Business communications costs can be a bit of a minefield nowadays. The business is asking the CFO to invest in the right infrastructure while managing the ongoing costs. But as communication options have expanded, so the costs threaten to grow, often uncontrollably as businesses with employees who travel overseas or spend too much time on Facebook know only too well. All businesses want to contain and account for spend, but may be unaware of the full extent of their communications costs, or of all the options they have to manage them.

In fact, communications technology is part of the ordinary business landscape in a way it wasn’t just a few years ago, says Vanessa Pillay, financial controller at Microsoft SA.