Top Advice For Mobile Communications Strategy
Author: Nick Pegley


To synch your business and communication goals, you need an
overall plan which outlines a strategy and schedule of actions.
To change your mobile phone services over from a big source of
expense to a true enabling force of the business takes a
comprehensive road map which leads to implementation. The
strategy and map both show how these services can complement the
overall strategy for business communications and technology.
This includes the goals for using a particular technology. The
road map is part of overall business strategy. It needs to
integrate devices used, terms of current contracts, business
process, and system function to become truly relevant and
achievable.

The cost of a single unit of long-distance calling keeps
dropping. Now that cell phone range is nearly everywhere, and
most plans have the long-distance covered, 'land line' phone use
keeps falling. This fall in cost per unit keeps true for phone
lines, Internet connections, and even data circuits. But - the
overall cost of mobile phone use in continually increasing.

The best way to get a strategy and road map together is to
create profiles for all mobile device users at the company. It's
not the same as a person's job description. It should represent
the different roles and responsibilities which the person is
responsible for. Also, it should describe both the present and
the future, with descriptions of:

- overall mobile needs

- type of device carried

- uses required by role/responsibility

- voice and data usage levels

- contracts held and service agreements

Once these profiles are created, you can run an analysis to
show you what steps to take. Why not change the plan of a worker
who has unlimited calling but never talks on the phone,
preferring email instead? These changes, when multiplied across
an entire organization, can really add up to big time cost
savings. Now that you've got the plan rolling, it needs constant
maintenance, and the policy you've created now needs to be
realized. Plenty of businesses simply don't have the resources
to handle this task. Mobile services work takes time and strains
other overworked staff, including Internet Technology (IT).

If you find yourself in this situation, perhaps you can
outsource to another third party who works between you and the
many phone service providers. If your business is larger, you
can use a custom mobile services tool for managing expenses
in-house. You can use internal resources to synch with the
company procedure in the map. This method is preferable for
businesses with five thousand devices or more to manage.

There are plenty of mobile service options; too many, in fact.
It can be tough to find the right mobility strategy for your
business. Businesses of all sizes need to keep tabs of the costs
and hours needed to create and maintain a mobile fleet, and draw
up the road map for long-term management success. Doing nothing
may just be a way of letting your service costs grow and grow
without contributing to the success of the business.


About The Author: Nick Pegley is Vice President of Marketing at
All Covered. See: http://www.allcovered.com for more info.