Control mobile costs for your business

Customers and clients have come to expect immediate attention and real-time responses. If you aren’t prepared to be flexible and agile, your competition will be.

By BT Business

Fortunately advances in mobile technology now open up a world of work beyond the office. But choosing how to migrate from a desk-bound business model to meet today’s business challenges is not always obvious.

Our experience of working alongside small businesses suggests that successful mobile working relies both on a commitment to supporting workers with appropriate mobile technology and embracing the right culture and management structure to support remote workers.

Naturally, before investing financially (and psychologically) in mobile working, small businesses must be assured of the business case – does it boost productivity and can I control the costs?

Here are our top tips to control your costs and get the most from mobile working:

1] Use a single supplier for landline, mobile and broadband. Businesses understand the benefits of using broadband, landlines and mobile phones, but managing multiple suppliers and bills can be time-consuming.

2] Choose a package that allows you to share inclusive mobile call minutes between staff. This makes managing your costs both cheaper and easier and ensures that you don’t loose minutes as your employees usage fluctuates.

3] Analyse your mobile technology spending at regular intervals so you know that you are on the right package for your business. It should enable you to quickly and easily see exactly when and how your mobile communications take place.

4] Take advantage of mobile VoIP. Use a supplier that allows you to make low-cost calls or free VoIP voice calls over the internet at wireless broadband hotspots. Mobile VoIP calls, are available through software such as BT Softphone or 3 Skype, which you download to a laptop, or through smartphones.

5] Give employees the right tools. Smartphones such as BT Office Anywhere and Blackberry can now enable employees to work effectively on the move as they would at their desks.

6] Take the internet with you, wherever you go. Wireless broadband, also known as Wi-Fi, allows users to access the internet at broadband speeds, without needing to be plugged into a phone point.

Provided that a user has a wirelessly-enabled device such as a laptop, phone or personal digital assistant (PDA), they can get online at one of their Wi-Fi providers’ hotspots. There are many thousands of hotspots around the world at convenient locations such as hotels, cafés, railway stations, and airports.

7] Secure your data on the move. The security precautions required to protect mobile data are similar to those required to protect the data being accessed by employees based in the office.

It is advisable to run devices on a platform with remote device management security features that allow administrators to wipe or lock on-device data, verify passwords, and enforce policies to multiple devices simultaneously – which means device administrators can easily secure company data if the device is lost or stolen.

8] Streamline administration costs. Services are available that allow companies to separate business and personal mobile calls.

By allowing employees to manage their own call lists and integrating the system into the monthly payroll system, small businesses can: streamline administration costs, tackle the problem of personal call expenditure, and allow employees to enjoy the convenience of a single phone for work and personal calls.

9] Take control of your costs. Research shows that cost is the biggest worry as far as future mobile internet services are concerned. 53 per cent of all disadvantages cited by those questioned in a recent study were cost-related.

10] It’s the advice and ongoing support of a supplier that will play a leading role in ensuring you get the most out of mobile technologies. A report by the Business Performance Management Forum makes this point even more forcefully: 71 per cent of respondents said the percentage of remote workers was increasing in their organizations.

If you want a helping hand identifying your mobile needs, try our mobility matters calculator at http://www.mobility-costs.co.uk/, and find out if your organisation is ‘massively mobile’ or ‘seriously static’…

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By BT Business  on   Jul 07,2008

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Keywords

mobile technology    data protection    phone bills   

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