08 Apr 2021
Increasing mobility costs are a constant challenge for Australian organisations. But not all cost increases are bad news.
Cost increases can sometimes be good news
Rising costs are a natural consequence of digital transformation, corporate growth and of the new ways we utilise mobility in our business environment.
Some of the positive reasons that mobility costs increase include:
1. Growth in the number of devices
Australian enterprises estimate that the number of connected devices within their organisations will increase five-times by 2024, according to research conducted by Telsyte. Already, the surge to remote working has seen companies providing greater numbers of employees with mobile devices to access the corporate network. This is likely to continue as many large corporates - like Telstra and Westpac - look to bring their contact centre workers onshore to operate as a distributed Australian-based workforce.
2. Expanding business use cases
Mobility use cases are swiftly expanding. There is IoT and edge computing, instant 'pop-up' connectivity and, of course, remote working. The growth in business use cases equals more devices of various types distributed among the workforce or throughout the corporate environment. More devices equals increased costs in hardware, management and consumption. With the imminent arrival of 5G, mobility use cases are poised to accelerate.
3. Digital transformation
The most obvious digital transformation for many Australian organisations in the past year has been the shift to enable remote working. The WFH revolution has enabled organisations to continue operating and surviving, but it has also increased the cost of communications and mobile connectivity.
When rising costs do need your attention
If your organisation is experiencing any of the following, it would be sensible to review your telecom expense management - also known as TEMs.
1. Skyrocketing data consumption
It is a fact of life that data consumption will continue to grow year on year. But if your organisation's data usage is sky-rocketing, it would pay to review the usage analytics. Even though carriers are including more data in plans and introducing unlimited or fair play options, it is a fact that data charges remain a major source of corporate bill shock, and take constant management from Australian organisations.
The main reasons for unexpected charges are
- excess data use or exceeding the shared data pool allowance. This is often impacted by employees accessing data for personal use e.g. viewing YouTube or downloading entertainment content.
- accessing unauthorised data - outside of plan allowance boundaries. This can include gambling and adult content.
2. Lack of visibility of devices and spend
Costs will inevitably increase if no one is watching. Lack of visibility always enables expenditure - both deliberate and consequential.
In organisations where line managers and employees have been given visibility of their monthly mobile bill, cost savings of 2-5 percent are typical.
This is due to employees discontinuing unauthorised use e.g. streaming movies or gaming, premium MMS or IDD calls; and also because employees become de-facto auditors by pointing out errors they observe on their individual bills.
3. Insufficient cost control
Insufficient cost control is often a by-product of not having enough visibility of where costs are being incurred or where devices are. Examples of insufficient cost controls include
- not having processes in place to audit expenses that are being incurred
- not reviewing or acting on data that tracks expenditure and flags spikes, anomalies, or unauthorised use
- not having policies in place that provide guidance about behaviours which incur unauthorised expense
- not having policies in place that mitigate risk of asset turnover or loss
Even when policies and procedures are in place, if they are not enforced, they will not be worth the paper they are written on.
4. Employee Behaviour
Most employees have no intention of abusing or mis-using their corporate devices. However, employees are our biggest threat vector when it comes to security, longevity, and durability of mobile devices. Their usage behaviours also have considerable potential for increased expenditure.
How to manage rising costs with TEMS
A Telecom Expense Management - TEMS - solution will shine a light on all expenses and provide business intelligence analytics that highlight cost savings opportunities.
Savings arising from TEMS activities will typically measure between 2-10% of corporate monthly expenditure. And this is a conservative estimate.
A Gartner White Paper (June 2019) reports that 50% of companies surveyed estimated savings at more than 10% of monthly expenditure.
TEMs solutions will include carrier bill auditing, cost optimisation programs, and provide data for use in policy creation, and carrier negotiations.
MobileCorp has three levels of TEMS solutions including TEMS Pro, which is delivered via a cloud-based SaaS platform developed by Bluewater.
TEMS Pro provides an online procurement and end user support ticketing system which is fulfilled by MobileCorp, as well as providing mobile asset management, end user analytics, billing and usage analysis, and BI reporting.
CASE STUDY: Ingham's - Visibility of expenditure delivers 15% savings across the mobile fleet
About MobileCorp
MobileCorp is a Sydney-based communications technology company. We support enterprise and business by providing managed endpoint and ICT services including mobile device security, mobile device management, expense management, managed IT, and managed connectivity solutions. Contact Us
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