Posts tagged "Business"

Calculating your Business Telecom Expenses

In the current economic climate, it has become absolutely vital that expenditure in all areas be addressed to ensure a smooth, consistent and ultimately profitable business operation.

Costs continue to rise in all areas even though the world recession continues to bite. The price of crude oil means logistical expenses are at an all time high while the cost of raw products, outside services and employee wages continue to have a dramatic effect on company outgoings.

One area that needs constant supervision is the accountability of business telecommunications. It is vital that costs are correctly calculated and usage is efficiently monitored.

Costs themselves are essentially easy to calculate. There is always going to be the need to make outgoing calls to customers, suppliers, outside service providers and associated companies. These costs will be coupled with the staff you employ and you will need to rent a sufficient amount of telephone lines to cater for the demands of your business.

Additional costs can be added for logistical reasons, such as mobile phone services to stay in contact with employees who are not confined to a particular site or office. Calculations in this area will include incoming calls as well as outgoing.

For a small business that operates in a home office scenario, it is incredibly important to monitor all usage and separate calls from those that are made for social or domestic purposes. Keeping stringent accounts, no matter what size your business is, will help in monitoring, calculating and reducing costs.

Maintaining control over telephone expense is accentuated by the fact that certain areas of business telecommunications are tax deduct able.

Costs can be controlled by selecting a package from your telephone service provider that offers a competitive price on a combination of factors including line rental, call costs, Internet accessibility and mobile phone facilities.

The advent of the Internet also means that using e-mails instead of a telephone makes for an effective cost cutting exercise. There’s also the benefit of using free services such as Skype which allow you to make calls for free.

Ensuring that all company mobile phones are on the same network will also save significant sums, especially as network-to-network calls for business purposes are often free of charge.

It’s also important that business lines are used solely for that purpose and employees shouldn’t be using company facilities for personal use unless agreed beforehand.
With a vigilant nature, comprehensive budget and some sensible shopping there’s significant amounts of money to be saved for any business that’s prepared to work a little harder to cut back on unnecessary expenditure.

Using Telemanagement to Reduce Business Expenses

Increasing profits may not be the easiest thing to accomplish during an economic recession, but minimizing wasteful expenses is the smartest approach to compensate for a challenging time. In any financial situation, there is no need to overlook how your money is being spent.

One of the most common places that funds are spent excessively is telecommunication. The degree of wasteful spending may vary between business types but the simple solution remains the same: telemanagement.

What is Telemanagement and How Can it Help Minimize Expenses?

Telemanagement is a simple-to-use computer based system that tracks and monitors phone usage, analyzes all information, and then displays the results in an easily understandable format. Telemanagement also simplifies telecommunication related tasks and allows you to bill back phone usage.

Sometimes referred to as call accounting systems, telemanagement can quickly be incorporated into any size business as a way to simplify specific operations and reduce costs.

The most notable way that telemanagement eliminates wasteful spending is through a visible overview of exactly where your telecommunication expenses are going, and how effective those investments have been.

You can also track personal phone usage, long distance calls, and abandoned or dropped calls to help you develop a strategic solution to any flaws in employee guidelines or telecommunication methods.
It’s never been this easy to access specific information and print up a record. The investment made into telemanagement is one that literally pays for itself very quickly.

Fact: You Don’t Have to Operate a Call Center to Benefit from Telemanagement.

This misconception is exactly why you’re currently spending too much time and money. In fact, businesses of all sizes and forms are learning about the many benefits that telemanagement has to offer.

• Hotels can quickly print up a phone record for guests with telemanagement, and adjust any invoices accordingly.

• Restaurants, or other businesses that deliver, can instantly access customer files when they call in to place an order.

• Any business that uses a phone can actually watch telecommunication expenses to see exactly where a majority of the money is spent.

• Telemanagement allows prior phone calls to be documented and accessed immediately, offering a simple solution for handling customer disputes.

• Any business owner can quickly analyze telecommunication processes, understand the results, identify any flaws, and create a strategic response.

In other words, it doesn’t really matter what the nature of your business may be. The truth is quite clear: that telemanagement simplifies important business processes and reduces wasteful spending…with just a few clicks of the mouse!

Welcome to the 21st Century, It’s Time You Start Using Telemanagement!

Just a few short years ago, many people thought they were cool for owning a beeper/pager.
I don’t have to point out how much things have changed. If you know a teenager, ask them what a beeper is for a good laugh.

Once you have experienced the benefits of telemanagement for yourself, you will be referring to your current system of tracking telecommunications the same way a teenager would refer to a pager. In other words, telemanagement does to telecommunications what television did to reading books.

CEO of TNT Expense Management: Happenstance and Strong Childhood Values Lead to Business Success

Growing up in a very poor Brooklyn neighbourhood, Michael had a happy childhood “since I knew no better.” His parents were Italian immigrants working in factories and living according to old-world values that kept Michael and his siblings away from the bandwagon of kids who went the wrong way. After graduating from East New York Vocational high school, where he took electrical and computer classes, Michael continued his education at the Technical Career Institute, then got his first job as a technician for ITT Communications.

