What direction are telecom expense management vendors heading in the coming year? We’ve put together some of our predictions about movement in the market.
Let’s explore the telecom expense management vendor trends that we foresee.
1. Improving Sustainability
Sustainability is at the forefront of business priorities. Today, more than 90% of S&P 500 companies publish environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reports in some form, highlighting its growing importance.
Telecom expense management vendors will be equally focused on ESG factors in the future. Services like physical asset and device management can have a significant impact on sustainability. This is because optimizing aspects like procurement, delivery, and data usage across business IT infrastructure can impact overall sustainability and ESG goals.
A telecom expense management partner can help improve sustainability across:
- Asset procurement
- Reverse logistics and recycling
- Cloud data management
2. Adopting Automation
Investing in automation and robotic process automation (RPA) is an ongoing trend in the telecom expense management market.
Vendors are making strides toward incorporating more automation into their offerings. This helps them provide better, faster, and more accurate services. For example, automation improves invoice processing and enables cost-effective, time-sensitive processing while ensuring that invoices are paid faster.
Greater efficiency was also recognized as a key trend in the 2023 Gartner® Market Guide for Telecom Expense Management Services, Global. Vendors must continue to offer automation capabilities to improve their service quality.
3. Managing SD-WAN Transitions
Businesses continue to transition to SD-WAN. However, for those who have chosen unmanaged internet access, this has increased pressure on invoice processing and billing management. Many companies continue to manage their bills across disparate sources and non-digital formats, like paper, making it a headache to navigate.
These challenges lead to inefficiencies like billing errors or late payments. Implementing SD-WAN becomes much harder without accurate telecom expenses and control across your environment.
The shift to SD-WAN will continue to challenge vendors, but offerings like SD-WAN as a Service will help vendors and their customers manage the transition. It consolidates the processes needed for a successful move to SD-WAN into a single service – and could be a key differentiator in the future.
4. Higher Volumes of Invoices
There will be a greater focus on invoice processing capabilities in the next few years. Businesses now use a greater number of technologies, software, hardware, and devices to manage their day-to-day workloads, and this results in a higher volume of invoices.
Telecom expense management partners must manage these quickly and efficiently to meet growing client expectations.
5. Better Transparency
Vendors will need to provide greater visibility over processes, operational track records, and costs. They must act as a meaningful extension of their internal teams, too. Providing a partnership, not just a service, will differentiate vendors in the years to come.
Economic changes have increased uncertainty across decision-makers. Enterprise leaders want reassurance that their third-party partners are worth paying for, and the evidence to prove it. Providing KPIs and SLAs can help vendors demonstrate much-needed clarity, helping improve client relationships.
Telecom Expense Management Partnership, Not Just Service, Will Triumph in the Next Year
At Cass, we’re proud to offer a telecom expense management partnership, not just service, to global businesses. Working with a vast range of leading organizations gives us greater insight into what clients are looking for and where vendor focus is heading. Get in touch today to learn more about our partnership and improve your processes in the coming year.
