Why Consider a Telecom Expense Management Solution

Cutting costs has become the main focus of enterprises across the world. Telecom costs form a major chunk of the overall IT expenditure and companies can reduce this by using telecom expense management (TEM) solutions. These solutions are employed to get the costs of doing business under control so that resources can be allocated for other more urgent requirements.

The demand for TEM solutions is increasing and many vendors have entered the arena to tap this growing market. Companies have a choice to select from the various options but when searching and evaluating TEM solutions in the market the enterprises  should ensure that solutions offered by the vendors are able to do some basic jobs.

TEM should cut costs
Enterprises deploy a TEM solution to cut costs and save money. The solution you choose must be able to identify errors in vendor invoices as these can form a significant part of your telecom budget. President and CEO of Veramark Technologies, Tony Mazzullo, recently told SearchMobileComputing that it is not easy for businesses to simply establish use policies to rein in costs. The company can establish plan guidelines but the employees may still exceed plan minutes or under-utilize voice or data service plans. Behavior management is part of TEM solution and it can cut the telecom expenditure by more than 20 percent.

Improve business process
TEM should be able to improve processes within the organization and introduce automation to boost efficiency. Companies can leverage telecom expense management software for inventory control, invoice and billing review. Vendors also offer contract negotiation support as part of the deal and will happily work with carriers to correct billing discrepancies.

TEM should save time
The solution of your choice should free up resources such as personnel time and this can be used for more profit giving initiatives. A company can save a lot of time by deciding to outsource time consuming management tasks such as service level agreement (SLA) enforcement and dispute management. Time saved by outsourcing non-core business processes can be effectively utilized for other pressing needs.

Improve communication
Ideally a TEM should improve communications service delivery between contract, billing, inventory & accounting teams in an organization. By choosing to control telecom spend through a telecom expense management solution, enterprises benefit from an easily accessible, centralized database of information that streamlines communication between various departments. The flexible reporting tools included in these applications create reports that can be accessed by users via the web.

TEM should centralize telecom spend
Centralized management of telecom spend allows companies to gain insight into their total network costs. The 2008 Telecom Expense Management Benchmark Survey, conducted by Edge Research, indicated that companies had more success by centrally managing telecom spend. The majority of the respondents that were able to centralize spend said they experienced TEM savings of greater than $1,000,000.

Many vendors allow companies to trial their software for free so that they can view their billing data in a centralized platform. This helps them to make a more informed decision and buyers are more satisfied with their purchase.