The complete do-it-yourself telecom audit

Anyone can successfully perform a telecom audit. If you are already familiar with your own services and willing to spend a couple hours a month reviewing your bills, you can trim your telecom costs by hundreds or thousands of dollars each month. I will explain a simple step-by-step method for performing a complete audit of all your telecom services. Many professional telecom consultants and bill auditors use this same approach.

Numerous phone bill auditing firms have sprung up in the last 10 years. These firms provide a valuable service for businesses that lack the time and expertise to audit their own phone bills. These consultants are either paid an hourly rate or a percentage of the savings and refunds that they generate. They prefer to work with customers whose monthly phone bills total $5,000 to $50,000. Smaller companies keep a close eye on their expenses, and larger corporations have a full-time telecom staff that manages the services each month. When customers keep their phone bills clean, there is less opportunity for the consultant. But no matter what size your company, you need a strategy for controlling and minimizing your telecom expenses.

The audit method explained is a comprehensive system to manage all of your telecom expenses. This system is scalable. You may not have the time to perform a complete audit; you may only be concerned about one of your services. In that case, you can use this book as a reference tool and selectively attack one telecom service at a time. But if you have time and follow this plan, you will know exactly what services your organization uses, as well as the exact cost for those services. You will then be able to cut your costs by thousands of dollars.