Have to cut heads to control costs? Think again.

The thousands of enterprise CIOs who have been tasked with cutting costs next year are facing a gloomy outlook of layoffs now more than ever. We've already seen massive layoffs across the world. But this is just the tip of the iceberg; departmental heads will need to do a lot more to control their budgets in 2009.

But before embarking on a plan to terminate significant slices of your workforce, consider ways you can eliminate pure waste. Such an area is telecommunications.

From what I hear from my own customers, the initial reaction to the task of getting a grip on your telecom is overwhelming. I would say this is true; it's a significant undertaking. But, as with any process, experience makes it perfectly achievable. Practice makes perfect, as they say. Having to spend money to avoid an uncontrollable spend may seem ironic, but companies need to make investments and dedicate staff to control costs and eliminate cutting valuable assets, like your employees.

As for telecom, things such as wireless devices and phones are simply a must for companies, and no CIO who manages a huge sales force would want to suffer any degradation in service. After all, telecom is the primary business tool. A software solution for managing costs is not enough. To expect to be able to effectively execute a project that involves sanitizing an enormous inventory, consolidating tens of millions of dollars of billing and building an efficient ongoing management process in the course, requires dedication, cooperation and pure hard work. Is it worth it? Absolutely - you will save heaps.

I've seen companies save millions purely by eliminating invoice waste. Just this month, a global IT company that historically paid $100 million in telecom each year, saved $6.5 million in telecom bills, within the first 8 months of implementing project. Their projections suggest that the company's additional savings during the next six months will likely exceed $20 or even $30 million. So, imagine the possibility of reducing costs by over 20 percent, just by checking your bills more thoroughly.

Telecom bills and infrastructure is an enormously complex collection of information. None of the elements naturally tie together. Finance departments deal with accounts and contracts, and IT departments deal with circuits and wireless devices - they don't match. Nonetheless, the accounts that you pay are for the myriad of telecom services you use, so this mismatch should not be ignored because the chances of them matching by accident is nil.

Here's another scenario: Who would issue pay checks to 10,000 people without knowing that they haven't been terminated - your HR department would check against a register, right? But imagine this: One huge invoice for a million dollars arrives from AT&T. It contains hundreds of thousands of line items at a few cents or dollars each. In honesty, how can you imagine paying for this without checking the accuracy of it? But you pay the bill anyway to avoid service disruption. Why doesn't this stringent HR type of reconciliation occur with telecom? Easy: it's too hard.

But it's not too hard if you follow a proven process and computers to do it for you. It can be automated and become 100 percent accurate. You would never have to pay for a service you don't need again.

So, when you are tasked with cutting costs and begin counting heads, take a look at the size of your phone bill first and imagine how many employees you would be able to save if you could reduce it by 10 - 20 percent, permanently and streamline your management for free.