Telecom management in mid-sized companies is not always a full time job. Stretched for resources, the IT team can usually only devote part of the telecom manager's team to managing the telco environment. Reviewing the telecom carrier bills for accuracy and errors typically get pushed further and further down the priority list.
Most of the time, companies will resort to just a face page comparison of the total bill. This approach, while expedient, can lead to costly errors.
Over time, the contents of the bill change. The change is typically slow, so noticeable differences do not appear immediately. New locations may open, or close. Rates may change or discounts expire. Your spending may increase and warrant a larger discount. Who is watching for these changes?
The carrier certainly is not. The telecom carrier leaves the accuracy of the bill up to the customer. You typically have just a few months to dispute a charge, or it is deemed accepted. Small errors can grow over time and become compounded with other errors.
In fact, Gartner reports that an average enterprise customer pays 8-15% too much due to carrier billing mistakes. If your telecom management team is stretched too thin to properly review telecom bills and expenses, you may want to consider a telecom expense management (TEM) platform. A TEM solution does not have to be expensive (in fact there are free versions available) and usually generate a healthy savings opportunity. These savings come in both hard dollars (reduction in telecom costs) and soft dollars (improved productivity of the telecom team).
Without a telecom management system, your costs will likely grow. Explaining how you saved money to the CFO will be much easier than explaining why costs increased in these times when everyone is trying to cut back.
A good TEM program will cover both your wireline and wireless services and provide for monthly bill aggregation and testing, financial reports that allocate costs to appropriate cost centers and assign general ledger codes, and provide a platform to track and evaluate network inventory. Managed services are frequently available, but not necessary. The free versions of TEM software are, of course, self-service.
If you are looking to gain control over your wireline and wireless telecommunictions environment or looking for a free TEM application, go to http://www.my-tem.com. my-tem.com provides simple free telecommunications expense management solutions.
my-tem offers a leading mid-market telecom expense mangement (TEM) solution for free to business clients. my-tem supports all wireline and wireless/cellular services. Get organized and start finding areas to reduce your telecommunications expense quickly and easily with my-tem.com's free TEM offer.
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