Are you paying too much for your Telecoms?

"The UK is losing £624 million annually through over billing and hidden charges alone," it is estimated by industry sources.

Recently I had a mild epiphany. I'm a small business and I wanted to try and get my telecoms contracts under one supplier and pay the best rates for each of my requirements. I quickly found there is no advantage in being with one supplier whoever they were. Here's what happened:

- I use Skype for my day to day UK landline and international calls. For around £11.50 per month and £40 per annum for a SkypeIn number, I have a 'London' based business with voicemail and all my UK landline and international calls paid for. Of course all Skype to Skype calls across the internet are free - and I interviewed a chap in Australia for two hours only a few weeks ago for zero cost.

- I have a 450 free minutes to any network with Passport for my international calls which means I pay 75p upfront for each call when I am abroad then use my normal minute plan once in the call for my mobile phone - this is on a business tariff with Vodafone. I also have push email to my PDA in MS Windows mobile which does not work abroad. Average monthly cost even when travelling abroad is around £70 per month with monthly insurance.

- O2 Broadband to my office is £7.50 per month (one of the only suppliers offering a deal to double up for my wife's mobile phone) for up to 3Mb although I only get around 1Mb if I'm lucky and I have changed provider 3 times.

- Mobile broadband for demonstrations on the road was the latest - having gone to Vodafone I was going to be charged £15 per month for 3Gb of data plus £79 for the stick which would be free if I signed for 24 months. So I walked across the street to 3G and got 5Gb per month for £15 per month for an 18 month contract and a nice natty black stick for free.

By the way, to keep these costs at these levels I have a strict policy on how to make calls - that way I rarely exceed my mobile minutes by making sure I do all landline calls and international with Skype.

Is this normal?

The net effect of this is you have to shop around and be creative to get your costs down as low as you can. As I come to my year end, telephony is still one of my most significant costs behind travel and so it is important to me and my clients as it is a fundamental way of doing business for me and on their behalf.

My experience in larger companies is not dissimilar. At Genesys, where our own telephony costs for business were mainly put through Vodafone Business for mobile and then a variety of suppliers for our bridging, it was not realistic to go with one supplier and as the business grew the complexity went off the map. It was not only hard to get creative on drilling down costs, it was virtually impossible. Heaven knows how much money we could have saved had we had the will, resources and expertise to assess it and then actually get the savings.

So while being in a large company increases your buying power, you still have to be creative and shop around to get multiple vendors to manage overall costs down. No one Vendor offers the best all round deal. And rates change - constantly.

Is there a nirvana?

I am sure there is and many Telephony Resellers profess to have one. In my experience, knowing enough about the industry and wading through baffling complexities like trying to set up Local Connect Calls for Conference Bridging and having to 'average' the call costs across all customers and hope Khazakstan is not the most popular calling point for conferences, is that no one company offers the best all round deal. You have to shop around and find the best deals for your particular needs in each category. Once you go beyond the UK boundaries, it gets ever more complicated.

Assessing your costs

For those who have multiple contracts already and your Telecom costs are above say £500,000 per year, it would pay to get an assessment done to check all your tariffs and do a market survey. As we hit a more uncertain market, drilling down on in-bound costs rather than people costs should be the first point of call, if not commercially astute it certainly is morally - and the savings can be huge.

Here is my advice:

I work with Intelligentcomms who are an independent assessor and do not sell Telecoms so have no vested interest in any one Telecom company - this is vital as all Telecom Resellers who profess to do the same are trying to sell you an alternative service. That's not the right way to go about it.

Making real sustainable savings

Intelligentcomms make an initial, chargeable assessment which looks at your entire Telecom costs, line by line, vendor by vendor, across your landlines, international calls, mobile phones and data costs - everything. They then tell you how much can be saved by taking certain actions - this can be simple things like changing to per second billing to changing tariffs to even changing vendors to get optimum deals.

Savings are incredible - with as much 60% cost savings in some instances and 40% is around the average, and this can be in each category of your telephony.

And here's the best part - Intelligentcomms get paid as a percentage of the savings they deliver to you and so a) you know they are working on your behalf to maximise savings - they have skin in the game, b) it's a massive win-win and c) they even refund the initial survey charge when you take advantage of the savings.

I would be delighted to recommend Intelligentcomms - they have worked companies large and small to make sustainable savings on their Telecom bills.

Please call me on 0207 193 2356 or mail me at nigel.dunn@calxeurope.com and I will be delighted to help.