Business

Three Suppliers, One Headache

It rarely starts as a plan. You get broadband when you move into the office. A few years later someone sells you a new phone system. The mobiles are on a deal the previous office manager signed. Then there’s the alarm company, the CCTV contract and the door entry system.

Each supplier might be perfectly fine on its own. The problem is the gaps between them, and who ends up filling those gaps. In a business with fewer than 20 staff, that’s usually the owner or the office manager.

This article looks at the costs of running several telecoms suppliers that never appear on an invoice, how to work out what you’re really dealing with, and what consolidating actually involves.

The costs that don’t show up on any bill

1. The blame loop

Your phone calls start breaking up. You ring your phone provider, who runs some checks and tells you it’s your broadband. You ring your broadband provider, who says the line tests fine and it must be the phones. You’re now the go-between for two companies who each have a reason to say it isn’t their problem.

This happens because modern business phone systems run over your internet connection. Call quality depends on both. When they’re with different suppliers, one problem has two owners, and in practice that can mean no owner at all.

2. Admin that multiplies

Every supplier means another invoice to check, another Direct Debit, another online portal, another login, another account number and another security question you have to remember when you phone them. None of it takes long individually. Together, it’s a steady drip of time every month.

3. Contract dates that never line up

Three suppliers usually means three contract end dates and three notice periods. Miss one and you can find yourself rolling onto out-of-contract pricing without noticing. Worse, staggered dates can keep you stuck: you’d like to review everything at once, but one contract always seems to have a year left to run.

4. Starters and leavers

When someone joins, they need a phone extension, possibly a mobile, and access to everything else. When they leave, all of that needs switching off or reassigning. With separate suppliers, that’s separate requests, separate lead times and more chances for something to be forgotten, like a mobile contract that carries on being paid months after the person has gone.

5. Nobody sees the whole picture

Each supplier only sees their slice. Nobody is looking across everything to spot the old line that’s no longer used, the SIMs sitting in a drawer, or the add-on you’re paying for twice. That kind of waste is common in small businesses simply because no one person has all the bills in front of them.

What consolidation actually means

Consolidation isn’t about squeezing everything into one contract for the sake of tidiness. It means three practical things:

• One provider who is responsible for your broadband, phones and mobiles working together, so a fault has one owner
• One bill that shows every service in one place, making it easy to see what you’re paying for
• One person to call who knows your setup, rather than a different queue for each service

It also gives you one contract calendar. You can see every renewal coming and make decisions about all your services together.

What it can look like

Here’s an illustrative example for an eight-person office, using Edison’s current prices.

Your own mix will be different. You might want faster fibre (our FTTP options also come at £50 and £85 a month), EE or Vodafone mobiles instead of O2, or FMC Mobile at £10 per user so staff can take calls to their business extension on their own phone. The point is that it all sits in one place, with one team responsible for it.

We won’t promise you a specific saving before we’ve seen your bills. Sometimes the biggest gain is money, sometimes it’s time, and often it’s both. What we can promise is an honest answer.

“Isn’t it risky to put everything with one provider?”

It’s a fair question. Two things are worth knowing.

First, consolidating the supplier doesn’t mean everything relies on one piece of kit. Your broadband, phone system and mobiles are still separate services running over different networks. What changes is that one team is accountable for how they work together.

Second, joined-up services can make you more resilient, not less. For example, FMC Mobile carries business calls over the mobile network rather than your office broadband, so your business number can still reach your team’s mobiles if the office connection has a problem. That’s the kind of thing that’s much easier to plan when one provider can see the whole setup.

When not to switch everything at once

If you’re halfway through a contract, paying exit fees just to tidy up rarely makes sense. A better approach:

1. Complete the supplier audit above so you know every end date.
2. Move services as their contracts end, starting with whichever comes up first.
3. Keep your numbers. Business numbers can usually be ported to a new provider, so customers keep calling the number they already know.
4. Plan the move around your business, not the other way round, so there’s no disruption during your busiest hours.

If you’re not ready to move yet, that’s fine. Send us the dates anyway and we’ll talk you through a sensible order for when each one comes up.

Why this matters to us

Edison Networks is a Croydon-based business telecoms provider, incorporated in 2013, with a team that has more than 30 years’ experience in the industry. We work with micro and small businesses, typically with fewer than 20 staff, and we offer business broadband, VoIP phone systems, business mobile, FMC Mobile, AI tools and, more recently, business security including fire, alarm, CCTV and door entry.

That range exists for one reason: so a small business can have one provider, one bill and one person to call. Connect. Communicate. Collaborate.

Related: VoIP phone systems | Business broadband