Tips To Reduce Your Telecom Costs

By: John Shepler

Business is open. Business is closed. Business is open again. Most businesses are suffering from whiplash as they navigate the Covid-19 crisis. When times were good, growth was king. Now survival is key and a major element of business survival is cost control. Here are some things you can do immediately to curb expenditures while still being operational.

Are You Paying For Things You Aren’t Using?
it seems obvious that nobody would pay for something they don’t use, yet both consumers and businesses are guilty of just that.

Get your phone bill and some pens and highlighters. Now go through it line by line. Consider yourself an old time prospector looking for gold. That gold is in the form of expenses that don’t provide value.

Are you currently using every line that comes into your business? How about lines to buildings that were offices and are now storage? Fax lines not connected to fax machines anymore? Old burglar alarm lines or extension phones? Old data lines that aren’t being fed by anything anymore?

What about mobile phones? Each phone should be currently used by an employee. Are there leftovers from departed employees that haven’t been reassigned? What about features that nobody is using?

Every line, every feature, every device should be assigned and preferably be in-use. Now, get on the phone with your carrier and delete everything not being used.

The same goes for equipment rentals. If you are not using it, send it back and stop the bleeding. When things pick up, reacquire the resources you need then.

While you were doing your survey, I’ll bet you found a bunch of equipment squirreled here and there. Routers, switches, PCs, phones, adaptors, and even boxes full of software. Have someone who is not otherwise engaged look into selling this stuff on e-bay. True, some has little value and should be just recycled. Sell anything that is worth the time and shipping cost to unload. This could turn into a cash cow and justify an ongoing job assignment.

Pay Less For The Same Value
I feel pretty safe in saying that you are paying more than you have to for your telecom lines. That’s because deregulation and new competition have driven down the cost of bandwidth year over year. You may be finishing a 3 year contract or be paying month to month on an expired contract. There’s high value-added in figuring out how many lines of what performance you need and getting a new competitive price quote .

T1 lines are still popular, but they cost a fraction of what they did a decade ago. Same lines, much lower prices. The fiber optic services from DS3 (45 Mbps) and OCx to 10 Gbps and more are largely being replaced with Carrier Ethernet. It’s more compatible with today’s equipment, bandwidth is scalable, and costs are much, much lower. Fiber is king these days, but there is also Ethernet over Copper and wireless services. MPLS networks are a better deal than multiple point to point lines. SD-WAN is replacing MPLS for even greater savings.

How do you sort all of this out? You need to work with a good master agency like Telarus that has relationships with dozens and dozens of suppliers. A knowledgeable agent will get you multiple quotes and help you decide on the best options for your situation.

Don’t Invest, Pay As You Go
You’ve heard that the cloud is taking over everything. Well, there’s a good reason for that. We’re past the time when every company needs to maintain telecom rooms and server rooms. All of that goes bye-bye to the cloud, which is nothing more than one giant data center with full time staff to maintain everything. You concentrate on your business and they take care of the constantly changing infrastructure. Cloud centers can also provide cybersecurity and stay on top of evolving threats? Do you really want to be saddled with that?

Moving to the cloud does two things for you. It avoids capital expense (capex) and allows you to pay as you go (opex). Paying as you go these days can be really helpful because you can scale both up and down rapidly as business goes on a rollercoaster.

Don’t forget to consider bandwidth that can also be easily scaled both up and down. If you get a fiber optic service with a GigE or 10GigE port, you can run any bandwidth level you like and pay for just that. Some services even let you upgrade and downgrade online instantly. It’s a far cry from the old days of nailed-up telco circuits.

Are you busy adjusting to the new normal and concerned that you may not be able to afford your ongoing business costs? Don’t let networking and telecom drag you down. Get competitive quotes and expert advice now and reduce your costs ASAP.

Is Mobility Killing Your Company?

Everything was fine when just a handful of execs had company cell phones. It made sense to keep them connected at all times for the good of the business. Then a funny thing happened. What worked for the C-level execs also worked for the VPs and the directors and the department managers. Finally, somebody did a trade study and soon everyone had a company issued smartphone. Productivity went through the roof, right?

Well, certainly there is a lot more interaction among team members and faster response to customers and sales prospects. But, oh, the expense of it all. Since this was a phased-in process, each location cut its own deal with its own preferred provider. Even if one carrier is predominant, there are hundreds of contracts with hundreds of bills. Sadly, some of these bill are routinely paid each month while the phones sit uncharged and unused in empty desks. Hey, people come and go. Who has time to stay on top of all this?

Certainly, you don’t. Your business isn’t optimizing wireless accounts. It’s keeping your own operation afloat. That doesn’t mean the situation is hopeless. Why don’t you turn over the entire load of hundreds of phones, their contracts and their bills to a company that specializes in wireless cost control? It’ll be out of your hair and you are almost guaranteed to save money in the process.

The first step is getting a free, no-obligation analysis of your accounts. The company that does this, Advantix Solutions, will go over a few months or more of detailed wireless bills with a fine tooth comb. They know what to look for and how to keep an eye on the big picture. Are some of these resources going to waste? Are there ways to consolidate contracts and bills? They don’t do this by hand, the way your harried managers probably do when they have time. They use proprietary analysis software to crunch the numbers and make accurate recommendations for cost savings. You’ll need to have anywhere from hundreds to thousands of cell phones to make this work efficiently, but work it will.

