Benefits of Telecom Expense Management solution(TEM)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The Importance of Telecom Expense Management (TEM)
2. What are the Top Benefits of TEM? Addressing Telecom Challenges with Strategic Solutions
   • Cost Control
   • Enhanced Security
   • Control Your Telecom Inventory
   • Improved Visibility Across All Locations
   • End-to-End Support for Your Telecom Infrastructure
   • Uptime Assurance
3. Spenza’s Approach to TEM Solutions
4. FAQs

Introduction: The Importance of Telecom Expense Management (TEM)

Telecom Expense Management, or TEM, is important for every business operating in the modern world as it helps to strategize to ensure reliability and efficiency. To ensure organizations save costs, TEM solutions actively manage invoicing processes, contract negotiations, compliance, and rate optimization. Effective TEM will ensure properly platformed goals and optimize ROI. With the benefits of telecom expense management solutions, this blog compels organizations of all sizes to wonder how TEM would aid their operational requirements.

What is the importance of TEM?

The ever-growing intricacy and expenditure on telecommunications services make TEM an integral part of any organization’s business structure. With telecommunications spending now constituting a large percentage of IT budgets, achieving control over telecom expenses has become a top priority for many organizations. 

Without a TEM policy, companies are prone to overspending on unwarranted services owing to billing inaccuracies or being overwhelmed with many contracts and service providers. These issues can have severe repercussions on an organization’s bottom line. The benefits of telecom expense management solutions include offering a governance structure and processes to easily resolve an organization’s telecom challenges, and enhancing organizational effectiveness and profitability. It is not just about eliminating expenses but leveraging a key business asset.

What are the Top Benefits of TEM? Addressing Telecom Challenges with Strategic Solutions

TEM Solutions furnishes your team with the tools and support to reduce IT and telecom spends. 

1. Cost Control

Managing telecom-related expenses can be quite a nightmare. Understanding complicated pricing models and dealing with numerous monthly bills is not only labour-intensive but can also be inefficient. 

Pain Points –

• Billing Mistakes: There are very few accurate invoices. Revenue tracking in usage-based billing and navigating diverse pricing structures is a challenge in the telecom industry.
• Overcharges: Are you paying for miscalculated services, or do you not use them anymore? Indeed, these things are generally missed out.
• Missed Payments and Penalties: The more invoices the client has to deal with, the greater likelihood he shifts responsibilities, leading to increased missed deadlines and more penalties.
• Service Interruption: Increased missed payments can lead to more late service payments due to being overdrawn, leading to shutting off services and directly impacting market operations.

This is where Telecom Expense Management (TEM) comes in. A skilled TEM partner can assist you in achieving a noticeable reduction in your telecom expenses. They do so by:

1. Having an Overview: TEM systems provide unified reporting and dashboards that consolidate telecom information, allowing organizations to identify and address potential issues quickly.
2. Reclaiming Funds: TEM providers submit chargebacks and credits for overpayments or overbilled invoices, returning to your pocket.
3. Stopping Unnecessary Spending: They remove expenditures associated with redundant resources or services that incur ongoing costs or spending for something for which the resources are no longer needed.
4. Optimizing Existing Assets: TEM providers help you optimize the use of your current telecom assets by Setting up ongoing cost tracking so they can understand where money is being pulled.
5. Tackling Issues Ahead of Time: By providing the contractor some guidance on the overbilling features of the contract, such as wrong pricing or inactive circuits, TEM contractors help to avoid unnecessary costs.

2. Enhanced Security

Many people think that subcontracting Telecom Expense Management (TEM) brings about the risk to information security, which is really one of the biggest myths. The reality is that a third-party TEM services provider can strengthen your organization’s security posture. Consider the various routes through which expense data enters your organization: emails, spreadsheets, paper receipts, and verbal approvals. While these methods may be designed to facilitate flow, they increase risk. 

