Keeping control of mobile usage is a never-ending job. Especially in today’s world where mobile estates are continually evolving. With 5G on the horizon we can anticipate more data, more devices, and more connectivity in the form of IoT resulting in greater complexity and risk of spiralling costs.
Users now expect to be connected everywhere, on every device, at any time of day. But how can you avoid unnecessary costs and make sure you only get charged for what you need?
First step is to consider if you’re in the process of doing any of the following as business?
- Meeting the demands of your users for mobility
- Growing connections as you roll out more and more devices
- Changing how and where you work
- Changing how you communicate
- Keeping abreast of regular staff changes
If so, then it’s likely that data, devices, users, usage and associated cost are all on the increase, making your mobile estate all the more difficult and time-consuming to manage.
Many businesses simply don’t have the time and experience to continually manage their mobile estate. Consequently, solutions can drift and lead to lots of challenges.
If any of this sounds all too familiar, then there are three key questions that you need to ask yourself:
- Are my bills accurate? – Do you understand your mobile estate, what you’re paying for, what you shouldn’t be paying for?
- Can I identify usage? – Is what you’re paying for being used or abused?
- Could my business pay less? – How do your rates compare, could you get a better deal elsewhere?
To address this and to regain control then we recommend the following three-stage approach.
Audit – A mobile audit and commercial review gives you a deeper understanding of your existing mobile usage and the management information to reduce costs and manage usage more effectively. Ideally this would include modelling your usage against the best available tariffs to present potential cost savings to you.
Act – Action upon the recommendations from the audit, cancel unused connections, move to a better tariff, pay less for roaming and international calling, implement a usage policy.
Monitor – It’s a never-ending job, you need to deploy the analytical tools so that you never lose control again. Many TEM tools will simplify management and reduce the time invested in handling mobility with a consolidated view of mobile bills and the services to control and manage assets, usage, behaviour and costs.
This approach can pay dividends, as one of our key clients, Alliance Medical, discovered upon utilising the three-stage approach to deliver significant business benefits:
Audit – Mobile usage was escalating so each user type was analysed for their usage and recommendations made to move to a more appropriate tariff.
Act – Heavy users were moved to a cost saving unlimited tariff and light users remained on a pay as you use tariff. As a result, the customer made savings in excess of £50,000 per annum.
Monitor – This continued on a monthly basis with Maintel providing detailed reports profiling high usage, spend that can be controlled and recommendations for reducing cost. This management information allows the customer to identify and recoup unauthorised usage from errant users.
“Every month our Maintel account manager drives the service reviews and comes prepared with detailed spend information which she then uses to suggest changes which will reduce our out of bundle spend.”
Despite the ongoing challenges your business may face in managing your mobile estate as technology evolves, utilising an effective audit service and three-step approach can help in creating a culture of continual improvement and maintained best standards.
You can read the full story of Alliance Medical’s journey from lack of cost control and user profiling, to increased productivity here. And, to learn more about what mobile audit services could do for your business, take a look at our guide.
