For all businesses, timely and reliable communications within the organisation and with customers and suppliers is critical to success. However, as the demands of business communications grow ever more sophisticated, managing communications requirements becomes ever more complex, as does the communications spend.
Communication inventory
In fact, these days, even a standard communications inventory is likely to include:
- Wireline phones and devices
- Smartphones and mobile devices
- Software licenses
- Communications network hardware
- On-premise, hosted or hybrid cloud services.
Whole-of-business communications spend
When managed cohesively by one service provider overseeing communications for the whole-of-business across the entire communication inventory, organisations typically find significant cost savings on communication expenses.
In practise though, many enterprises engage multiple suppliers to provide discrete services in a more fragmented fashion, which tends to add to the complexity and cost of management.
It’s not uncommon to have one supplier deliver your data network carriage, another your fixed voice and mobile phone assets, another to manage communication costs, and yet another to maintain everything.
Not surprisingly, these arrangements can be costly and time consuming to manage, resulting in the headache of:
- Multiple points of contact
- Multiple service desks
- Fragmented billing.
Communication expenses
Even keeping track of billing and invoices for mobile communications expenses is not a straightforward exercise for most businesses. In fact, supporting the growing use of mobile devices is becoming a considerable burden as few companies have the internal expertise to review these charges and maximise efficiencies for their business.
Communication equipment and services
At the same time, as you consider updating equipment or changing services to meet new business needs, it’s important to secure agreements based on current market conditions and your whole-of-business communication needs.
For example, if your business is facing increased phone expenses, making the switch to a cloud-based phone system will help the busines cut costs and future-proof communication systems.
VOIP services
With a cloud-based business phone system, any employee with a computer, smartphone or connected desk phone can have access to all their standard calling features. This technology enhances remote capabilities, allowing employees to work efficiently and respond to requests from any location.
VOIP also allows you to communicate with clients on a variety of platforms, enabling switching effortlessly between a call on a desk phone, to a mobile. Real-time video allows meetings with clients and colleagues across continents, instant messaging can be connected to other forms of communication.
Ideally, to make the switch, it’s critical to work closely with an experienced provider. To develop a process for migrating your phone system from an on-premises solution to a cloud-based system it’s essential to factor in your communications spend and whole-of-business needs.
Information and communication technology capability
With multiple partners accounting for discrete areas of your communication spend (fixed and mobile voice and broadband, VoIP, audio/video conferencing, unified communication), your company may lose out on the benefits of consolidation and miss out on bundling for these services. When managed cohesively, it’s possible to unlock competitive advantages and cost-savings.
Updating and upgrading communications systems is a considerable undertaking, and choosing the right solution for your business can be challenging. To help you get there, imei offers unique whole-of-business telecommunication capabilities across fixed and mobile voice and broadband, VoIP, audio/video conferencing, and unified communication.
Cost effective communication
imei helps businesses optimise end-to-end management of mobile devices and endpoints, including provisioning, staging, helpdesk, support, management and decommissioning. We also configure secure unified communications, integrating mobile, voice, messaging, collaboration and remote working to keep your people working together effectively. And if you’re thinking about migrating your communications to the cloud, you can rely on our experience and expertise, including help with SIP trunking.
