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Telecom
Expense Management what is it? Actually, telecom expense management
means different things to different entities, but we would suggest that
telecom expense management is an umbrella-like term that covers a wide
array of services. The constant is the fact that all services that fall
under this umbrella are designed with the goal of managing and reducing
telecom costs. The different services that fit under the description,
telecom expense management, include the telecom audit, network
optimization and management, automated invoice management platforms, and
a variety of subsets. But the constant remains that the overall goal of
any telecom expense management is to manage telecom cost and to reduce,
or optimize, telecom costs. Managing telecom surrounds understanding
what your telephony does, why it does it, how it does it, and how to do
it better.
So what are the elements to manage?
We would offer the following: an inventory of your local, long distance,
and data circuits and services including whatever type of switch used in
the process. Also to be included would be the underlying contracts and
monthly invoices associated with those telecom services. And finally,
the purpose of each service versus the business process those services
are hopefully supporting.
How does one go about "managing telecom?"
The first step is to realize the importance of the mission. We were
recently contacted by a division of one of the world's largest five
companies in terms of capitalization. Based in Europe, they had one
hundred sites in twenty countries. Their telecom costs towered over
$100,000,000 per year, yet it was astonishing to learn they just didn't
know what they had in terms of telephony. Companies of all size have the
same issue. They don't know what they have, so they are not in a
position to lower their telecom costs and run an efficient telecom
network. The reason this state exists is that most companies do not have
adequate staffing or resources to perform the mission, no matter how
large or small that company may be. Correcting this situation would
start with a complete inventory of an entity's circuits and services.
This can be accomplished by a complete demarcation study and it can also
be facilitated remotely by a telecom auditor or specialist experienced
in such a task. This helps answer a very basic question that is vital to
the financial health of any organization:
Do you have services that you don't need?
First and foremost, the advantage of this survey will be to cancel
unnecessary or unwarranted circuits that are causing needless expense.
Imagine having a modem or fax line and learning through this form of
telecom management that the computer and the fax machine are no longer
in use. Nevertheless, you are paying for the service every month because
either your company failed to cancel the circuit or the phone company
mishandled your termination order. In either case, by managing your
telecom network, you eliminate waste and make yourself a more efficient
organization. After performing the telecom network inventory, two
following actions to both manage and lower telecom expense would be a
telecom audit followed by adoption of an automated invoice management
platform. The telecom audit is considered the foundation of telecom
expense management. The two main goals to be accomplished are the
recovery of funds misspent due to telecom invoice errors and also a
reduction of telecom expense due to the implementation of findings and
recommendations by the auditor.
Recoveries will be in the form of a credit on your carrier invoice or,
in some cases, a check sent directly to the enterprise. But most of the
cost savings usually are found in the implementation of findings and
recommendations. These recommendations are suggestions to improve
service or efficiency and they have nothing to do with telecom company
invoice errors. These looking forward savings may account for up to 70%
or more of the telecom cost reductions.
ime reading them.
In fact they are down right cryptic and difficult to read. So any review
of an EDI document that may involve a human is at best a slow and
cumbersome effort. A second issue is detail. Often not all the required
detail is provided for a proper evaluation to occur. Another problem is
that the EDI Services may cost you money and sometimes the can be very
expensive. Finally, EDI standards are not really standard in their
arrangement carrier to carrier and even sometimes within the same
carriers. So time and money must be spent to map and maintain an invoice
review system.
One way you can save money is to simply reduce the total number of
invoices you must deal with. Consolidation of your telecom services so
that the billing becomes consolidated can yield significant savings. It
is a fact that you spend as much as $40 per invoice from receipt to
payment.
If you think you invoices are accurate why to you think we offer this
service on a contingent basis? It is because we know your invoices are
more than likely in error. Carrier invoices are getting better but the
problem with continue for the foreseeable future because carriers
continue to consolidate, they are always offering new services with
increase billing complexity.
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