A worrying 91% of UK small- to medium-sized enterprises
(SMEs) cannot estimate their annual phone bill, a new study has
found.
Despite this inability to put a figure on yearly communications
overheads, SME managers said they were very confident (53%) or
fairly confident (39%) that they are fully in control of the size
of their telephone bill, internet telephony firm Inclarity has
found.
Inclarity conducted the research to gauge SME take-up of Voice
over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone calls made over the internet as
opposed to traditional analogue systems. It found that only one in
eight firms is currently using VoIP.
Though even the less tech-savvy consumers the world over have
been using the leading VoIP systems, Skype in particular, SMEs are
yet to embrace new internet telephony, with two-thirds of companies
questioned having no interest in or understanding of it.
According to the most recent DTI figures, there are 185,390 SMEs
in the UK. By uniting this figure with its own findings on
potential savings, Inclarity estimates that UK SMEs could save £1bn
per year − £434m on telecoms and £566m on IT − by migrating to
VoIP.