Why 85% of businesses are on the wrong mobile tariff
Whilst the media is awash with stories about consumers paying too much for their energy supply, car insurance, broadband and the like, it’s also true that most businesses are not being served adequately across many of their core service providers.
Whether that’s IT contracts, insurance, mobile tariff, accounting or office supplies, it’s true to say that many of your providers are not always presenting you with the best deal or all the available options.
It’s a daunting task reviewing service contracts, often involving many separate negotiations, quote comparisons and going back and forth playing different providers off against the other. All this takes time, as all providers send quotes in different ways, often structuring their contracts differently making it harder to make an accurate comparison.
The success of all the online comparison sites in the consumer space indicate that people don’t like to feel they’re being mis-sold a more expensive, unsuitable product, but often people just accept what they’re offered in their renewal proposal because it’s too much hassle and takes too long to go and make the comparison. I know personally, there have been times I’ve just accepted my car insurance renewal because I can’t face filling out all those online forms. If only I had a PA to do it all for me and show me the results!
Making comparisons easier and less time-consuming
We believe that business providers should be there to increase efficiencies, enhance productivity and overall provide confidence that they have the business’s best interests at heart. More often than not in highly competitive areas such as telecoms, energy and IT, it’s too complicated to put the effort into a full review and competitive tender, and there’s no obvious place to go that will do an independent market analysis. Providers rely on this to maintain profit margins.
We have introduced a new service to businesses in the last 12 months where we invite them to share their current mobile bills for 3 months of typical usage and we then compare their current tariff against all available tariffs across all the UK networks. The piece of software we use has been developed by an independent third party that looks at a business mobile bill, analyses it line by line to see what type of calls the business is making on which numbers, identifying high out of minute or data bundle spend or any inactive users in order to show which tariff would best fit their needs.
As the only national business mobile provider with all the UK networks we’re here to make sure businesses are on the best value tariff which is why we’ve invested in this software solution to provide a truly impartial overview. In just 6 months of carrying out these reports, the results show us that 85% of businesses are typically paying 25% too much for their business mobile contract. We’re pretty sure most business owners and finance directors would be interested if they could cut costs by 25%. In some cases we’ve come across businesses we’ve managed to cut mobile expenditure by 80%.
What causes so many businesses to be on the wrong mobile tariff?
The situation often occurs when businesses choose to get their mobile deal direct from the network, thinking that they are going to get the best price by cutting out the middle man. This isn’t always the case. For many smaller businesses, they often wouldn’t get offered the bespoke pricing options an independent 3rd party could negotiate. The networks don’t have the resource to manage all the UK businesses directly which is why they partner with independent third parties such as ourselves and other smaller specialists who can provide the level of service these businesses need.
Also a common perception is that by going for the cheapest line rental deal you will keep costs down, when in actual fact this can often result in the business having inadequate bundled allowances resulting in high out of bundle charges which make their actual monthly spend a whole lot higher than they were budgeting for. A good third party provider will keep an eye on your spend and if you are continually going over your allowance they’ll suggest another review to see what’s influenced the change in behaviour. It may be that the business has had a period of increased international travel, or someone has started working remotely and uses their mobile for most of their calls now whereas before they were on a landline. There could be many different scenarios but a good mobile provider will look at all these, suggest a tariff change or adding some additional bundles to make the costs more controllable and consistent.
Recommendations
We would always recommend that you go to a third party, whether that’s us or someone else, as they’ll be able to give you a wider view of the total market and hopefully an unbiased view of which network and tariff is right for you. Think of it a bit like using a broker. Also in today’s world of increased flexible working agreements, mobile data consumption, the need to be “always on” and to react quickly to the demands of customers’ mobile connectivity is a non-negotiable in today’s world. Networks know this and will try to put you off moving your business away from them for fear of loss of connectivity. That’s another subject entirely, and again a good third party provider will manage your switch so you get a seamless transfer of service, ensuring that your business stays connected.
So, if any of this has struck a chord with you why not take us up on our free tariff analysis report? It will clearly show you which tariff is best on every network so you can make an informed choice, and because it’s run from an independent software platform with the latest tariff data direct from the networks you can rest assured it’s honest and auditable. Simply send us up to 3 months of you current mobile bills and we’ll send you your free report. After that it’s entirely up to you what you do with the information.
