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New Year's Resolution - Resolve to Reduce - Then
Take the Credit! You should think of yourself as the Chief
Financial Officer of the Telecom Department. Telecom expenses are the 2nd or 3rd
largest monthly expense in your company and it is your responsibility to
control, manage and reduce them in any way possible.
A call accounting system, if used properly (and if programmed properly) can
be a very effective Telecom Expense Management Tool, and your career can benefit
greatly if you use it to produce measurable cost reductions.
Misuse and Abuse
If monthly Summary Reports of extension activity are sent to Department
Managers, employees will know they can be accountable for their telephone
activity and will make shorter and fewer unnecessary calls to family and
friends.
Productivity Increases
Remember that the cost of a phone call is only about 10-20% of the cost of the
LABOR that is consumed while making the call! If you can document a 10% decrease
in telephone usage – that means you have reallocated a block of labor costs that
is 5 – 10 time greater than that. Find out from your CFO or personnel department
what your company's average loaded labor rate is and use that number in your
documentation report!
Telephone System Efficiency
If you are not getting any complaints of busy signals – you have too many
trunks! But do you know how many more you have than you need? A trunk
utilization report from your call accounting system can tell you if you have
trunks that you are paying for that are not being used. There might be a bad
card in the PBX that needs to be replaced, there may be no dial tone on the
block (it should be reported to your telco) or you might see that you just have
too many trunks.
Don't forget the cost of a trunk means a monthly fee to the telco provider,
hardware costs and additional annual maintenance costs to your vendor.
Frequently Dialed Number Report
This can be an easy way to find problems. One user found hundreds of calls to a
modem. After researching the calls he learned that they were slow, dial-up modem
calls. He had installed high-speed circuits to access the desired service, but
the final call routing had never been finished so the high-speed service was
never utilized. Once the error was discovered and fixed, the department
experienced a dramatic increase in productivity – thanks to this one report.
This report can also reveal calls to another branch or facility that could be
accessed less expensively by installing dedicated lines or possibly VoIP
service.
Document It and Take Credit
Assuming you do reduce your telecom expenses, it will not benefit you unless you
document and publish the results so that you receive the credit that is due to
you. Ask your manager to include these documented results in your quarterly or
annual review and in your personnel file.
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