Communication is the lifeline of any organisation especially now that businesses are spread across various locations and geographies. Companies spend a considerable amount of time and effort to establish communication systems. In this context, streamlining communication pays big time.

 A medley of compelling communication modes (instant messenger, e-mail, fax, SMS, phone) juxtaposed against multiple technologies necessitates streamlined communication. Use of the most inexpensive technology for a particular kind of communication by employees can ensure that communication doesn’t weigh heavy on the business budget. Routing voice communication on the internet via Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) instead of cell phones or landlines can, for instance, as much as halve communication costs. With global market intelligence company, SIS International Research, finding that communication barriers and latencies could be costing mid-market companies in eight countries (including India) up to 40 per cent of their productive time, streamlining communication is an effective way to get messages across faster and save employee time for more profitable activities.

Using suitable technologies, network service providers and devices, and adopting best practices can cap your communication costs with no loss of talk time or call quality. Read on to get wise and choose right.

Use Appropriate Technologies

Avail cheaper telephony: Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solutions can drastically trim telephone bills with no loss of call quality. VoIP-based popular tools such as Skype, Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger enable free video conferencing, provided both the caller and the called party have the application installed on their respective computers. Skype also facilitates calls from a computer to a phone anywhere in the world, albeit for a fee. TringMe, an Indian innovation, is easier to use. It works directly from the browser (unlike Skype, sans an installed application) and offers internet-based telephony for less than half the price of Skype.

Use prepaid local SIM and phone cards: Local prepaid SIM cards come in handy for frequent visits to a certain state or country. For instance, while Vtechsquad CEO Manish Sharma is based in the company’s back office in Gurgaon, he frequently visits business clients in the US. According to him, “In one visit, I spend $50 on an AT&T Go prepaid card (which includes data services) and another $50 on usage—for an average daily usage of about 60 minutes over 10 days.” Sharma feels that local SIM cards work out cheaper than low-cost international SIM cards like the Matrix from India.

Matrix SIM cards, however, have an edge over local SIM cards bought overseas—the Matrix international number allotted prior to departure can be circulated to colleagues. Matrix cards also make it cheaper for colleagues and clients calling from back home to reach the travelling executive. Both these options allow free incoming calls, but share a common drawback—calls must be made to a different number from the one in regular use.

Matrix customer Amit Garg, director, AKG Group of Companies, attests to saving over 85 per cent of the typical international roaming charges. Companies like Matrix offer smartphone data packs or country-specific data cards to access the net at a fraction of the cost of international data roaming charges.

Fax over the internet: Faxing over the internet saves paper and ink costs associated with traditional fax machines. Since faxes are sent and received over the internet via e-mail, fax documents can be easily stored on a computer. The growing popularity of smartphones ensures access to faxes even while travelling. “We communicate with customers, prospects and vendors over the internet—be it faxes or call centre communication,” shares Sharma.

Adopt Best Practices

Get the best deal: As a rule of thumb, calls made from cell phones are the most expensive. Still, the variety of plans offered and intense competition between service providers makes it worthwhile to shop around for an appropriate mobile plan. Freebies like unlimited night or weekend usage are better suited for personal plans. Business users gain more from free daytime local or long-distance minutes, or a combination of these. Negotiations can help strike a favourable landline deal as well. “Reliance provided 60 free instruments for 60 office landlines and we get 300 free minutes per line every month, which can be grossed across the total number of lines. We pay about `16,000 towards monthly rentals and usage,” shares R Ramkumar, director, Spices, AB Mauri India Pvt. Ltd.

An SIS International Research study shows that more than half of the employees of small and medium-sized businesses travel outside the office, roam inside the office, or work from home often. Such mobile workers would benefit from the Closed User Group rental plans that give subscribers unlimited talk time with each other.

To optimise the use of good telephony deals, install a telephone exchange with the least cost routing feature. Long distance and local calls can be routed over the cheapest network to reduce outgoing office call charges.

As a rule of thumb, calls made from cell phones are the most expensive."

