Controlling Opex

Controlling communications costs is becoming ever more important in today's tough economic climate.

Capital expenditure savings are an obvious route but they need to be balanced by the continuing pressure to deliver high value services.

The challenge for many IT departments is to identify areas where costs are not directly supporting demonstrable business benefits. IT projects that don’t earn their keep need to be eliminated, whilst those that will enhance value are retained; the value of existing assets must be maximised by delaying all but the most necessary of new system purchases; and staffing levels must be kept to a minimum, while making sure the skills base to support the post-recession bounce-back are retained.

In other words, where cuts are made they must improve efficiency, not reduce effectiveness.

Savings you can make right now

Technology can be your best ally when it comes to curing the pain of constrained or reduced budgets, getting your enterprise up-to-date and fit for the future.

• Re-evaluate your mobile phone charges and assets – for instance, We can provide leased line links between your PBX estate and the mobile network substantially reducing call costs.
• Ensure customer contact is as efficient as possible - achieving the optimum balance between human and automated intervention can reduce contact centre costs. We worked with a well know retailer and helped them reduced call rates by 75% through self-service problem analysis and solution prediction without any agent intervention. They now process more than 90% of calls through their speech system.
• Reassess your data management requirements - realise substantial savings in management costs, running costs and ongoing upgrade costs through our managed hosting services.
• Review your line rental & call charges – are you paying rental for lines you no longer use? We can carry out a detailed voice audit to assess where immediate savings can be made.

Longer-term strategies

Whilst the fundamentals are being addressed, you should look at the next phase - the strategic overview, aiming to prepare the ground for your longer-term goals, with a leaner, meaner fighting machine.

• Supplier rationalisation – Multiple IT suppliers take up time and resources to manage, as well as complicating the resolution of any problems that arise. Streamlining your supplier can help save money, reduce complexity and improve the reliability of your critical communication environment.
• Let someone else worry about managing the network – is worrying about ‘keeping the lights on’ really the best way to maximise your in house resources?
• Move IT onto the Board - too many organisations’ management boards still view IT as a support function when it should be seen as a business enabler.
• Evaluate green IT initiatives - there is significant alignment between green IT and the business goals of cost savings and cost optimisation.

Kcom’s range of  managed communications tools and capabilities can help your company in all these areas - increasing efficiency as well as releasing time and budget for your IT teams to think strategically about the future. 

Discover how we can help you achieve your objectives. Call the team today on 0800 915 5226.

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