Manipulation, deliberate oversight, or even plain negligence can leave a lot of gaps through which fraud, theft, and data compromise can occur in an organization. Conversely, TEM vendors have more sophisticated security measures than most in-house teams can handle. This network contains specialized personnel and resources that ensure the risks are mitigated by employing the following measures:

• Regular Security Audits: TEM service providers routinely check their systems for potential cracks, which could lead to escalated weaknesses.
• Real-Time Monitoring: Their staff combats advanced threats with innovative and sophisticated techniques and expeditiously responds to suspicious activities.
• Automated Processes: Reducing the risk of human intervention greatly lessens the chances of committing errors while guaranteeing that data stays complete and authentic.
• Purpose-Built Software: TEM software is designed specifically for handling sensitive financial and telecom data, incorporating security best practices.

3. Control Your Telecom Inventory

Maintaining telecom inventories is very complicated. 

Pain Points –

1. Scale & Complexity: A normal telecom setting may consist of thousands of independent components and services, almost making manual tracking impossible.
2. Diverse Needs: You are trying to balance between fixed lines, mobile devices, and BYOD programs, together with all the contracts and invoices related to them.
3. Dynamic Environment: Your requirements are continuously evolving. New branches, service plan upgrades, and employee changes make cost optimization efforts a moving target. This is MACD (move, add, change, disconnect) activity.

Managing such intricate inventories accurately is crucial for cost control and strategic alignment. A strong Telecom Expense Management solution can help you accomplish effective telecom inventory management through:

1. Accurate Tracking: TEM solutions ensure that all MACD activities are captured and inventory records are always updated.
2. Reconciling Services & Invoices: They measure your actual service usage against the invoices received and, where necessary, resolve quickly any discrepancies. This allows you to control costs and ensures you only pay for what you need.
3. Providing Comprehensive Visibility: The responsive nature of TEM allows telecommunication inventory to be viewed from everywhere, even across many locations and time zones. Telecom structure decision-making can be expanded to previously unreachable heights with proactive business intelligence.

4.  Improved Visibility Across All Locations

Managing the information technology and telecommunications services for a company with multiple sites (whether nationally or internationally) is daunting. Consider the hassle of managing hundreds of different setups, with each location having its account, equipment, services, policies, and processes. 

Pain Points –

1. “Out Of” Costs: When you cannot identify the range of services in your IT and telecommunications operations, getting an accurate estimate of the overall spending becomes impossible.
2. Unmet Needs: Without a centralized system view, you cannot adequately gauge each location’s distinct requirements, resulting in either overprovisioning or under provisioning.
3. Lowered Production: Centralized data helps increase the efficiency with which your IT team operates all locations, leading to higher productivity. Without this data, it is much harder for your team to manage all the sites.

Analyzing and calculating IT spending is simplified with the right Telecom Expense Management (TEM) solution, which can aggregate all previously unconnected pieces into one system. This tactic improves your ability to plan strategically by providing crucial information and reduces the cost and time needed to get the information.

5. End-to-End Support for Your Telecom Infrastructure

A telecom network is a living system that requires maintenance. The industry is ever-evolving, with bandwidth requirements changing, offices moving, and mergers and asset divestitures happening, all while technology expires. Managing everything and keeping pace can be incredibly challenging. 

Pain Points –

1. Changing Requirements: Business goals shift, technologies are developed, and bandwidth factors are replaced.
2. Institutional Changes: Relocations, acquisitions, and divestments all impact your telecom infrastructure.
3. Equipment lifecycle management: The obsolete technology should be replaced and disposed of properly.
4. BYOD Management: This introduces additional complexity due to employee-owned device management.

Your ideal TEM partner will be an experienced supporting system to the structure, enabling you to easily handle some of the more complex challenges so that your provisioning within the telecom industry is optimal. They can assist you with the following:

1. Finding the Right Fit: TEM providers check your specific requirements to recommend and implement telecom services and resources that precisely match your operational needs.
2. Service Contract Negotiation: They have the tools to make service contracts with carriers and monetize them to get the best product value.
3. Optimized Provisioning: TEM providers help you:
   • Acquire the set resources and bandwidth for your operations.
   • Acquire the set resources and bandwidth for your operations.
   • Identify and disconnect any obsolete resources to eliminate added costs.
   • Recognize and understand the contract terms and the waiver conditions to avoid penalties.
   • Obtain the best prices for mobile devices and other equipment for the BYOD program.
   • Accurately develop and assign bid requirements that competitors will use to obtain competitive pricing in the vendor marketplace.

