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Given today's tough economy, it's easy to
understand why so many business owners are ruthless about watching
their costs. After all, on net margins of 2.5 percent, a
business must generate sales of $40 to earn $1 in net income.
So why are many of these same business owners bleeding away
tens of thousands of dollars each year on telecommunication
overcharges? The answer is simple: Most business
owners have no idea how much they spend on telecom services, let
alone how they can best optimize those budgets.
According to a recent study by the Aberdeen Group, most
businesses spend 1 percent of sales on telecom services, and 8
percent to 12 percent of those expenses are in error. By
that math, a business with $20 million in sales and $200,000 in
telecom expenses would be flushing $20,000 in cash down the drain
every year. Ouch!
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Traditionally, small- to mid-sized businesses have relied on
accounts payable clerks to validate bills and catch errors.
Yet, telecom bills are difficult to decipher, so these clerks
usually pay the bills without validating them just to keep
up with the volume. These bills can include local,
long-distance, broadband, data, paging, cellular and maintenance
services... Additionally, many businesses have given
control of their telecom budgets to the IT department because of
the overlap between their Internet service providers,
long-distance providers and local phone companies. As these
companies merge, consolidate, lay off employees and change
computer systems endlessly, telecom service offerings are
multiplying faster than rabbits. Meanwhile, the typical CIO
is so buried with trying to manage the rest of their business that
they simply don't have time to optimize these telecom service
plans. the problem is simply bigger than the human resources
that companies have to throw at it. |