You’ll get a detailed report in 7 to 10 business days. It will outline where the problem areas are and what the opportunities are to optimize your wireless costs. What you probably don’t realize is that every provider has both published and hidden rate plans. You may well be on the wrong ones for how you use your devices. A few changes here and there and, suddenly, you are paying less for the same benefit.

OK, how much are you going to save and what’s this going to cost? Would you be shocked to know that the average Advantix clients saves over 29% on their monthly wireless bills? That’s without having to change service providers and reduce usage. Here comes another shock. Advantix gets paid out of the savings they create. In other words, they get paid and you get paid. Your expenses don’t go up, they go down.

That’s just the start of the good times. Advantix will also take the management headache of administering those wireless phones off your back. They’ll expedite support and trouble ticket resolution for all your employees. They’ll also raise accountability standards for every location to lower your costs. Need to order new phones, replace old, lost or stolen phones, get accessories, activate new services, change rate plans or user names, or cancel lines of service? Advantix has a dedicated support staff for that. They know what they’re doing and they’re good at it because that is all they do.

Mobility is no longer a two-edged sword when you have the proper support to make it work optimally. It’s pretty hard to go wrong when the cost of this service comes out of the savings you didn’t even know were available. Can you really say no to having your expenses go down? I didn’t think so. Before you do anything else, lock in a cost savings for your company right now by requesting a free, no obligation analysis of your wireless accounts. Get that ball rolling, and you’re already ahead for the day.

POTS Phone Service For Multiple Locations

Companies with many branch offices or other business locations spread out over the US, Canada and Puerto Rico can find themselves drowning in paperwork. Is it all the forms they need to file with the government? No, it’s just the phone bill... or should I say bills - lots and lots and lots of phone bills.

How does this happen? It happens a little at a time. First the business is established in a single location. They order business telephone services and dedicated Internet and the bill or 2 bills arrive each month. The manager or someone delegated pours over the bill each month looking for charges that don’t belong there, services that are no longer used, or employee abuse of phone privileges.

Soon the need arises for a branch office in the next state. That office orders its own phone service and gets its own bills. Each month, management at that site spends an hour or so perusing the bill before submitting it for payment.

Now, multiply this activity by 10, 20, 100, or 1,000 locations. Similar paper bills come in on completely separate accounts from completely separate phone service providers. The same reviews are simultaneously conducted. All the bills are separately submitted for payment. Can’t this all be coordinated somehow to achieve greater efficiency? Not hardly. Every locations has its own arrangement with its own incumbent or competitive service provider. Since each account is unique, there’s no commonality to take advantage of.

Now, replace that horror scenario with a single vendor that serves all locations and consolidates all those bills into one bill. This vendor has tools available for Telecom Expense Management (TEM) to make auditing telecom bills, tracking disputes and managing contracts a far easier task. Think of the hours saved when your bills are consolidated.

Who is this vendor? It is Ernest Communications, the nation’s largest telecom company that specializes in large multi-location POTS accounts through the United States. Ernest began in earnest, if you will, as a result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that opened the door to competitive local phone companies using the resources of the Public Switched Telephone Network. Since then, they’ve installed the facilities needed to give you reliable and affordable analog business phone service anywhere you locate.

Why analog? Isn’t the world going digital? True, large organizations are migrating to enterprise VoIP to converge their multi-location voice and data networks. This is a sophisticated process that offers cost and productivity improvements IF you can afford the capital expense involved and IF you have the resources to engineer, install and maintain the facilities.

Most smaller companies have only a handful of phones, maybe a dozen or two at each location. Some have only a single phone or a few multi-line desk sets that they picked up at the local office supply store. Their data network is a broadband connection to the Internet, if they even have one. What does the IT staff do all day? What IT staff?

These businesses are quite happy with traditional analog telephony, also called POTS for Plain Old Telephone Service. It’s reliable, voice quality is excellent and pricing is reasonable for a few phone lines. This is where Ernest Communications excels. They can do something other companies can’t. They can get you analog phone service for all locations you have and then consolidate the bills and offer extra benefits like blocking of 3rd party charges, elimination of hidden fees and highly competitive long distance rates.

If one or more locations is large enough to have an on-site PBX system, Ernest can supply a dedicated local PRI service to bundle up to 23 outside lines on one standard digital trunk line that plugs right into a jack on your PBX box. Are you using both telephone and Internet? Ernest offers Integrated T1 circuits that combine 6 telephone lines plus dynamically allocated broadband data on a single T1 line. They supply the Integrated Access Device that makes this system work.

Could you benefit from having a single competitive service provider who can get you excellent rates for each of your business locations, with service customized to meet your requirements and a consolidated bill to make telecom management easier? If you have multiple locations dealing with multiple phone companies, you should get competitive quotes for analog POTS telephone, Integrated T1 and ISDN PRI service that covers all of your needs with easy inclusion of future business expansion.