Every organisation will benefit from the information provided if positive action is taken in line with these recommendations. That’s the hard bit – you have to decide to do something and get a project underway to better manage your telecoms-related expenses and adopt a better practice approach to take advantage of the fantastic developments of today’s technology. The result will undoubtedly be seen on your bottom line – from improved customer service to lower overheads and a more efficient workforce.

Assertion 1 – Your phone bill is not accurate, your providers are likely to be overcharging you against what you originally agreed with them.

Assertion 2 – You are paying for circuits and capacity that is not being used and does not require the continued unnecessary payments.

Assertion 3 – You do not have the best deal in place for basic products such as line rentals and call charges, as well as more complex wide area data services.

So how do you ensure you take immediate steps to properly review these three areas? Do not engage BT, your present provider, a “percentage of savings consultancy” or a “paid by the day” independent consultancy. All of the above will either have their own agenda or are not up to date with the latest products and tariffs across the market. Instead, work with an organisation that understands “everything telecoms”, knows about the latest products and works with multi-telecom providers and carriers.

Such an organisation is a Value Added Reseller (VAR), which will have its own billing services, can deal with your audit, provide a clear report and make recommendations across the breadth of your telecoms services. There are at least a dozen such firms practising in the UK.

Assertion 4 – You have not investigated the impact of offering your workforce increased working flexibility, through home working, hot-desking and introducing mobile working practices.

Assertion 5 – You have not introduced appropriate service levels throughout your organisation to ensure all callers are given an appropriate speed of response to enhance your reputation with them.

Assertion 6 – Much of your telecoms technology is over three years old, has a mysterious (and probably expensive) support agreement and is treated like a necessary evil, rather than an immensely powerful tool.

Assertion 7 – Your internal IT people have not recently provided a board-level strategy proposal to justify cost and address all of the above voice communications-related topics.

Assertion 8 - You do not have a strategy regarding all of the detailed components, including messaging, fax server, call recording, music and information on hold, diverts to your users’ mobiles, use of headsets by “ordinary staff” and so on.

Assertion 9 – You do not have a staff policy regarding telephone use, such as how to answer external DDI calls, how to handle calls for colleagues, setting a daily voicemail greeting, always leaving a detailed voice message when being answered by a voicemail, setting workable and appropriate call diverts and so on.

Assertion 10 – Most of your staff cannot make their outgoing calls from their computer screen, either directly from their contact database or the phone systems database; do they still tap regularly dialled numbers onto the phone?

Assertion 11 – You spend a fortune on directory enquiry calls to 118 118 (59p) and others when you could pay much less to 118 707 (29p) – it’s the same as the old 192 service by BT. And do you spend hundreds per month for call conferencing services instead of “pay as you use on 0870”?

Assertion 12 – Your call logger (if you have one) sits in the corner of your comms room, a little unloved and very much underused to provide analysis and useful reports. You certainly don’t manage web activity either. Your mobile bill gets paid if it was the “same as last month” and you have a potential VAT problem regarding personal calls from mobiles.

OK, so my assertions are somewhat provocative, but do have another look and count up how many apply in whole or in part. Even if you think a topic doesn’t apply to you, it is worth getting an external opinion and advice from experts who understand telecoms and voice technology. So how should you approach the enormity of the task, whether you have 80 users on one site or 8,000 worldwide?

Action 1 – Get agreement at board level to undertake a cost review to establish any overspend, discover where immediate savings can be made and to potentially move to lower cost and better quality providers.

Action 2 – Get agreement at board level to undertake a telecoms technology review that encompasses improving the user and caller experience and also looks at more flexible working options for your workforce.

Action 3 – Decide how you should go about the exercise. Would you like results in a reasonable timeframe or could this be a great drawn-out exercise. Prioritise your immediate problems and needs, and decide to be open to adopt “quick wins”.

Action 4 – Build your internal team, perhaps one board-level leader and individuals from IT and comms, accounts, HR, facilities and customer service.

Action 5 – Research potential providers. Work with a network services VAR and a telecoms technology VAR. When choosing providers, the profile, experience and overall quality of the new business account manager(s) is vital. You need someone who has an equivalent team to draw on for pre-sales and back-office support, and a track record of delivery with excellent long-term support. Someone with experience that is more complex, more challenging and more leading edge is often reassuring.

Action 6 – Get the project underway with your most favoured potential partner. Agree the scope and set expectations that mean they will endeavour to do an excellent job for you. Provide access to all people, telecoms bills, contracts in place and give appropriate authority to the provider to seek additional information from your various existing providers.

Action 7 – Put in place any immediate ways to reduce overheads – before the audit is complete, cease lines discovered to be unused, lower your call costs, adopt a more efficient directory enquiry practice, use the call logger or install one and implement other appropriate quick wins.

Action 8 – Get a telecoms industry view about your use of the presently installed systems, of the technology in place and question whether there are better, more efficient ways of working.

Action 9 – Understand and review at board level the benefits and implications of adopting more flexible working practices – from home working to hot-desking.

Action 10 – Make decisions to proceed on short-term wins, medium-term gains and long-term strategic products and partnerships. Make sure your decisions are informed, with win-win reasonable terms, and you are confident your supplier will complete an excellent project with minimum disruption to your organisation.

Action 11 – Make sure you have a method of internal management that provides easy visibility of overheads, contracted dates and commitments, as well as dates for expected account management reviews through the life of the technology and new network services.

Action 12 – Bask in the glory of your success, thank and reward your team, and challenge board-level colleagues to achieve comparative results. (Don’t forget the nice letter to your new telecoms partner.)

As you may have detected, it can be quite hard to write a meaningful article that will be appropriate to an organisation with 50 people with similar issues, which is on a completely different scale to multi-national firms with many sites and thousands of employees. However, many of the principles are the same.

It can be difficult to get such projects underway with organisations that would certainly save between 20% and 40% of their telecoms overhead. Is it inertia, the cosy status quo with the big name providers or would huge savings be somewhat embarrassing? Who knows? You, the reader of this article, could get an audit and review under way, although the chances of you doing so would be at best 50/50. Why?

 For more information, please visit the M12 Solutions website: www.m12solutions.co.uk

This article is a revised online version of "Telecommunications Efficiency Improvements - a White Paper by Andrew Skipsey". Please click here to download the full version of the white paper (PDF).