Fear of saving

One surprisingly common reason that companies don’t use WEMaaS to cut their phone bills has nothing to do with calling plans or cost calculations. It has to do with basic human psychology.

Many telecom managers are simply embarrassed to publicly admit that they’ve been spending way too much money on wireless every month.

On one hand, this embarrassment is understandable. Telecom managers are experienced professionals who take legitimate pride in how well they do their jobs. If they suddenly have to admit to their CFO that they’ve been spending thousands of dollars a month more than they had to, it is possible that their competency may be momentarily questioned. And no one likes that.

On the other hand, this embarrassment is problematic—because it can keep telecom managers from saving their companies substantial sums of money.

I hate when companies overspend on telecom, so I’m going to offer a few suggestions to any of you who may be hesitating to pursue big savings on your wireless bills because you think it may wind up making you look bad in retrospect:

1. Blame it on the carriers. Carriers purposefully maintain a degree of opacity in their rates and invoice presentation. The reason you’ve overspent in the past isn’t that you’re incompetent. It’s that the carriers have been so unhelpful.

2. Credit breakthrough technology. The reason you’re able to reap big savings now isn’t that you finally decided to do your job right. It’s that there has been a breakthrough in WEMaaS. It’s not your fault that software capable of quickly and automatically pinpointing opportunities for savings in today’s complex corporate wireless bills didn’t become available until 2011.

3. Keep tallying the score. Sure, your CFO may roll his or her eyes when you first announce the savings you’ve discovered. But that’s just a short-term hit. What’s really counts is how much you save your company over the long term. So keep reporting your quarterly and annual savings as you rack them up. That will make any momentary embarrassment a thing of the past.

Companies are spending too much on wireless. So telecom managers have to overcome their fear of savings—and start driving down wireless costs today.