Should You Outsource Your Company’s Telecommunications Management?
If you ever wondered if your company is as cost efficient as possible when it comes to telecommunications expenses, the answer is probably NO. Outsourcing your company’s telecommunications cost management or project management allows your company to focus on what it does best, while allowing experts at BLS Communications to do what we do best. Outsourcing does not mean sending the work off to a far away land; BLS Communications offers a solution that allows a company to benefit from our in-house telecom consultants. By partnering with a telecommunications consulting firm that specializes in telecom inventory management, telecom order management, Request for Proposal (RFP) management, contract negotiations and telecom auditing, your company can benefit through increased efficiency and telecom cost reduction.
In today’s environment, many companies have consolidated their telecommunications department and IT department in an effort to reduce labor costs. While this certainly does reduce labor costs, it often increases the risk of overwhelming staff and assigning tasks that may not be their area of expertise. An outsourced telecom partner alleviates this problem and allows a company to benefit by having all telecom issues managed by true telecom professionals.
Telecommunications carriers have drastically reduced their staff, thereby leaving customers to fend for themselves when it comes to telecom planning, implementation and telecom billing issues. Reduced support staff at the carrier level has left many companies in quite a bind. Companies are forced to spend an increasing amount of time in telecom order management, keeping up with changes in the industry, obtaining support and trying to resolve billing issues. This can cause serious problems for an already over-stretched IT or other department. Outsourcing your telecom management to BLS Communications will alleviate all of this frustration.
While there are numerous financial, organizational and staffing related reasons to consider outsourcing telecommunications management, a few of the top reasons are discussed below.
1) Faster and more efficient telecom implementation.
Whether your company is moving, making changes to your existing telecom services or changing providers, the implementation of these changes can be frustrating and incredibly time consuming. BLS Communications has an experienced staff to make minor or major changes to your telecom infrastructure far less stressful. BLS Communications works to gain a complete understanding of each clients existing telecom infrastructure by analyzing the current telecom environment at length. Through this analysis and a complete telecom inventory of services in use, BLS Communications can offer suggestions to make changes to existing telecom infrastructure easier and more cost effective.
2) Telecom Cost Recovery
It is no secret that errors on telecom invoices are on the rise. As the carriers continually merge and consolidate, the likelihood of telecom billing errors has continued to increase. Outsourcing your company’s telecom management to BLS Communications allows your company to have an edge when professionals review the invoices for errors before they take a toll. Billing errors are identified and resolved before the invoices are paid and credits or reimbursements are issued in a timely manner.
3) Telecom Project Management made hassle-free.
Major projects are particularly difficult these days as the telephone companies are quick to show interest but slow to deliver results. Telecom contract negotiations, network design and telecom order management can often take weeks or even months. BLS Communications’ staff has extensive knowledge and experience in all areas of Telecom Project Management to make the process as easy as possible. By having BLS Communications act on your behalf, these processes are expedited and overseen so the project is completed on time and within budget. BLS Communications offers complete telecom management services to assist clients in all phases of a project from the initial planning to a review of the first invoice.
When it comes to reducing telecom expenses, more and more companies are considering outsourcing these services as a viable and intelligent option.
What exactly is telecom outsourcing and how do you know when and if you need to consider outsourcing in-house tasks to an experienced specialist in the field? To answer this, let’s review the different aspects of telecom outsourcing in greater detail.
Outsourcing telemanagement tasks can be as simple as ordering a new phone line or handling moves/adds/changes for a multi-location company. You can think of most telemanagement tasks as the ones that drain staff time and provide very little return on that time investment. (No one enjoys being on the phone with a carrier or provider for an hour just to make a small change to your account.)
You may want to outsource these basic functions based on your responses to the following questions:
Are you currently understaffed and unable to complete the above tasks in a timely manner?
Do you have a dedicated in-house staff member who reviews telecom expenses monthly to monitor changes in rates, tariffs and industry practices?
Are you paying a full-time salary and benefits to one or more individuals to handle bill review duties?
Do you need an experienced telecom specialist to implement a system of routine auditing to maximize savings and reduce waste?
Do you need one point of contact to handle service issues (lines not working, broken phones, new lines needed.) Your outsourced specialist can maintain relationships with ALL of your telecom vendors and providers to keep your staff focused on the flow of business instead of telecom issues?
Telecommunications Services is the core competency of BLS Communications. This is all we do. Therefore, we would appreciate the opportunity to discuss an outsourcing option that is right for your company.