Top 3 TEM Benefits

Cost savings is an obvious advantage to telecom expense management or TEM. However, it doesn’t tell the whole story. There are actually three primary advantages to this process:

• Reduce costs

• Optimize telecom spend

• Improve efficiency

We explore each of these below in order to address common TEM concerns, including:

• Validating invoice accuracy — 26%

• Managing accurate service inventory — 26%

• Accurately allocating or charging back costs throughout the business — 24%

Top 3 TEM Benefits

Beyond saving money that could be put to better use, managing your telecom technology expense has other advantages. It won’t save money in the long run if you are cutting back on essential services and ignoring glaring waste. Let’s find out what’s in store beyond cutting the fat.

1. Reduce or Eliminate Unnecessary Costs

TEM solutions include both consulting and software solutions. Third-party consultants, such as Valicom, help companies take an objective look at their expenses and eliminate redundant and unnecessary services. When the solution includes automation in the form of reporting and red flag alerts, companies can save thousands every month.

The key is to develop a TEM process that optimizes your telecom budget by analyzing the spend and setting up alerts for telecom managers and other stakeholders. To do this, you should ensure that there’s a solid process in place to verify all significant telecom charges, including a streamlined process to negotiate billing disputes. Automating the data gathering and reporting role frees up analysts to catch and object to inflated charges, allowing incremental improvements and a deeper awareness of recurring billing inaccuracies with your providers. Even the smallest changes can save significant amounts over time.

2. Improve Inefficient Processes

Telecom expenses are often among the top expenses companies have. Unnecessary telecom charges exacerbate the issue and so do processes that create bottlenecks. Valicom helps its clients streamline workflows and billing processes. This often begins with a hard look at telecom invoices. When your team gets stacks of invoices through the mail, it’s nearly impossible to validate them all manually. Due to time constraints, a small portion of invoices is typically examined to spot check the totals and raise awareness to any discrepancies found.

Time constraints and payment deadlines often mean that these invoices get paid first and investigated later or not at all. On top of that, accounts payable teams often enter invoices into their systems manually. This introduces human error and another blow to efficiency. Developing TEM solutions for these issues helps your company improve its processes.

3. Optimization of Telecom Spending

TEM provides all the data you need to take a close look at your processes and internal spending habits. With TEM automation, it’s easy to audit usage and who has access to telecom resources. Your company can look at policies in place to assign company devices to employees. BYOD and restricted usage can help you save money and reduce the company’s liability in terms of supporting mobile users that don’t really need a company phone, for example. Better information also makes it easier to budget and forecast future spend so decision-makers can make informed decisions.

The Valicom Advantage

While considering the benefits of telecom technology expense management (TEM), there are three choices for how to proceed. You can assign the role to internal resources, use a web-based tool such as Clearview, or partner with third-party subject matter experts such as those at Valicom. Partnering with a Telecom consulting company has a number of advantages, such as getting your program up and running and reducing your costs faster. This type of service pays for itself many times over.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: BRITTANY PECKHAM

Brittany grew up in Oregon, Wisconsin and graduated from the University of Wisconsin Business School with a Bachelor’s degree in Management and Human Resources with an emphasis in entrepreneurship. Brittany has been working with Valicom for many years creating content for the TEM industry to deliver the many benefits users and organizations can experience in utilizing TEM services. With a passion for social media marketing, Brittany enjoys applying creativity throughout various areas of her life while expressing creativity in everything she does and loves being consumed in projects, from start to finish.