Have you ever heard that annoying ad on the radio about companies who pay too much for their payroll processing? I hear it all the time. They sing weird jingles about it, and mock companies for staying with their incumbent processors and thus paying extra for their services over time. When I hear the ad, I always think that no one would pay more for technology than they have to.
But then I started thinking about a couple of examples of projects that I worked on this year where in fact our clients were paying too much, way too much, for technology. Specifically for web and audio conferencing. In one circumstance, our client was being charged so much for their audio conferencing, that we were able to cut the cost enough to allow them to purchase a web conference license for their global employees essentially for free. In another, our client had negotiated with their web conferencing carrier for months to get the best deal they could. What we found was that based on the way the carrier was offering the license, the client was going to sign a deal that would have cost them 36% more than what they should have been paying. We were able to help them understand the correct way to buy the license for their needs, and also how much to pay for it.
So are companies actually paying too much for technology? Technology and telecom service providers can be smart like a fox when it comes to selling and billing their service. If you think you might be falling into the trap of paying too much for technology, give us a call. We don’t sing well (so we promise not to), but we do understand that “the price of technology goes down over time” and we can show you how to get there.