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Managing Conferencing Costs

By
Joe Bjorklund

I was demonstrating our software platform to a telecom consultant yesterday.  We went over all of the different tools that his clients can use to manage their telecom costs.  In the consulting world there is usually a particular type of telecom spend that gets them in the door and starts the relationship with the client.  In this case it was the audio conferencing costs.  The primary goal was to find a lower monthly per minute (more on that later) cost for the customer.  Lower per minute charge = savings.  It’s pretty simple stuff.  We went over the ability to have all conferences tagged with cost centers and G/L codes as well as the fact that it is included in the single master bill. This was all very well received, however, the demonstration took a huge leap forward when I showed him the report that we call “under used conference bridge”.  This report lists EVERY conference call that has 3 or fewer participants on the call.  Many had just 2 participants, otherwise known as a phone call.  These conferences could have been completed by using the customer’s telephone system and not a cost per minute bridge.  Do you think that the conferencing providers would produce such a report?  One more reason that dealing with the carrier, or in this case the conferencing provider is an outdated strategy.  Oh, by the way, our cost per minute was 34% lower than their current solution.