5 Ways to Reduce Your Companies' Cellular Bill

5 Ways to Reduce the Company's Cell Bill

Today's employees as well as execs use cell phones for business - PDAs, Blackberrys, and Smart Phones - they are a business necessity. But what happens when that necessary cell phone usage gets out of hand? How can a company pull in the reins and lower costs?

Here is a known fact: If employees are carrying company owned devices, whether meant to increase productivity or not, are more likely to drain the company's monies as well as actually decreasing production!

One Provider, One Plan

One way to reduce costs is to have one provider for all cellular devices issued by the company, whether the employee is purchasing their own with expense accounts, or purchased for a group of employees. Taking back control by one specific carrier brings added perks like volume discounts.

Necessity or Desire?

Take a look at who really needs that Blackberry. Analyze employees with big ticket items as to how much they actually NEED that expensive Smart Phone. For instance, someone who works all day in an office on a PC has little use for a Blackberry - better a treadmill! If an employee doesn't travel as part of their job - they don't need high-end phones.

Set a Limit

Allow employees a set amount of acceptable minutes per month based on job type. If this limit is exceeded over the set period of time, it would be deducted from the paycheck. This option won't do much for your "likeability factor" but many business have instituted this idea with much success. You should try pairing this idea with the next - it will make you more likeable!

Raise the Morale

To raise your employees' morale after initiating the above idea, create a reward program or contest that earns the winner money back or extra minutes. Whoever has the LEAST monthly usage would earn for example, a percentage of the money saved that month. You would need to base this on job type again, so the traveling employees aren't competing with the in-house execs.

The employees will feel they are contributing to the financial health of the company at the same time competing for a reward. How hard would that be to sell to employees?

Adjust Existing Devices

Finally existing cellular devices can be adjusted to disable certain features that you don't want your employees to use on company time. For instance, the camera - disable or purchase phone without cameras. Expandable memory is another good example which can be disabled fairly easily. Email servers can be changed, blocked ...To put it another way, if you don't want your employees to use it, it is up to you to make sure they don't.