Here's an example: Carrier service fees account for about 75 percent of frame relay network costs, support fees account for 61 percent of VPN costs, and hardware and maintenance fees account for 83 percent of PBX system costs, according to Meta. If your network expenses follow this pattern, your cost-cutting priorities for 2004 should include negotiating lower frame relay and voice carrier rates, centralizing VPN support and minimizing hardware expenses on any PBX upgrades you have planned.
Of course, it can take some detective work to get a true picture of all your costs. More than 20 percent of remote dial-up access costs stem from hotel charges for outside lines, according to Meta. A major hotel in San Diego charges $13 for a three-hour local call, for example. But IT doesn't always get to see these surcharges--they go straight to accounting by way of employees' expense forms. If that's the case in your organization, why not set a policy that lets employees use hotel broadband services or cellular data services where available? (These services can be less costly and more convenient, too.)
Remember, too, sometimes you have to spend money to save money. If you're still running equipment that was purchased during the first Bush administration, maintenance and support costs may be soaring even as service is declining because most vendors are focused on selling and supporting new gear, not relics. Consider retiring your campus ATM, token ring and CDPD hardware and investing in something more state of the art.
The projects that will get green-lighted for 2004 are those you can justify with concrete costs and ROI figures, not with squishy claims about "increased productivity," "better customer service" and "building for the future."
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