Meanwhile, Michael’s personal life was about to change his professional plans. After two years of marriage, he and his wife were expecting a son whom he wanted to raise away from New York. It happened that Electronic Mail Corporation of America (EMCA) needed technical assistance moving their offices from Manhattan to Connecticut; Michael moved with them, staying as an engineer and senior engineer manager. He devoted the following twelve years to working for consumer-services company CUC International, where he ran voice and data networks, and continued building his knowledge base. The company entered into a merger after tremendous growth; he asked for a departure package and by that afternoon was already doing consulting work.

Although Michael never meant to make consultation his primary work, this stage of his career ended up being vital for his future. “I never had the intent of starting a company; it sort of just fell in my lap. Now I don’t know if I could go back to working for someone.” His company, TNT Expense Management, began with a team of three people. Due to his reputation among clients, the phone calls kept rolling in, and after a short while he had to recruit additional people to fulfil the demand. Overnight, without any previous expectations, his consulting work became a full-fledged business. Michael remembers the moment when he realized this and the anecdote that marked it: “We had just signed a client with a market capitalization of 0 billion, there were only three of us in the company, and we had a server running on a file cabinet in a basement. That’s when we realized this was going to be a company, and not just a few of us doing consulting.”

Today, TNT Expense Management coordinates the telecommunications of large companies, reducing their costs and assuring that companies pay only for what they should be paying. Among the techniques used are sourcing of contract negotiations, bill auditing, processing of invoices and making optimization recommendations about how to reduce costs. TNT’s clients are mostly Fortune 500 and several Fortune 50 companies, and Michael proudly relates that his business has almost 100% client retention. What is his secret? “Reputation, reputation, reputation.” What brought prestigious names to TNT’s roster was performance at an in-depth level and finding the maximum savings for its clients. Although the company has only about 85 employees, it does business on the level of billion-dollar corporations. As Michael puts it, “Big companies expect you to be structured, formal and at their level in your work and communication with them.” Having a quality staff has proven to be crucial. Even though TNT has a significantly smaller staff than what one would expect from a company that generates -12 million in revenue, the selection of employees was anything but random. When asked what brought his company to success, Michael replies: “Having the right people. Make sure you spot the right people and make them happy.” When it comes to efficient and professional employees, it’s a matter of knowing what they are doing, and in a conscientious way. With such an approach, no wonder TNT has grown to become an “ethical, customer-focused company.”

Still, the cherry on top of the large-corporation-client cake is not always sweet. Clients have high demands and the job can become stressful. In those moments, it’s important to stay on track. “Don’t make decisions in a panic mode.” On the other hand, sometimes the issue is not in the task’s difficulty so much as in the client’s temperament. Michael happens to have a remedy for that situation as well. “Growing up where I did exposed me to a lot of different personalities, income levels and backgrounds. That was very helpful to me later on in life because in business you deal with a lot of different types of people. If you can see past someone who is being obnoxious, see where that person’s coming from and why they’re coming off that way, you will be able to respond in a way that makes that person calm down.”

Ultimate career choices are not necessarily those made in one’s twenties, nor do they always require the skills possessed at that point in life. A good CEO and businessman must have well-developed people-smarts to recruit key employees and effectively communicate with clients. And of course, every now and then, not take things too seriously.

Not advice one would give to a heart surgeon, but often the best tonic in business.

TDS

TDS Telecommunications Corp.

Madison, Wis. (Vocus) September 8, 2010

The greatest threats to a business’s network often come from internal employee use. To help businesses learn how to protect and secure the last layer of defense — internal users — TDS Telecommunications Corp. (TDS®) is offering a free webinar on Sept. 15 at 2 p.m. EST.

The Sept. 15 webinar will be the last in a four-part series designed to educate business owners and IT professionals on ways to increase Internet security. Guest speaker Johannes Ullrich, Ph.D., chief technology officer of the SANS Internet Storm Center, will discuss:

    Ways employees unknowingly expose their employer to risk;
    Security threats to your bank account, reputation and business plans; and
    Tips for developing guidelines, educating employees, and properly using technology.

“There are serious threats taking a toll on your company’s network and your employees are oftentimes the catalyst, whether they know it or not,” says Scott Meier, product manager of managed security services at TDS. “It adds up to lost productivity. Plus, it puts your company at risk of compliance violations and legal liabilities. Before your network is compromised, now’s the time to learn and teach employees how to avoid exposing your company to unnecessary risks.”

For more details, to sign up for the free webinar, or to listen to the previous webinars about Internet security, visit www.tdsbusiness.com/securitycenter.

About Johannes Ullrich, Ph.D.

