Businesses are always looking for ways to maximize their technology budgets and minimize waste in the organization. Here are ten ways businesses can avoid overspending on their voice and data technology services:
1. Regularly Review Plans and Usage: Conduct regular audits of your voice and data plans and review your invoices to ensure they align with your actual usage needs. Adjust plans accordingly to avoid paying for unused services. Contact your City Communications representative to help make changes or dispute bill charges. 2. Negotiate with Providers: Regularly negotiate with your service providers for better rates or discounts, especially if you've been a loyal customer or can leverage competitive offers from other providers. We typically do this with about 6 months left on your contract which is also a good time to make changes if necessary too. 3. Implement Usage Controls: Some services allow you set limits on voice and data usage (if they are measured) and/or allow you to setup automatic notifications as various thresholds are met. We can help you set those up if requested to avoid unintentional overages. 4. Utilize Voice Over IP (VoIP): If you aren't using it already, consider using VoIP services, which can often be more cost-effective than traditional phone service. We have a wide range of providers to fit any needs and will help you transition to VoIP. 5. Leverage Cloud Services: Use cloud-based solutions for voice and data services, as they often offer more flexibility and scalability at a lower cost. 6. Consolidate Services: Sometimes bundling voice and data services with fewer providers will allow you to take advantage of discounts and simplify billing. Contact your City Communications rep to review your invoices and services to see if there might be some savings in bundling. 7. Use and Agent/Consultant: Utilize a telecom agent or consultant can be a great way to save time, save money, and help to ensure your services are installed on-time and accurately. 8. Monitor and Manage Usage: Regularly monitor and manage your voice and data usage to identify and address any inefficiencies or areas for improvement. Network monitoring tools can also help you to identify specific devices and/or users that may be causing issues in your business. 9. Consider Outsourcing: Outsourcing your voice and data technology needs to a managed service provider can often be more cost-effective than maintaining in-house systems. We have a wide range of providers that we can help you evaluate for specific needs. 10. Stay Informed About Industry Trends: Stay up-to-date with industry trends and advancements in voice and data technology to identify opportunities for cost savings and efficiency improvements. We are constantly getting updates on new products, services, and solutions and are happy to share our knowledge and experiences with you. CIOs often look for specific qualities and outcomes when working with a technology agent. Here are the top five things that we heard from some of the CIOs we work with:
City Communications has been doing this and more since 2001. By providing these key elements, we can help CIOs make informed decisions that meet the organization's technology needs while optimizing costs and efficiency. New Jobs Opening SoonIt's a new year, and we have new opportunities opening up on our team. Click the button below to view and apply for any of the exciting positions we have available.
If you have telecom contracts expiring in the next 6 months, we should talk. Typically telecom contracts are between one and three years in length, with some extending out to the five-year mark. Most of them either auto-renew for a new term at the same price, or they roll over to higher month-to-month rates. Typically, we recommend having a conversation with us about the services, what changes you might need, and what pricing is available. Over the years, we have saved a ton of money for our customers by taking some time on the front-end to review those options.
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Just fill out the form below. Learn about better options for mobile phone and data plan business customers with over 25 devices.6/25/2020
With recent mergers and acquisitions, and recent nationwide outages, some of our customers have asked about alternatives in the marketplace. Thankfully, we do have some options that we can help you evaluate.
Use Different Mobile Networks You don't need to have all of your users and devices on just one network (like AT&T, Verizon, Sprint/T-mobile, etc). Now you can blend your users across which ever network is the best for their location. One Bill Even though you have users on different networks, you can still receive a single bill for all of your devices and services. Contract Buy Outs If you want to make a change, but have some time left on your existing agreement, often times we can find an option that provides credits to off-set your remaining contract liability and effectively buy you out of your contract. Easy Device Support and Upgrades We have options that provide an easy-to-use web portal to manage your account and also an account manager to assist with equipment replacements, upgrades, and more. Phones, Laptops, and Wireless Internet Backup Devices We have options for anything and everything that connects to or uses a mobile network. Let us help you find a solution that is easy to setup, easy to use, and easy to manage...that fits within your budget. Contact us today for a No-Cost, No-Obligation review of your options.
During the Covid-19 quarantine, businesses have had to adapt to deal with a global shut down. The interruption to business-as-usual is more challenging than we have ever seen.
