Jola offers a communications audit service that is free to SMEs below a certain size. In the last audit we conducted we calculated that calls costing our customer £300 per month were actually costing their supplier around £10 per month.
The problem is one of perspective. The actual cost of calls has reduced by a staggering amount since BTs monopoly was broken in 1984. In those days it was not uncommon for a foreign exchange broker to be spending £2m a month on international calls. The same phone calls today would only cost hundreds of pounds a month. A 50-employee company with a phone bill of £500 might think they are getting a good deal until they find out just how much they could be paying.
Of course that’s not to say that every telecommunications company is making super-profits. Many will cross-subsidise services. For example they may offer free telephone lines or a cheap phone system if a company commits their call spend to them. The key is to know exactly how much they could be paying for each element – and then negotiate.