Johannes Ullrich, Ph.D., chief research officer at the SANS Institute. Johannes is currently responsible for the SANS Internet Storm Center (ISC) and the GIAC Gold program. He founded DShield.org in 2000; it is the data collection engine behind the ISC. His work with the ISC has been widely recognized, and in 2004, Network World named him one of the 50 most powerful people in the networking industry. Prior to working for SANS, Johannes worked as a lead support engineer for a Web development company and as a research physicist.

About TDS

TDS Telecommunications Corp. markets communication services to business and residential customers in 30 states through its brands TDS Telecom® and TDS Metrocom®. With 1.1 million access line equivalents in service, TDS Telecommunications Corp. connects customers to phone, broadband, and digital television service in hundreds of rural, suburban, and metropolitan communities. TDS Telecommunications Corp. is the eighth-largest wire line company in the nation; employing approximately 2,500 people. The company is headquartered in Madison, Wis. Visit www.tdstelecom.com and www.tdsbusiness.com for more information.

TDS Telecommunications Corp. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. (NYSE: TDS, TDS.S) Telephone and Data Systems, Inc., a Fortune 500® company, provides wireless, local and long-distance telephone and broadband services to nearly 7.3 million customers in 36 states through TDS Telecommunications Corp. and U.S. Cellular® (NYSE: USM), its 82-percent owned wireless subsidiary. Founded in 1969 and headquartered in Chicago, Telephone and Data Systems employed 12,300 employees as of June 30, 2010. Visit www.teldta.com for more information.

For more information contact:

Cindy Tomlinson, Associate Manager – PR

TDS Telecommunications Corp.

608-664-4471 / cindy(dot)tomlinson(at)tdstelecom(dot)com

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Why Your Business Needs A Telecom Audit

There is a very clear reason that so many new technologies appear every year – new technologies help keep businesses competitive and successful. As computers grow ever more capable and inexpensive, businesses continue to take advantage of them. This causes the tech industry to continually come up with new models, in an incredibly profitable feedback loop.

The same phenomenon has begun in the world of business communication. In addition to the classic hard line telephone and radio systems, there are now digital phone options, voice mail, videoconferences, email, and many more options. If a business needs to communicate, the world of telecom offers a solution to their specific need.

I Can Do What With My Telephone?!

Of course, every new technology brings new problems and challenges. Much as computers introduced a whole range of compatibility issues and headaches for early adopters, modern telecom technologies have raised a range of new issues.

Relatively few members of any organization actually understand the specific workings of any one telecom system in their office, let alone how the entire system operates. A lack of understanding about any one portion can directly impact the company’s bottom line.

That’s Not How We Do It

This issue affects larger businesses in particular. A small, local baker really only needs a simple phone line and voice mail system, for example. An interstate or international corporation, on the other hand, needs an entire phone system for each of its offices, and perhaps a larger network tying them all together. This kind of effort requires not only a major investment, but it rarely develops all at once.

Businesses acquire other companies, adopting their offices and existing equipment, and occasionally the communications contracts they’ve already signed. This creates an inherent difficulty in oversight and control over the communications network, and can be a source of costs that a business shouldn’t have to pay.

For those companies that don’t want to keep ignoring – and paying for – the problems, there is an alternative; the professional telecommunications audit, (similar to the concept of a tax audit but without the pain and fear). Simply put, a telecom audit is a professional, thorough review of an entire telecommunications network, encompassing billing and contracts as well as data integrity and security, efficiency, and policy.

Specifically, a telecom audit can cover three general areas. First is the review of records and information. This portion of the audit covers areas like data integrity (ascertaining if the information is being stored and archived properly, for easy and long term access) and data security (is the information accessible to people it shouldn’t be?), and can include recommended policy revisions for better performance.

Next is a review of the technologies themselves, and whether adopting an alternative system might improve matters. Finally there is the review of the financial side, ranging from the obvious (comparing different phone contracts for pricing and options) to the esoteric (tariffs and call volume versus network capability). Not every audit will include every portion. As mentioned in the bakery example, not every business has the same telecom needs.

The Devil That You Know vs. the Devil That You Don’t

The defining reason to get a telecom audit is one of information. Auditors don’t come in and solve a business’ communications problems; they simply review the procedures and options currently in place and make recommendations on how to improve the state of things compared to how it exists. Frequently, some of their findings aren’t related to external matters. A department could be losing customers because employees are not filing customer contact information properly, leading to longer wait times and missed calls or appointments, and an audit could catch this.

The advantage lies in having an independent, external audit when possible. This doesn’t imply wrongdoing on the part of internal users, or anyone attempting deception. Simple familiarity with a system could prevent a user from seeing that they aren’t using it to the best of its capability, and an outside pair of eyes can provide an impartial, expanded view.

Communication is the lifeblood of the modern economy. It doesn’t matter how critical a piece of information is, nothing is gained if it is not communicated to the proper audience. As businesses grow more and more dependent on advanced telecommunications systems, new problems will emerge. Every system develops difficulties as it grows more complex, a fact of nature that cannot be avoided. A professional, independent telecom audit is a useful tool that can identify these problems, and allow a successful business to take steps to maximize their communications potential and their bottom line.