Call Accounting: Are You Paying Too Much for Telecommunications?
August 04, 2014
By Susan J. Campbell
TMCnet Contributing Editor
When was the last time you sat down and really looked at your telecommunications spend? If you’re like most professionals, you get a monthly bill and as long as it matches the anticipated amount, you pay it. This is a great strategy to keep your credit in good standing, but not so great if you’re actually paying too much.
A blog posted by call accounting solutions provider, ISI (News - Alert), suggests that you could be paying as much as 35 percent more on your telecommunications bills than what you actually need. In other words, have you looked closely at the charges to know for sure that what you’re paying for is still what you need? This is not to suggest that your provider is trying to cheat you, but instead is just staying the course because you haven’t requested a change.
This is where call accounting plays an important role in the way you manage your business. We now have complex technologies and choices when it comes to telecommunications and unless you have a keen eye on all activity, you could be spending more than necessary. Did you know that industry experts suggest that as much as 80 percent of telecom invoices include billing errors, unnecessary services or taxes that have been erroneously applied?
Your company may also be the victim of suboptimal pricing plans, or perhaps you closed locations and forgot to tell the provider. It’s also possible that you have divisions of your company that have changed the way they are communicating in order to reduce costs. But, if they didn’t tell you they were making the change, you’ve likely continued on with business as usual and now they’re cost-saving ways are actually costing you more.
Fortunately, it doesn’t mean you have to sit down with a multipage bill each month to verify each and every line item. The larger the organization, the longer this would take. Instead, you can turn to call accounting solutions like the ISI Telecom Profit Optimizer that will concentrate on obtaining vendor refunds due to billing errors and recommending activities that can reduce overall telecom costs while also improving productivity.
In working with a company like ISI, you take away the mundane activities involved in verifying your telecommunications spend and instead focus on driving everyday business practices. Given that ISI regularly saves clients an average of 10-25 percent of telecom expenses, it’s worth the time and investment to ensure your phone bills are truly reflecting your actual activity.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi