Have you reviewed your business phones recently? A phone review should cover not only cost reductions, where possible, but also communication improvements. Ensuring that your mobile phones and landlines work together to provide optimum performance and smooth lines of communication.

Too many companies fail to review their arrangements and renew their contracts without giving consideration to how much they might save by looking at alternative ways of organising their business phones.

In fact savings of several thousands of pounds are possible for medium to large users. This is money that should not be wasted, particularly in the current economic climate. No business should be paying over the odds for their telecoms.

Some of the areas to look at with a review include:

• Business mobile tariff
• Mobile network
• Changes of usage (more/less mins, sms, data)
• New mobile handsets
• No of lines/extensions
• Line rental costs
• Landline hardware (system/handsets)
• Cost per minute of most used destinations
• IT integration

By ensuring that your business communications are on the optimum plan you should not only save money on your basic monthly costs but should also benefit from increased new business and business retention by improving your communications both internally and externally.

You have nothing to lose with a business phone review from Business Mobile World. They are free of charge and take little time out of your business. After a quick fact find we can put together a proposal showing you where improvements and savings can be made.

According to a recent study only 24% of mobile phone users in the UK access the internet via their handset. There are several reasons cited for this low figure:

• Actual cost of data when known
• Unknown costs related to downloads and fear of a big bill
• Difficulty in viewing websites on small screens
• Slow download speeds and unwieldy navigation

Many of these problems can be overcome, particularly if you are looking for a new handset. If the internet is going to be a factor in your choice of mobile phone you will likely want as big a screen as possible. This means a touchscreen or slidephone are the best options.

A QWERTY keyboard enables you to email better and also to type long URLs into your browser getting to the website you need faster. A 3G enabled phone is a must and look out for whether it supports standard web programming such as java and flash. Wi-fi phones keep your costs down if you have a wireless access point.

A smartphone enables you to download different web browsers and applications to suit your taste and preference.

When looking at tariffs there are some different options for data usage. These include:

• Pay as you go for amount downloaded
• Include a data usage amount within your tariff (eg. 500MB)
• Pay per day

Which one works out best for you depends upon how often you are likely to access the internet/email. For instance if the daily access charge is 30p and you are likely to use it half a dozen times per month it works out better to pay daily than paying £5 for inclusive data within your tariff.

Beware the high costs of downloading data on a pay as you go basis. It is easy to run up a sizeable bill if you surf the internet without a special data plan of some sort. Also note that your data plan applies only in the UK. When overseas the cost of data usage is usually enormous.