Many business owners are asking themselves right now how they can reduce business costs, their business telecoms bill being just one of those considerations. Here are some tips to consider when looking to reduce your business telecom bill and IT costs.
How much do you value customer service?
Firstly, you have to decide how important customer service is to your business. If you ever changed energy supplier you probably won’t have seen any difference in service, as you are used to poor customer service from the energy sector! However, IT and telecoms are different. Most businesses simply cannot function if there’s a fault, if their customers cannot reach them or if they don’t reply to customers swiftly.
There is no point moving from a trusted supplier to a new one in order to save, say, £50 a month on your business telecom bill if your new supplier takes two days to fix any faults. How much is your time per hour worth? How much will your business lose if your customers can’t contact you and you miss a sale that could be worth hundreds or even thousands of pounds?
If you are happy with your current provider, speak to them first. There may be some way to mitigate price increases or discount your bills with them. Finding a reliable, responsive supplier that knows your business and values your custom is hard. So why move to a big corporate supplier where you are just an account number to them, or a supplier that sells really cheap but has terrible service when you really need them?
Downtime can be costly, so if your current provider resolves any issues you have swiftly and provides great service it’s probably better talking to them rather than jumping into the unknown and having to deal with call centres where nobody knows you or your company. Cheaper is not always better! Also changing to a completely new supplier may mean you unwittingly enter a long contract, so if the new service level is awful, you’re stuck.
Help me save on my business phone and IT costs ££
Business bundle discounts
Another business cost reduction method is to ask for bundle discounts. For this you need a great SME supplier that can offer you a full product range. Basically, it’s cheaper for your supplier to look after one customer with five products than five customers with one product. A great starting point is to get out all of your business phone bills, phone system bills, broadband bill, business mobile phone bill, and all your IT bills including any monthly costs paid for support, cyber security or Microsoft.
If you are using various suppliers, now is the time to look into consolidating these with one supplier to reduce your business costs. Decide which of these suppliers is the best and gives you great service, then ask them if they can supply all of your business telecom and business IT services in one consolidated offering. By giving them the opportunity to supply all these services to you on one bill, in return they should be able to give you some discounts.
If your current supplier cannot offer you all of these services, then it’s probably time to find one that can. After all, these services should all work together to ensure your business not only saves money, but also gives you additional savings from a more efficient unified solution. Mobiles, office phones, laptops, IT applications should all be working together to give your business a resilient and flexible working environment. So, by bundling your services together with one supplier you should get cost savings for your business, improve efficiency and save time, plus have the additional comfort that if anything ever has a fault, you are not scrabbling around trying to find out who to call to fix it.
Don’t pay for stuff you don’t need
Sounds simple right? But how often do you check your bills and really understand them? Hopefully every month, but here’s why. An easy way to save money in a business is to review all your bills to make sure you don’t pay for anything you don’t need. Sometimes this can be hard to work out when it comes to business IT and telecom bills. So, ask for help if you don’t understand them.
Some unscrupulous suppliers make their bills hard to understand on purpose. When we review a potentially new customers’ current bills, we often find they are paying for things that they just don’t need anymore. This is not usually because the existing supplier is intentionally charging them for services that are not required. It is more that many businesses do not review what they are paying for on a regular basis and technology moves on meaning other cheaper solutions are now on the market.
A great example is SoGEA business broadband. This is a low-cost replacement for traditional business broadband connections that were delivered by copper cables (these old types of connections will be switched off by 2025 by the way, so check yours now!). This type of broadband can be delivered without you having to pay for a phone line as well, so there is an immediate saving. This is just one simple example, but when we analyse clients’ bills the reasons why businesses are paying for things they don’t need are varied, so contact us today to help you check your bills – there could be some easy wins on how to reduce your business telecoms bill and IT costs.
Here are some other top tips to reduce your business telecoms bills:
Say goodbye to call charges
Change an old business phone system to VoIP.
When you switch to our Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) cloud systems, you’ll get up to 5,000 minutes per user of free UK calls.
When you move to VoIP, you’ll also have the advantage of a scalable system that can give you more telephone lines as and when you need them.
You can also get £250 towards the upgrade as well. Plus getting rid of your old phone system will save your electricity.
Move your business mobiles to a SIM only deal
With mobile contracts, you pay for the device over a number of months as depicted by your contract. The actual price you pay for the device will be much higher than the market value, allowing the contractor to profit. With a business SIM-only deal, however, you can reduce your costs. You’re not paying for a device, only for the calls and services you use.
Convert your business telephone system to use SIP
A SIP telephone system, is for businesses that already have a phone system on-site and aren’t ready to make the move to the cloud.
SIP is a hallway house that converts your ISDN PBX telephone system to a cloud version (VoIP). What that gives you then, is cheaper bills, as it reduces your call charges. You also have fewer line charges to pay for.
Plus, all your old phone lines will not work after 2025, so now is a good time to change anyway. Here is a free video to explain the BT ISDN switch off.
Take advantage of any free offer
For example, we offer a free cyber security health check. This will highlight again anything you are paying for that you don’t need. Also, it will give you a report to show if your business is vulnerable to a cyber attack. Small businesses are an easy target for cyber criminals and hacks can be expensive to resolve.
In addition, many suppliers like ours offer cash back on a business phone system upgrade or a discount voucher on services you currently have under contract that can be moved later. We also offer the 1st month free on all new full fibre broadband connections.
I hope this guide helps to reduce your business costs, but if you need any expert advice, contact us today. We can help you reduce your business telecoms bill and IT support costs.