Today’s business environment is a globally connected world. Whilst technology has come a long way to reduce some travel requirements, there is still the requirement for business to travel abroad to visit key suppliers, customers and partners.

When travelling, it is important to understand that once you cross Australian borders you automatically move to new tariff structures for mobile communications. Whilst many organisations have understood this for voice communications, the prevalence of smartphones has meant that staying connected to e-mail whilst travelling is placing great cost pressures onto organisations.

This paper looks at tips for both mobile voice and data whilst travelling:

Mobile Voice:
VoiceMail – Many users are unaware that whilst travelling overseas that calls to retrieve voice-mail are actually charged at global roaming rates. There are some simple steps you can take to reduce this cost:
1. Leave a detailed voicemail to users stating that you are currently overseas and please send an e-mail and do not leave a voice mail message.
2. Upgrade to Optus SurePage service whilst travelling. Optus SurePage sends voicemail messages as a text. Using SurePage is a great option as it reduces your global roaming costs, but also ensures that you never miss a message. Each of your callers are greeted by a real person who takes down the message details and sends them to you.
Receiving Calls - This is one area that is hard to limit the cost structures, especially when a client calls. There are some measures however that you can put to use for your internal teams:
1. Call only when emergency, otherwise e-mail.
2. Set up a conference call time if you need to need to speak to a number of different stakeholders within your organisation.
3. Quick phone calls and call back at a time when you are at a fixed location or can use an alternate method.
A hard measure is to unconditionally transfer all calls to voicemail with a detailed message that you are overseas with limited access to voicemail. Some customers in this voicemail request callers to send an SMS instead of leaving a voicemail as voicemails will not be checked while you are travelling.
Planning is the Key:
If you are in a set destination for a set period of time, it may make economic sense to purchase a pre-paid SIM card within the certain destination. Utilising this approach means that you do not pay any global roaming charges to receive calls as an example. Further, if you are using a SmartPhone then you will pay local data rates which are typically much cheaper than international data rates. This requires some work by the end user, however, if the stay is for a longer period of time, then this approach makes a great deal of economic sense. If you choose to go down this path, it is recommended that you update your voice-mail with a message that provides your alternate contact number and that you will not be retrieving messages from this number whilst overseas.

Check you plan before you go:
A quick 5 minute phone conversation with your communications partner can greatly relieve many costs. Many carriers are offering global roaming bundles as additions to the current plan that you are on. These bundles typically offer a reduced rate to standard global charges and are an excellent option for many businesses. These are offered in many cases as either a 30 day pack, or an on-going pack that continues month in month out. It is important to note that although these provide additional cost benefits to standard global roaming, you need to still ensure that you play within the included value in order to reduce excessive global roaming charges.
Whilst speaking with your communications account managers, you should also check whether your handset will work in the destination that you are going to. As we are now a much better connected global marketplace, this is becoming less of an issue – but in some remote destinations, and even in developed nations, this can still be an issue due to handset frequencies.

Control of Data Usage Whilst Travelling:
We have become so used to performing many tasks through our Smartphones that it is often hard to change this behaviour when we are abroad. Competition in the local market has greatly reduced mobile costs across voice and data and we now have a seemingly insatiable demand to being glued to data on our smartphones. Although this has many productivity benefits, when we operate the same way abroad, there is the risk of high global data roaming charges. There are some easy steps that can be taken to avoid this, below are a few:
1. Suspend the data service on the mobile when you are travelling. By doing this, you ensure that you cannot access data from your mobile handset when travelling. This may seem a harsh move to make however, it is important to note that many smartphones natively use data simply to sync to the network for location based services used by many applications loaded onto many market leading smartphones.
2. Change the settings on your smartphone to manually sync rather than automatically sync for e-mails. Many of the latest smartphones automatically sync for e-mail under a terminology called “push” where e-mails are pushed from the e-mail server directly to the smartphone. If we consider that 50% of the e-mails we receive are not really meant for us (being cc or bcc recipient is just one example), then when roaming, it is important to upload e-mails at periodic intervals (ideally when connected to wifi), rather than continually. Undert his method you manually pull your e-mails in a batch, rather than one by one.
3. Utilise wifi connections for mobile data when travelling. Typically you will be located at a hotel when travelling. Hotels have lifted their game globally and most hotels offer wifi-internet in the room, and in many cases around the hotel. It is very simple on many smartphone to access wifi connection through a change in the setting section of the smartphone. This is an excellent approach to take as many regions have extensive wifi networks that you can harness. Wifi is prevalent in many eating establishments and shopping centres also, as well as within corporate offices.
SMS:
SMS is a great application for global roaming. SMS allows you to convey a quick message to colleagues and family when travelling and is much cheaper than making and receiving phone calls. This is often overlooked by many customers and is yet such an easy and effective tool to utilise when travelling abroad.

Technology can greatly alleviate global roaming charges:
An excellent example of how technology can alleviate global roaming charges is a unified communications system with integrated voice-mail that transfers voice-mail to e-mail messages. Further, many of these systems allow the ability for a soft client where all you need is an internet connection and you can pick up and make calls on your same extension number via your laptop. The soft client is basically software that allows you to make/receive calls from your laptop as long as you are connected to the internet and your network. As the call in this scenario via the soft phone is made over a data packet, you can use hotel facilities or wifi in the location that you are in to make and receive calls. These systems also have many other benefits such as presence, where internal users can see where you are and through least cost routing you can create rules for how you are contacted by your internal teams as an example when you are travelling. This is a detailed discussion that will be delved into in future papers given the scope of unified communications. It is however an excellent approach to take if you have a team that frequently travels.
If you do not have a capable communication system that allows for soft clients, then there are free applications such as Skype that can be used when travelling to make calls. Skype needs to be loaded onto your laptop as it is not recommended for security reasons to utilise internet café or hotel business PC’s as you are unsure of how the system is cleaned after you and what remnants remain.

A final note to ponder - According to BackChat Mobile CEO Danny Nathanson, roaming is now the third highest cost for overseas travellers after airfares and accommodation. This is a very alarming statistic considering how much time companies focus on getting cheaper airfares and accommodation, and forgetting the third most expensive part of the trip – roaming.
We trust that you use these tips to reduce costs and that you avoid bill shock upon return.

Regards,
The TeleChoice Team.

 

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