spots rather than a 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 don’t 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 spend on mobile, data, roaming enables improved contract negotiations with operators.

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. Telecom Expense Management services offers the right telecom usage information for the business case (e.g. VOIP). 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 organisations do not have a clear understanding of their telecommunication usage and cost; this lack of visibility often results in significant wastage. Excess cost comes from issues such as misuse, billing errors, lack of management etc." commented Ron van Valkengoed, CEO of Ezwim. “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."

Ezwim helps enterprises to calculate their potential savings when using Telecom Expense Management services on ezwim. This easy to use calculator is based on Ezwim’s experience with savings generated for its enterprise clients.