Today's enterprise leadership teams are exploring every opportunity to reduce operating costs and eliminate unnecessary expenses within their business. The question is, where do you begin?
Finding opportunities to minimize costs within an enterprise can be tricky. Decision makers require full visibility of the latest financial data to spot opportunities. Considering that 90% of CFOs say they want to evaluate their finance strategy, scope, and design in the next year, it's more important than ever to understand where the next cost reduction opportunity lies.
One key opportunity is your telecom environment. Your business likely relies on vast telecommunications networks of fixed-line, mobile, and IT services that span multiple countries, vendors, and locations. Because of this complexity, most struggle to understand their enterprise telecom costs and overspend.
Here are five ways to reduce telecom expenses in your enterprise.
Five Ways to Achieve Telecom Cost Reduction
1. Conduct Cost-benefit Analysis
2. Identify and Eliminate Unnecessary Costs
1. Conduct Cost-benefit Analysis
Before making any changes to your telecom estate, conduct a cost-benefit analysis of your services to establish the advantages and disadvantages.
A cost-benefit analysis will show you whether a specific change will add value, determining whether it will:
- Reduce telecom expenses
- Deliver a positive return on investment (ROI)
- Meet defined service level agreements (SLAs)
If the answer to any one of these questions is ‘yes’, then it’s worth making the change. If not, you need to look elsewhere for cost-saving opportunities.
Remember, even a minor change to a physical asset or service contract can impact your telecom environment. A trusted telecom expense management (TEM) partner can provide insight into potential opportunities. Their support is essential if you don't have the internal expertise to identify this yourself.
2. Identify and Eliminate Unnecessary Costs
Whether it’s repeated overcharges or paying for services you no longer use, there are plenty of opportunities to reduce expenses in your telecoms estate. The trick is finding them, and the best way is with a telecom expense audit.
A telecom expense audit gives you complete visibility of your estate. It involves checking every line of every invoice to identify and eliminate:
- Incorrect charges
- Misallocated costs
- Obsolete or unnecessary inventory and services
The individual charges might only make up a fraction of your overall bill. But combined, they represent a significant reduction in your telecom expenses. In telecom expense management, the telecom cost reduction strategy of marginal gains is often where the biggest savings lie.
3. Consolidate Your Bills
When you have a constant flow of invoices from multiple service providers, it can be difficult to see what you’re paying for. Take the complexity out of the equation by consolidating your bills.
Improving your telecom billing management gives you greater visibility into your overall costs, but it also reduces the amount of time you spend processing invoices.
4. Optimize Device Spend
Equipping your employees with the latest hardware is expensive. In some cases, it can total millions in capital outlay. However, as the demand for remote and hybrid work continues, ensuring they have the right devices has never been more important to keep end-users connected.
Hybrid is no longer just an employee perk but an employee expectation.
For many, the solution is device-as-a-service (DaaS). Rather than paying high costs for devices as you purchase them, you can spread out the costs and add them to your monthly managed service fees. It allows you to get the latest tech into the hands of your employees and spread the costs, making it a truly long-term and effective telecom cost reduction strategy.
5. Understand Baseline Costs
Enterprise telecom goes beyond traditional fixed-line infrastructure and mobile assets. VoIP/SIP services, SD-WAN, and IoT connectivity add another layer of complexity. This is especially apparent today, as hybrid working increases reliance on bring your own device (BYOD) programs.
To keep expenses under control, you need complete visibility of your baseline IT costs. You also need to identify any shadow IT expenses.
Once you have a clear view of your baseline IT costs, you can determine which areas of your estate contribute most to your expenses. You can then look at business priorities and dependencies to determine where you can achieve telecom cost reduction, without harming your operations.
You Don’t Have to Manage Telecom Cost Reduction Alone
Few enterprises have the time or expertise to continuously monitor their telecom environment for discrepancies or renegotiate service contracts with every vendor. Instead, it's sensible to work with a telecom expense management partner. They work closely with your internal teams to identify opportunities, manage telecom cost reduction strategies, and maintain long-term cost controls across your organization.
Ongoing Telecom Cost Savings for a Large Healthcare Organization
Thanks to a successful telecom expense management partnership, we helped one healthcare organization realize annual savings of nearly $400,000, marking a 5% reduction. Total savings over the first five years amounted to $2.91 million.
The most reliable telecom expense management partners offer fully managed, end-to-end, global support for your entire telecom estate. They give you greater visibility and control over your environment, ensuring you only pay for what you use, and continuously implement telecom cost reduction strategies that don't impact operational efficiency.
Topics: TEM, Expense Audit