The number of services and devices out there is so vast that it creates challenges for internal teams to make the right decisions when negotiating with carriers. A TEM partner relieves you of this responsibility and allows your team to prioritize more strategic endeavors. They help you save on operating expenses by ensuring that your telecom infrastructure is always up to date with your business needs and budget.

6. Uptime Assurance

Disruptions of services based on billing alone can prove extremely detrimental. It’s not only about dodging late fees; it’s about maintaining smooth business operations. Consider the implications:

1. Decreased Output: Employees are not able to perform at their full capacity. This wasted productivity due to telecom outages creates a lot of value loss.
2. Brand Injury: Your corporate image can be severely damaged from outages. As employees fail to meet deadlines due to the outages, customers view your business poorly, resulting in the loss of future business.
3. Operational Disruption: Telecom services are integral to daily business activities for many organizations. A service disruption can paralyze critical business functions. Think about a retail outlet that cannot accept card payments or a call centre that cannot answer incoming calls.
4. Financial Damage: Outages can also directly affect profit margins, alongside decreased productivity. Unattended prospect sales and stagnation of work are just a few problems that can arise.

Powerful Telecom Expense Management (TEM) systems can help you sidestep disruptions by:

1. Securing Payments: TEM takes care of invoice paying and billing automation. Such automation lowers the risk of deadlines getting missed and services being disabled.
2. Finding Charges Mistakes: TEM providers monitor invoices for charges that could result in illegal expenses or automatically halting services.
3. Avoiding Service Disruptions: TEM proactively manages your telecom services accounts and ensures proper billing, which helps prevent service cut-offs because of payment problems.
4. Ensuring Smooth Operations: Telecom services must be reliable and consistent to ensure uninterrupted business operations. TEM helps mitigate downtimes by providing needed infrastructure resources at the right moment.

Selecting A Reliable Partner: Spenza’s Approach For TEM Solutions

Spenza’s comprehensive TEM services directly tackle the challenges you face, providing tangible solutions for cost control, security, and operational efficiency. Here’s how:

1. Cost Control:
   • Pain Points: Billing errors, overcharges, missed payments, service interruptions.
   • Spenza Solutions:
     • Centralized reporting and dashboards for clear expense visibility.
     • Automated invoice auditing and dispute resolution for fund recovery.
     • Identification and elimination of redundant services.
     • Continuous cost tracking and asset optimization.
     • Proactive contract monitoring to prevent overbilling.
2. Enhanced Security:
   • Pain Points: Vulnerabilities from manual data entry, risk of fraud and data compromise.
   • Spenza Solutions:
     • Regular security audits and real-time threat monitoring.
     • Automated processes to minimize human error and ensure data integrity.
     • Purpose-built, secure software for sensitive telecom data.
3. Telecom Inventory Control:
   • Pain Points: Complexity of managing large inventories, diverse needs, dynamic environments.
   • Spenza Solutions:
     • Automated tracking of MACD activities for accurate inventory records.
     • Service and invoice reconciliation to ensure you pay only for what you use.
     • Comprehensive, real-time inventory visibility across all locations.
4. Improved Visibility Across All Locations:
   • Pain Points: “Out of” costs, unmet needs, lowered production due to fragmented data.
   • Spenza Solutions:
     • Centralized data aggregation for unified visibility across all sites.
     • Enhanced reporting and analytics for strategic planning and resource optimization.
5. End-to-End Telecom Infrastructure Support:
   • Pain Points: Changing requirements, institutional changes, equipment lifecycle management, BYOD complexity.
   • Spenza Solutions:
     • Needs-based assessments and tailored resource recommendations.
     • Expert service contract negotiation and optimization.
     • Proactive provisioning, including resource optimization and BYOD management.
6. Uptime Assurance:
   • Pain Points: Decreased output, brand injury, operational disruptions, financial damage due to service interruptions.
   • Spenza Solutions:
     • Automated invoice payment and billing oversight.
     • Proactive charge mistake detection and service interruption prevention.
     • Ensuring consistent and reliable telecom services.

FAQs

So, to enjoy the benefits of Telecom Expense Management, contact Spenza today!