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I have noticed an interest change in behavior lately, and it’s been mostly from my customers.  A number of them have started to place the toll conference line number in their meeting invites (some even first with the title of Preferred).  Could it be that they read the post I made back in December advocating just this type of behavior as an easy way to help save corporate money on conference calls?

I’m more than happy to take the credit. How about a small 1% of the savings commission fee?

By now it should be no surprise to anyone that every business is looking to cut costs.  In an economic recession like the one we are in, even those business that are still doing well are cutting costs as the future is so unknown.  There is one area of cost cutting that is so simple and so close to everyone in a company…and yet most companies don’t really focus on it.

The Conference Call.

With so many remote employees, the conference call line is necessity of modern business.  As a career member of sales teams, I have always had my own personal conference line.  This conference line consists of both a toll free and a toll dial in number.  Most of the time when I get a conference call invite in my inbox, the location is the toll free conference line number.  And most of the time this is costing the company more money that it should.

At a previous company, an analysis was done of our telecom usage.  It was concluded that we were wasting over $100,000 a year on duplicate phone charges from our conference calls alone (and this was a company of less than 500 people).  Every time we would dial the toll free conference call number, we were paying substantially more than if we were to use the toll number.  Add on to that the fact that we were usually dialing that toll free number from a company phone, and we were getting double billed: once for the local phone change and once for the toll free conference line.

By raising the awareness of this situation to the entire company and by adapting user’s behaviors — we all started to include both the toll and toll free conference line number in meeting invites and always dialed the toll number when using a company paid for phone line — the company was able to save a substantial portion of this $100,000 per year phone waste.

Extrapolate this estimated wastefulness up (or down) to the size of your company and see how much money you might be wasting yearly.  Changing your corporate and personal behavior is an easy way to reduce this waste.

A helpful tip for companies of all sizes during these economic times.

Update:  A client of mine brought up an interesting point during a recent discussion on this topic.  His company uses IP Phones internally. With the phones leveraging the exising data network, calls within any location for the company world wide are free.  But, when someone dials a toll-free conference call number, they are routed outside the network and start to incure a phone charge.  This client happens to produce their own conferencing solution, so the costs really start to add up when the toll-free confernce numbers are called since the entire conference system is “free per use” as long as they don’t leave their IP network.

“When all is said and done this business is nothing but a symbol, and when we translate this we find that it means a great many people think well of its products and that a great multitude has faith in the integrity of the people who make the product.In a very short time, the machines that are now so lively will soon become obsolete and the big buildings for all their solidity must some day be replaced.

But a business which symbolizes can live so long as there are human beings alive, for it is not built of such flimsy materials as steel and concrete, it is built of human opinions, which may be made to live forever.

The good will of people is the only enduring thing in any business.

It is the sole substance.

The rest is shadow!”

The previous quote is from Herbert Fisk Johnson, Sr. (President, SC Johnson Wax 1919-1928). It was given during a SC Johnson Was 1927 profit sharing meeting.

This quote is hanging on a large plaque in one of the buildings of the Cornell Business School. As I was visiting Cornell, I sat nearby and watched 100’s of business school students walk right by this quote (and probably have hundreds of times) without even noticing it.

How many companies today think (or act) with this level of understanding?

Ever had one of those days where separate conversations from the day collide into a similar theme? Today was one of those days for me.

A co-worker and I were talking about the trials and tribulations of working remotely as part of a larger technology team. We were sharing horror stories of the disconnection from your co-workers because everyone relies on email. Where if you didn’t block off Noon to 1pm on your calendar you were likely to have a co-worker schedule an important call during that time (like I have to block off my lunch hour?). And to boot, they scheduled the meeting at 11:50am via the shared calendar system and then get upset when your ten minutes late (yeah, like I just sit in front of my computer waiting for email all day). If you can’t tell, this is a pet peeve of mine…email is not instantaneous, guaranteed communication method. If it’s urgent, pick up the phone and call me!

My co-worker was describing how his last job had him working from 6am till midnight due to the fact that there were people all over the world and they were all work-a-holics (or the company culture/expectation was that everyone was). Sure, it’s nice to have the flexibility of your work schedule to go to the gym in the middle of the day to blow off some steam or run an errand or two, but not at the cost of not being able to step away from work.

Then, this afternoon, I heard a story on NPR’s All Things Considered that talked about a home recorders dream, playing with pros online. It was a story about a guy who’s passion was playing the guitar and recording his music in the evenings. With a laptop and about $1000 he was able to build a home recording studio. The kicker was that there are numerous services available online where he could send an MP3 of his recording to someone, do a short call with them, and then for a flat rate they would record background tracks for his song (drummer, beat track, background horns, etc.). A few more MP3s would be passed back and forth and in the end the home musician had high quality tracks he would download for his song and mix it himself at home.

To those of us long time technology people, you’re probably yawning saying “so what, that’s not new”. But it is for the music industry. When you look at how music is made, all these musicians are usually in separate rooms, just listening to the other tracks when they record their own. Technology and the internet has enabled the studio musicians and singers to go independent, live geographically where every they want, and work on their own schedule. Everyone is happy, right?

Again, all of this isn’t new to those who have been doing this in high tech, but I look at this in a different way. How many of these people have the self-control and discipline to work in this fashion? More importantly, as we have the next wave of employees coming out of school, how many of them are being prepared for the challenges of balancing your life in an always-on economy?

If you can work in that situation, great for you! But, I have heard rumblings about the always-on economy from many people from all different areas of business. The difficulty of having family time because you work retail and have to be in the story during the holiday sale. The difficulty of taking a vacation and having to check your email or blackberry constantly. The difficulty of getting work done becuase of the constant interruptions from IM, Email, or the phone. Regardless of whether a worker can work in this type of environment, is it efficient and healthy?

My co-worker is expecting to see more of a revolt toward the remote working situations. We might see a new wave of self-help gurus who will help you learn how to work remotely and still have a balanced life.

Here’s my advice from what I try to do regularly to balance out my work/life and deal with the always-on economy…and it won’t cost you a four easy payments of $49.99…

• Take time each day for thinking. No phones, no email, no IM. Those are tools, learn to turn them off. Just take some quite time to review and focus on topics from the day (for me, I follow this with time for writing).
• Set aside focus time to accomplish more detailed or creative work. Turn off the communication tools. Give yourself time to concentrate and work.
• Take a real vacation at least once a year. No cell phones, no email, no connection with work. If you can’t leave your business to let it run on it’s own, then it’s not a real business. (or if your boss won’t let you take a vacation where you can’t be reached, then they’re not a real boss.)

I think there is a frustration level simmering beneath the surface of the working world that we have created. For our own and the greater good, we can’t ignore it.