To synch your business and communication goals, you need an overall plan which outlines a strategy and schedule of actions. To change your mobile phone services over from a big source of expense to a true enabling force of the business takes a comprehensive road map which leads to implementation. The strategy and map both show how these services can complement the overall strategy for business communications and technology. This includes the goals for using a particular technology. The road map is part of overall business strategy. It needs to integrate devices used, terms of current contracts, business process, and system function to become truly relevant and achievable.
The cost of a single unit of long distance calling keeps dropping. Now that cell phone range is nearly everywhere, and most plans have the long distance covered, land line phone use keeps falling. This fall in cost per unit keeps true for phone lines, Internet connections, and even data circuits. But the overall cost of mobile phone use in continually increasing.
The best way to get a strategy and road map together is to create profiles for all mobile device users at the company. It s not the same as a person s job description. It should represent the different roles and responsibilities which the person is responsible for. Also, it should describe both the present and the future, with descriptions of:
overall mobile needs
type of device carried
uses required by role/responsibility
voice and data usage levels
contracts held and service agreements
Once these profiles are created, you can run an analysis to show you what steps to take. Why not change the plan of a worker who has unlimited calling but never talks on the phone, preferring email instead? These changes, when multiplied across an entire organization, can really add up to big time cost savings. Now that you ve got the plan rolling, it needs constant maintenance, and the policy you ve created now needs to be realized. Plenty of businesses simply don t have the resources to handle this task. Mobile services work takes time and strains other overworked staff, including Internet Technology (IT).
If you find yourself in this situation, perhaps you can outsource to another third party who works between you and the many phone service providers. If your business is larger, you can use a custom mobile services tool for managing expenses in house. You can use internal resources to synch with the company procedure in the map. This method is preferable for businesses with five thousand devices or more to manage.
There are plenty of mobile service options; too many, in fact. It can be tough to find the right mobility strategy for your business. Businesses of all sizes need to keep tabs of the costs and hours needed to create and maintain a mobile fleet, and draw up the road map for long term management success. Doing nothing may just be a way of letting your service costs grow and grow without contributing to the success of the business.
Nick Pegley is Vice President of Marketing at All Covered. See: http://www.allcovered.com for more info.
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