Managing communications costs effectively

With proper monitoring and management, companies can slash between 35% and 70% off their communications costs. This is the view of Keith Jones,director of strategic business development at Unison Communications.

Jones, who will speak on the subject at the ITWeb Business Communications conference, on 22 November, says in many cases, the real costs of company communications are hidden.

“Communications in any business today accounts for the largest portion of the budget, after salaries and building rentals. This is, of course, looking at communications as a collective of fixed-line, mobile, data, 3G data and e-mail. The problem is that they fly under the radar, due to companies looking at these expenses in isolation, or rolled up under different headings.

“Fixed-line is communications, while 3G and cellphone often end up under HR and e-mail, while data is hidden in some IT budget somewhere. We also should not lose sight of the fact that all of these have a severe impact on productivity,” he says.

manage abuse down to what they believe to be acceptable levels. However, what they have really done is force people to use their cellphones for private calls.

“Now the company gets even less return on the allowances it pays. And to make matters worse, cell calls are often much longer than the equivalent land-line call due to the poor voice quality, and the convenience of being able to move around while talking,” Jones says.

He says by isolating these areas, enterprises end up doubling or tripling on infrastructure required. “With the advent of the smartphone, everyone started directing their e-mail to their cellphones, too - doubling up on bandwidth requirements.

“With PAD devices becoming the norm, we will now direct the mail to those devices, too, but they also allow us access to our business applications, which will demand even more bandwidth. Unison predicts that the demand for bandwidth will double again in the next year, due to the way we interact with our systems; and the problem is that it will go largely unnoticed.

“Our research among more than two million users shows that more than 65% of communications have already shifted to include a mobile device, and in the next two years, this number will jump to over 80% - why then are we still investing in fixed-line infrastructure?” Jones asks.

He says an emphasis should be placed on understanding what the costs should look like, and what impact this has on the business.

“It is a fact that management of communications are important and necessary; our research over 30 years and more than 11 000 installations have proven that a managed environment costs at least 25% to 35% less than an unmanaged one, but this does not give you the full picture, or necessarily empower you to make the best decisions.

“Taking all of the above into consideration, Unison feels that you could cut 50% or 70% of your communications cost by rationalising infrastructure, cancelling services, stopping the duplication process, and planning your enterprise communications according to the business delivery needs,” says Jones.

For more information, or to book your place at the Business Communications conference, click here.