Are voice products simpler?
Great question. Comparing voice solutions can be equally confusing. One carrier may give great per-minute rates but charge high ‘mandatory fees,’ while another carrier waives these same fees entirely. Some carriers even charge account fees just for the privilege of having an account with them, while others have the audacity to charge a sub-account fee for every location in your enterprise. Those really do add up, and frequently don’t even appear on the proposal provided by the carrier. An experienced telecom specialist knows to look for these things. Getting an accurate bottom line cost comparison of multiple providers will make the true cost of services much easier to assess. Seeing the cost for all of the services you need plus any associated fees is much more valuable than just looking at a line rate or usage rate.
Many companies are now looking at converged voice and data services. How does that impact this process?
This can get even more cloudy when you get to integrated solutions: Voice Over IP, dynamic bandwidth allocation, SIP trunking, concurrent call paths, etc. Every carrier has a different twist on their offer. Comparing the features of these different products across the carriers is time-consuming, but absolutely necessary to determine what carrier/product best suits your needs.
How can partnering with a trusted adviser help companies make the right decision for their specific telecom needs?
Partnering with a telecom specialist introduces an adviser who is able to study your existing system and analyze your present and future needs, and then say, ‘Here are the products that fit your needs, here are the ones that are better or worse and the pricing associated with those.’
It’s a huge advantage to do that as part of a single process with one point of contact and one set of pricing comparisons, as opposed to your company doing the research on its own. You must meet with multiple carriers, get multiple quotes for pricing, and it’s probably still not an ‘apples to apples’ comparison.
When you have a single person handling that for you, getting pricing from everyone and putting it into a format that is ‘apples to apples,’ you have a real basis for comparison on the carrier, the product and the price. Then, you have a better, fuller understanding of how products work and how they are priced before you make a decision.
Ginger Smith is a business market manager with Simplify Inc. Reach her at (972) 393-5322 or [email protected].