Use a data condenser: Get more out of competitively-priced international data packages with mobile tools that condense downloaded data. Onavo.com offers an iPhone app that compresses users’ web, e-mail and application data to extend data plans by up to five times and monitor data usage. Opera offers free data compression for internet surfing (but not for downloads or videos). Download the mobile browser Opera Mini, which works on popular Androids, BlackBerrys and iPhone models to get as much as up to 500 MB surfing on a 50 MB data plan. Type m.opera.com into the phone’s browser, or download it from Apple’s App Store, the Android Market or Nokia’s Ovi store.

SMS for free: Using free tools can eliminate the cost of texting altogether. Popular sites such as way2sms.com, 160by2.com and fullonsms.com facilitate sending free SMSs from a computer to a mobile number in India. A few cellular providers also offer free email to SMS gateways for users to send simple text e-mails to mobiles for free. Users need to know the recipient number and its provider to start e-mail texting to a mobile phone. For instance, a message can be sent to a Tamil Nadu Aircel number on this ID: number@airsms.com. The reference for Chennai Airtel is 919840number@airtelchennai.com, for Delhi Airtel it is 919810number@airtelmail.com, for Orange numbers it is number@orangemail.co.in, for Idea Cellular it is number@ideacellular.net.

Run Cheaper Marketing Campaigns

The printing and despatch of marketing collaterals such as sales flyers usually account for a significant chunk of communication costs. “E-mail marketing campaigns can completely eliminate these costs. We use both e-mail and SMS to communicate with our members,” says Dinesh Agarwal, founder and CEO, IndiaMART.com. Cheaper email-based marketing campaigns can become more intense because announcements can be sent more often. “Apart from the cost advantage, online media is a much easier way to reach a customer base. We use it for customer acquisition as well as customer service marketing,” adds Sharma.

IndiaMART also creates digital variants of traditional marketing collateral, online video tours, etc for its customers. The idea is to leverage the cost-savings from internet-based communications. Novices can tap e-mail marketing tools offering predesigned templates that can be customised to suit business needs (see resources). These tools help maintain customer contacts and incorporate useful reporting options to boot.

Newer technologies are fast becoming an integral cog in the way businesses communicate. Adopt these today and see your profits soar.

Avail Inexpensive Data

Downloads during Travel: Receiving an e-mail with a 5 megapixel photo on roaming would require a mobile to download about 2 MB of data. That’s a lot for one measly photo, all the more reason to avail of inexpensive data connectivity when you travel.

Since most business people can’t restrict data downloads only to occasions where free WiFi is available, consider renting a portable wireless device. CellularAbroad.com offers the National Geographic International MiFi, portable Wi-Fi covering over 100 countries as well as the single-country MiFi. The latter offers unlimited data rates as low as $12 a day for a fortnight’s use in countries like Australia, China and Italy.

Tep Wireless (UK) offers a pocket-sized Wi-Fi device servicing up to five devices simultaneously in 16 European countries. Rates begin at $15 a day for three days (longer durations get cheaper) and include shipping both ways.

Adopt a few best practices as well:
a) Sign up for automated alerts to know when roaming charges exceed a certain threshold.
b) Set e-mails to download only text and turn off app pushes.
c) Set your phone’s usage tracker to zero to monitor data usage.
d) Check into business hotels offering cheap VoIP telephony and free in-room WiFi as a standard feature.

Unifying Multiple Technologies: Popular communication technologies nowadays include landline phones, mobiles, internet-enabled videoconferencing, instant messaging, etc. This proliferation of technologies creates multiple points of presence for each employee, sometimes posing a barrier to effective communication. Unification is the key to manage these multiple points of presence, intelligently integrating communication-enabling gadgets to allow cross-device calls, for instance, making calls from an instant messenger to a mobile device.

Readiness: It should allow users to get started right away. That way, businesses can quickly leverage new services without any additional investments.

Customisable: Call, conferencing and messaging facilities should be easily customisable to the enterprise’s needs.

Compatibility: The unification platform’s communication capabilities should be integrated with technologies the enterprise has already deployed.