3 Reasons to Take a Closer Look at your Mobility Spend in 2017

The stats are in, and the growth of mobile devices is on an overwhelming trajectory. This explosion of devices makes it even more critical to closely evaluate your corporate mobility spend. Here are three good reasons why:

  1. Telecom Services are the biggest IT Expense:
    Gartner’s forecast for worldwide IT spending still identifies telecom services as the largest part of the global IT budget in the coming year, accounting for 43% of worldwide technology spending. That’s 50% larger than IT services, twice the spending on devices (which includes mobile phones and tablets), over 4 times the money for enterprise software, and over 10 times the spending on data centers. As the largest slice of the projected global IT budget pie, telecom – and by extension, mobile telecom – is the first, best place to look for cost reductions and efficiencies
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  3. Mobile data will be the largest segment of Telecom Spend:
    Within that largest part of the global IT budget, the largest segment will be mobile data,according to IDC. At a projected $536 billion in 2015, not only will it account for nearly one-third of spending on telecom services — that’s 14% of the global IT budget — it’s also the fastest-growing part, increasing 13% year over year. As the biggest chunk of the biggest IT expense, you need to need to examine and optimize your business’ mobile data use.
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  5. The mobile carriers are increasingly relying on mobile data for their revenue:
    Before the era of the smartphone, mobile phones were used primarily for voice calls. Voice minutes were a precious metered resource and data, then largely used for texting, was unlimited. Today, thanks to smartphones, their apps, and services, data is now the valued product, while voice minutes and text are unlimited. US wireless carriers’ revenue has been increasingly coming from data, and as of late 2013, it accounts more than half of their ARPU (average revenue per user). This trend is expected to continue; Gartner predict that voice ARPU will fall 10% every year through 2018. As carriers adjust their business models to profit off the new data-centric mobile world, your business should also make corresponding adjustments to its wireless plans and spending.

Mobile is a big deal in the telecom world, and it’s also your biggest opportunity to find savings opportunities. From managing, right-sizing, and optimizing for the ever-changing plans offered by the carriers, to fixing their billing errors and under- or non-delivered services, to disconnecting and decommissioning zero-use devices, a good look at your mobile spending (followed by taking the right corrective steps) can reduce your costs by up to 20%. If you’d like to see how you can tame the biggest IT expense, talk to us about taking our platform for a test drive!