Published In:
The Australian Date Published:
2nd December 2003 Author:
Jess Blanch
SMALL and medium enterprises have new ways to contain the major expenditure of telecommunications, as well as better understand their telecommunications bill.
Telecoms costs rank third on the list of important issues for small business, according to a survey, What Small Business Wants, by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It follows changes to tax rules and legislation and levels of taxation as top concerns in the survey.
Graeme Cox, a telecommunications cost management specialist with consultancy Expense Reduction Analysts, says telecoms costs are a huge concern for clients.
"And interestingly, for most of our clients, it's billing issues and administration costs -- not quality of services or call costs -- that are their main problem,'' he said.
"Businesses have a lot of trouble figuring out how to organise their phone bills to reduce the administrative costs of dealing with them.''
ERA provides services that it claims can, on average, save organisations between 15 and 25 per cent on telecoms bills. Mr Cox claims this saving is generated by creating a bill profile and identifying trends within the telecoms bill.
"Information is always powerful -- once you start reducing your phone bill to a set of meaningful figures, you can start tracking changes and doing something about it,'' he said.
"Phone bills tell interesting stories when they are analysed correctly and all this can have implications for savings.'' Mr Cox believes a business's telecoms bill can actually be a very useful management tool.
"The figures in the phone bill reflect very closely what an organisation is doing -- I think they are just as valuable as the financials,'' he said.
"For example, from your call centre, you can see how much time each division spent on the phone -- it's a great way to track your organisation's activities.''
Telecoms provider AAPT, recognising the importance of the bill to customers, recently launched Online Bill Analyser, a web-based tool that enables AAPT business customers to get greater insight into their telecoms spending.
AAPT project director Steve Sacks believes it has empowered businesses to control costs.
"The real benefit that our customers are starting to see is using the information that is embedded in their telecommunications bill,'' he said.
It could be "finding out who's making night-time calls from the office on a personal basis, or trying to track which one of their advertising campaigns is generating the most inbound call traffic.''
Mr Sacks maintains the tool has advantages for small business when it comes to saving both time and money.
"The time saved in doing cost allocations on a monthly basis ranges from two to three hours a month for a smaller business,'' he said.
