How much are you wasting on mobile call costs?
Mobile phones are increasingly replacing the office desk phone as the primary business tool. Undoubtedly, mobile phones have provided organisations with greater communications flexibility and mobility, but at the same time many organisations are facing escalating mobile costs when budgets are tight. On the surface, it may appear difficult for organisations to reduce their mobile costs, but in fact many are potentially wasting millions on unnecessary and avoidable call charges.
Damovo recently surveyed 100 IT directors from UK enterprises on their current mobile expenditure. The survey revealed that on average they were spending £209,150 annually on mobile calls, however 42% of those calls were being made by employees in the office. While it would be impractical to restrict employee mobile usage in the office it does highlight that organisations could be far smarter with regards to how they use their existing communications infrastructure.
Many organisations have under-utilised fixed line and WiFi networks. For instance our research found that only 14% of organisations were utilising WiFi for voice calls. The latest fixed mobile convergence (FMC) solutions and dual-mode smartphones can utilise existing public and private WLAN networks and extend enterprise PBX functionality to the handset. This means that mobile costs can be reduced significantly as calls can then be routed over the WLAN network with calls seamlessly transitioning between WLAN and mobile networks when the user moves in and out of WiFi range.
FMC not only significantly reduces mobile call costs, but also provides a wide range of other productivity benefits too. Combining FMC with Unified Communications functionality, means that users are always reachable as communication can be delivered irrespective of device type (e.g. mobile phone or desktop PC) or location, according to individual needs and organisational policies.
Another advantage of FMC is that it provides organisations with improved visibility and control over their mobile usage at a time when many organisations simply don’t have the time to carry out a full monthly analysis of their mobile expenditure. Our research revealed that over a third (37%) of the IT directors surveyed didn’t even look at their organisation’s mobile bill each month!
The current economic climate is forcing a number of organisations to re-evaluate their mobile policies and costs. So now is the perfect time to consider FMC and how it could benefit your organisation.
For further information, please visit Enterprise Fixed Mobile Convergence (eFMC).
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