November 13, 2004
Quocirca Straight Talking: Death to desk phones?
Businesses could see big cost savings from - get ready - requiring certain workers to use only their mobile phones. So, asks Quocirca's Dale Vile for Silicon.com, why aren't more doing so? (One reason could be potential abuse by workers, who run up outrageous cell phone bills. cf previous post).
"Many organisations are wasting a fortune on unnecessary telephony costs, simply because they do not understand the behaviour of their mobile users.
Over half of the IT and communications managers in the Quocirca study indicated that mobile users had a tendency to use their mobile phone in preference to their desk phone when sitting at their desk, usually because their mobile is the place where they maintain their frequently used numbers.
Related behaviour has become common practice. When trying to contact someone not often at his desk, for example, employees tend to dial that person's mobile number in the first instance. Why bother with a desk number that will probably not be answered? The mobile phone will always be picked up if the individual is in a position to take a call.
This leads to the ludicrous situation of employees burdening the company with high-rate mobile phone charges when calling a colleague that might be sitting in the same building. If the first person has the second person's mobile number programmed onto his mobile phone, this might even be a cellular-to-cellular call, which is the worst possible scenario from a cost perspective.
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