As small-business owners ourselves, we are inspired and awed by those businesses that have found ways to survive, and even thrive, under today's challenges. We want to highlight some of the companies who are doing an exceptional job of balancing the demands of social distancing, work-from-home requirements, and protecting customers, and employees, while keeping people employed. It goes without saying that the people working in organizations playing the essential roles in society - hospitals, grocery stores, food supply, transit, social services, and others - are heroes in a separate category. For this nomination, let's focus on the other organizations that aren't required to be open, but continue to operate and provide service to their customers, and jobs for their employees. They too deserve some recognition for showing the American spirit of ingenuity and adaptability. If you know of a company that would make an excellent example of adapting during this situation, please nominate them below. We will highlight the best nominations and send each a special award for leading by example. We will then randomly select 3 participants who submitted nominations and send them a special "thank you" as well. Ok, we might be overstating it a bit, but given the current and future need for people and businesses to operate from home, communications technology is more critical than ever. The right phone system solution (or Internet access or network management service, etc.) can help with social distancing and allow us to be productive. In the early stages of the quarantine, there was a rush by businesses to adapt their communications technology to remote work as fast as possible. By now, we're all pretty familiar with how to use services like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Skype, and Google Hangouts. You have also probably figured out a way to make and receive business calls at home, either using mobile or hosted phone platforms. Now, that the dust has settled and remote work is becoming the new normal, it's time to take a deeper look at the systems and processes you have in place and make sure your solutions can work for the long term. Things like scalability, security, flexibility, and overall cost, need to be considered and City Communications can help. With access to over 150 providers nationwide and nearly 20 years of experience, we are uniquely suited to help businesses of all sizes. It is free, and there is no obligation to get started. 1. Fill out a Technology Assessment 2. Call us at (602) 266-3100 Either way, we will be happy to talk with you about your current situation, as well as your future plans for the business. Since 2001, we have been in the business of helping organizations with their technology needs. Most of our new customers come from referrals from customers, word-of-mouth, or referrals from our Independent Business Partners (IBPs). Typically, our IBPs are companies or individuals in related industries with customers who use the products and services we sell like: hosted phones, internet connections, SD-WAN, contact center, etc. Over the past five years, that group has expanded to include other companies or people that are not directly involved in technology, but instead have customers who might need help with one of the following:
Our partners refer those customer over to us. We work closely with the customer and if they end up working with any of our 150 solutions providers, then the partner is paid a commission. Partners don't need to be an expert in what we do, but instead need to have relationships and the willingness to ask those people if they need help. This formalized referral program empowers our partners with supplementary monthly income while providing outstanding results for their customers. We are currently accepting applications for a handful of new partners across the country. If you are interested, get started today by completing a no-obligation Partner Application below. We look forward to helping you and your customers with all of their technology needs!
If you lived on an island that had only one bridge that connected you to the mainland for all of your food, water, and supplies, you would want find backup solutions in the event that the bridge was knocked out of service. You might get a boat, or a plane, but the most stable solution would be a a second bridge that connected you to another island. With SD-WAN and a second internet connection, we are basically doing the same thing.
Five years ago, only large business and enterprise customers had redundant networks and internet connections, because the monthly cost and the equipment and service was way to high for small and medium-sized businesses. Now, all of that has changed, and we recommend that all of our clients consider implementing SD-WAN and a second internet connection regardless of size. SD-WAN makes your business more resilient With the rise of Office365, Google G Suite, and everything other cloud-based services you're using in your business, it is more important than ever to have have strong and reliable connections. SD-WAN allows you to have multiple Internet connections, ideally from two different providers, managed by modern SD-WAN routers that don't require you to do anything. SD-WAN is the safest, most reliable, redundant, disaster-recovery-enabled Internet-access management scheme for business. We help our customers find solutions that make their business more efficient and/or more resilient to interruptions in business. We with within our client's budgets, which sometimes means we recommend dual, less-expensive broadband Internet connections rather than one expensive connection, or finding savings in other areas to beef up your internet reliability. SD-WAN budgets are within your reach Typically we see SD WAN pricing from a number of providers start around $130/month and business internet connections (cable, DSL, etc) around $100/month. So for under $500/month, you could have redundancy and reliability that will allow your business to operate, even if there is an issue happening with one of the providers. You can self-manage SD-WAN without being an expert One of the neat things about SD WAN is it is pretty much plug and play out of the box. We set it up, you plug in your internet connection(s) and the box does the rest. It will automatically route traffic across the best path, so that you don't have to touch anything. You can be notified when a connection is down (or having issues), so that it can be reported to the carrier, but most likely your users won't be impacted. This is huge for businesses that need to have everything up and working all the time, like medical offices, sales organizations, or...just about every other business that is out there. I have only one small office, why do I need it? If your office uses services on the internet such as hosted phone service, accounting, video conferencing, or any other web service that you need access to throughout the day, then the internet is your lifeline. If that lifeline is cut, you are left calling into customer service and hoping that they aren't having a larger issue that is affecting multiple customers. Because when that happens, customers calling in about problems with their $80/month service do not get the highest priority. It is better to plan redundancy across different carriers and across different types of Internet connections. Should I just buy SD WAN from my phone company? We evaluate the options on a case-by-case basis. In general, we like the idea of having multiple connections from DIFFERENT service providers, using DIVERSE transport connections (such as copper, coax cable, fiber, or wireless). If you have two connections, both coming into your building on the same copper cable and riding in the same conduit, provided by the same carrier, you haven't really bought yourself any redundancy. If you would like to talk about implementing SD-WAN and a second internet connection, or anything else we offer, please schedule a virtual meeting below.
We often get asked to, "send me a one-pager about what you do". Since we do a lot of things within the business communications and IT segments, I decided to put together a quick "menu" of services that will hopefully help you better understand what we can help with. If you need something else, we can probably help you find a solution for that as well. Here are some of the main issues we can help with:
Connectivity
Internet, MPLS, Fiber, Coax, Wireless Business connectivity from over 150 carriers nationwide to provide internet access and to connect locations together.
TEM
Telecom Expense Management Manage all of your spending, contracts, tickets, quote requests, and more for all of your telecom services.
SD Wan
Software Defined Wide Area Network Make the internet better, view and manage what is using up your internet, connect multiple offices, and get notifications and reports on how your connections and network are performing.
Mobile/Wireless
Mobile Phones, Devices, Plans Aggregate your spending across multiple carriers, easily review and manage your usage to help reduce and avoid overage charges.
UCaaS
Unified Communications as a Service Hosted phone systems that easily allows employees to work from home or the office. Low cost, easy to deploy, with tons of features that let you setup your offices however you like and easily connect your employees from anywhere.
CCaaS
Contact Center as a Service Hosted Call Center seats and solutions that allow you have a simple or complex group of agents with the ability to make and/or receive calls as well as use advanced routing technologies such as "bots", "speech analytics", "skills-based routing", and more to maximize productivity and minimize costs.
Misc
We have a wide range of products and services from hundreds of providers across the country and
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