As much as 13% of annual global IT spend is spent on telecom services. And a significant amount of this is lost on billing errors, wasted resources, and poorly negotiated contracts, costing enterprises millions of dollars every year.
For many, the key to managing these costs lies with a telecom expense management (TEM) partner. They combine the software, tools, and expertise that help businesses better manage their inventory and spend with higher visibility, so they can get the most out of their telecom investments. TEM solutions streamline troublesome invoices and telecom lines, optimize costs and resources, and identify key opportunities for cost-savings that would otherwise be missed.
For businesses looking to capitalize on these benefits, you need to make a convincing business case for TEM. To start, you’ll need to assess your own telecom environment, along with quantifying the benefits, costs, and potential saving opportunities that a TEM partner can provide.
To help with this, our new infographic highlights the various considerations that should form the basis for pitching the business case for TEM.
The Challenges Global Enterprises Face
In recent years, more and more organizations have embraced TEM solutions as their telecom infrastructure becomes more complex. Many enterprises find it difficult to sort through discrepancies, manage costs, and stay on top of invoices – especially if they deal with multiple carriers across different countries.
Visibility is also an issue. The larger the environment the harder it is to keep track of inactive lines, wasted resources, and provisioning activities, resulting in a lack of a unified view of their inventory.
Plus, if a business handles many different contracts and conditions, it’s often difficult to know if charges are correct - and lack of visibility means it’s harder to negotiate the best deals.
If you recognise any of these challenges within your own business, use them as a driving force for arguing a business case for TEM.
Benefits of Telecom Expense Management
A TEM provider can help in a number of areas, from reviewing and auditing invoices, to handling negotiations, billing analysis, and supplier communications – to secure you the best rates of service.
TEM lets you identify misapplied billing, unused resources, or incorrect contract rates – so you can take back control of your telecom spend. It can also help you build up a complete database of your inventory, capturing details and automatically assigning it to specific units and locations.
Assess Your Business Needs
To create an effective overview of your telecom environment, you need to first assess your needs, requirements, and the tools you need to reach your business goals.
You’ll need to assess your needs across sourcing, procurement, inventory management, service, invoice management, and business intelligence – and create an accurate picture of your current setup so you can discover areas to build on and improve with TEM.
Once you’ve gathered this data, you’ll be in a better position to see the tangible benefits you can expect to see from a TEM solution.
Demonstrating ROI
Securing investment from your stakeholders can be tricky, so it’s important to actively demonstrate the return on investment (ROI) that TEM will bring to your business.
You can demonstrate ROI in a number of ways. Firstly, you can estimate areas for improvement by using key savings metrics. These include number of service providers, invoices processed, overall spending, and level of visibility and tracking.
Aside from direct benefits, TEM also provides indirect benefits like time saved reviewing invoices and performing service calls, better visibility over your resources, and more.
Use your current values to determine the scope of benefits possible with a TEM provider. You can include these values in a before and after workflow diagram to highlight areas that can be improved with automation, and better resource allocation from TEM.
Choose the Right Vendor
With a dedicated TEM provider you can alleviate common telecom issues with automation of manual processes, better visibility over your telecom environment, and more streamlined operational processes.
Ideally, your TEM service should come from an experienced team that are well-versed in telecoms, asset management, and carrier billing. And one that can assist you with change management, accounting, and any other challenges you may encounter, on a global scale.
Learn more about the representative vendors in the telecom expense management industry in the latest Gartner® market guide. It contains vendor profiles in the context of an up-to-date analysis of the market to help you choose the right partner for your needs.
