Nearly all businesses are under severe pressure to cut costs. As leaders, many of us have had to let some of our colleagues go or take pay cuts so that the organisation can live to see the other side of this pandemic.
However, there are opportunities for saving costs that are also smarter from a long term point of view. Network costs is one such area which can help you save while improving productivity.
Here, are some ways in which you can bring down or restructure costs using tools provided by IT networks:
1. Use More Internet
If employees can access business applications using a home broadband connection, then surely there is a case for replacing expensive dedicated network architecture in branches too. Solutions such as Viva Communications' Virtual Leased Lines provide you the security of a managed MPLS at nearly half the cost.
2. Use WFH Smartly
Enterprises invested in fat pipes to connect their offices. With offices unlikely to ever see the same occupancy levels, there is little need for a giga byte enterprise infrastructure. If your VPN deployment brings all WFH traffic calls to the central data centre then you are paying twice of what you should. Smart WFH routes internet traffic directly from the employee home to the cloud and only critical enterprise traffic is sent to central servers.
3. IP based Voice Solutions
The use of collaboration platforms such as MS Teams has resulted in dramatically increasing the cost of international telephone calls. It is more so for IT and ITeS businesses which need to communicate regularly with clients and on-site staff. Consider solutions that integrate collaboration platform with IP telephony and allow your employees and agents to seamlessly operate from home at a fraction of the cost.
4. Move to fully managed Network-as-a-Service
You don't need an SD-WAN to have a centrally controlled virtualised network. You can choose a telco agnostic service provider with a single programmable devices that can achieve all your critical functions while being centrally controlled and managed end-to-end. This will bring down capex spends substantially, reduce maintenance costs and points of failure while also freeing up operating resources. Most importantly, you achieve the benefits of scale, specialisation and outcome related expenditure.
5. Go for Provider Provisioned VPN for WFH
It is not just better compliance, but also lower TCO if you opt for a service that gives you security built into a managed network at your employees' homes. Insights into network performance and management and resulting improved employee productivity is a bonus.
At Axon Networks, we are committed to help enterprises advance their digital initiatives while optimising costs. We would love to hear from you how you are managing your costs while digitally enabling the business.