Know what costs to cut. Sometimes cutting costs is just a matter of focusing on the areas where the most money is spent. It's more important to try to save 25% on a GBP60,000 telecoms bill than to try to save 50% on a GBP4,500 vending machine bill.
Length of Contracts: Signing a contract for one to three years is good for the telecoms company because price drops don't have to be passed on to customers and customers can't save money by switching to a cheaper provider. Also, if there is a 3-month notice period, who will send the letter to the telecoms company from your organisation?
Find out what you can do - Everyone is busy. Who will be in charge of bringing down costs? It might be better to hire an expert who works well under pressure and wants to get real results.
On-going monitoring - Measure the savings you'll make in the future, since any new supplier knows they have to do well at first. The important thing is to make sure that prices don't go up after the "honeymoon period" while service levels go down.
Did you know that phone costs can often be cut by up to 40 percent? This is true even when using a different telecoms company.
Calls to mobile are also a big deal, since there are about 62 million mobile phones in use in the UK right now. These calls can't be avoided, and they often make up more than half of the money spent on calls each month. But rates are going down. In October 2004, OFCOM forced a reduction in tariffs, and there will be more in the future. Because of competition, telecoms companies are also cutting their profit margins.
Minimum Call Charges and Rounding: Let's say the headline rate for a local call is 1.5p per minute. Now that there is a minimum call charge of 1p, a call that lasts 20 seconds will cost 1p, which is twice the advertised rate. If calls are rounded up to the nearest minute, the cost will be 300 percent higher than expected. Also, 30% of business calls last less than 30 seconds, and almost all of them last less than 2 minutes. How will these two things affect the price of your phone bill?
Capped Calls: Yet another minefield. Most business calls last less than 2 minutes, so a capped call tariff would make these calls much more expensive. Some big phone companies charge 7p to set up a call to a mobile phone, plus 10p per minute. So, on this capped call tariff, a one-minute call would cost 17p and a thirty-second call would cost 12p, which is a lot more than they would cost on a standard per-minute tariff. Ninety percent of businesses with capped call rates pay a lot more than they should.
Line rental: This can now be easily cut by anywhere from 10% to 25%.
Calls to pricey 0870 numbers are sometimes unavoidable, but there are many ways to cut down on this wasteful cost.
Ask the company for their regular local phone number if you need to call them from outside the country.
Check your phone when someone calls. If you have caller ID, you might see their real number.
Look up their number on 192.com, BT's website, or online directory enquiries. Their real number could be written down.
Go to saynoto0870.com A great site that lists many companies' other phone numbers.