What To Look For In Your Telecommunications Review

There are many opportunities for errors in a company’s telecommunications landscape. Most people don’t realize it but reoccurring expenses can have errors month after month and the errors may continue for years if there is not a designated person reviewing such expenses.

A telecommunications review can focus in on a variety of expenses including:

• Land line phone expenses
• Cellular phone expenses
• Internet expenses
• Data networks
• Taxes
• Contractual agreements with vendors
• Long distance carrier fees
• Toll free carrier services
• Teleconference lines
• Equipment maintenance fees
• Incomplete call charges
• Inventory
• Moves, adds, disconnects of employee connectivity
• Idle communication lines – ones that you may still be paying for but are no longer in use

Errors often go unnoticed. Did you know there is over an 80% error rate in telecommunications billing? Typically the bills are mailed to a company of which they then get passed on to the accounting department for payment. When this happens there is not much of a thorough review of the bill. This is usually the case for most organizations.

On the flip side to this, some company’s do perform a regular review of their telecommunications expenses. They may find overages and errors but who in the organization is responsible for getting the necessary refunds or credits? This can be a time consuming endeavor. Usually contracts need to be reviewed followed by several phone calls to the vendor to review the error and negotiate a credit. All of this takes time and resources.

Once an organization decides to start reviewing their monthly spend it’s something that they will want to continue monitoring. In this case a human resource will need to be allocated to continue reviewing monthly invoices.
Did you know that U.S. businesses waste over 38 billion dollars annually in lost telecom expense due to telephone company errors?

How many times have you looked at your own smart phone bill and seen month after month your fees are increasing? Eventually you may act on it and make a phone call to your carrier, talk with customer service and spend more than an hour on the phone reviewing your billing. Imagine this same scenario for an organization’s cell phone bill that includes multiple cellular lines. This is time intense to review the many charges and statements an organization receives on a monthly basis. Thanks to time constraints and man-power limitations often times the review does not happen and the bill gets paid without contesting overages and erroneous charges.

We challenge clients to ask internally and find out who is looking at their telecom bills and reviewing reoccurring expenses. Some of the responses clients have received from internal employees include:

– “we’re all good”..
– we just looked at them and “we are in line.”
– I just spoke with the rep and “he/she says we have the best price possible.”
– “we pay a little more but our vendor or agent takes care of us.”

What verification and proof is offered to support these types of claims? Do you hear the answer, move on, and just accept it? And if so, does doubt sit in the back of your mind that your expenses should be less?

What can you do?
Go outside your environment and seek a reputable telecom expense auditing company. There are expert firms that will burden the risk and share in the profits, while minimizing the impact to business. For almost any segment of your business there are consultants that can help you find the errors and shave the excess from your monthly reoccurring expenses for:

– little to no money/investment upfront
– little impact on your employees
– minimal disruption to your business.

These telecom billing review firms come with the expertise, process, and tools to find your excess expenses and realize your increased profitability. Be sure that you hire firms that:

– have the recent historical industry background
– have been in business for more than 5 years
– have a “reference able” client base and supporting testimonials
– are experts in your particular industry or service interest
– have a proven process to ensure success

For more information on how to reduce your monthly telecommunication expenses we invite you to explore our website at: www.limitlesstechnology.com or call us today at 866-504-4050 for a free, no obligation analysis.