In an increasingly connected world, finding ways to streamline your telecom service provisioning activities – also known as MACDs (move, add, change, and disconnect) – is vital.
Generally speaking, organizations that haven’t discovered the most cost-effective and efficient means of managing their assets, at home or abroad, are putting themselves at a distinct disadvantage to their competitors. Yet, many enterprise businesses treat provisioning and telecom expense management (TEM) as separate entities, adding an unnecessary layer of complexity which can lead to potentially costly mistakes.
Thankfully, the simple action of hiring a TEM provider to manage corporate provisioning activities can mitigate many of these issues and provide tangible benefits in the long run.
Greater Financial Visibility
As with almost every other aspect of TEM, the chief benefit of hiring a third-party service is financial.
In situations like the one above, in which provisioning has been divorced from the rest of the organization’s TEM services, keeping track of costs (invoices, contracts etc.) can be tricky —especially if you have multiple offices located across the globe. The result is a disjointed telecom infrastructure in which the likelihood of errors, such as inaccurate billing and overcharging, is substantially increased.
An experienced TEM provider, on the other hand, can automatically update your telecoms inventory to ensure all payment information is accurate, up to date, and correctly scheduled. Which, as well as helping you coordinate your efforts throughout multiple regions, gives you complete visibility over your entire cloud estate.
What’s more, by keeping a close eye on your MACD activities, TEM providers help you identify any superfluous expenses resulting from carrier errors and lost disconnects during previous provisioning events. We’ve seen several examples in the past of organizations that — because of the fractured nature of their telecom infrastructure — have suddenly discovered they’ve been paying for services they haven’t used in years.
With such a diverse array of communication channels available, this is perhaps more common in the digital age. Modern businesses have everything from instant messaging and social media, to smartphone technology and BYOD services to consider on top of traditional fixed-line infrastructure, making it easy for those that don’t possess in-depth knowledge of telecom provisioning to make mistakes. Trusting provisioning to a TEM provider who has dedicated teams around the globe who focus only on mobile and fixed provisioning can reduce your risk and dramatically improve inventory validity.
Improved Decision Making
Systematically recording and organizing your company’s telecom estate into a single portal isn’t only useful as a tool for reducing costs in the short-term, however. Having a bird’s-eye view of your telecommunications infrastructure is also hugely beneficial when it comes to formulating long-term provisioning strategies.
Most enterprises simply don’t have the requisite time or resources to organize the data they receive; let alone draw any meaningful insights from it. But, by capturing all provisioning activities (including detailed notes, workflows, and approvals) in a single place, you gain unparalleled database integrity. This, in turn, enables you to make better informed decisions across your communications infrastructure. Something that simply isn’t possible with an Excel spreadsheet or any other traditional form of data management software.
A Truly Global Perspective
The difficulties inherent in telecommunication provisioning grow in proportion to the size of the business. Indeed, organizations with a global reach will typically encounter more issues than those operating on only a local or national scale. Understandably, this often makes maintaining a productive working relationship with carriers located on the opposite side of the globe problematic.
While countries like the US and UK boast advanced telecommunications infrastructure, access to high-speed internet and smartphone technology is far from universal. The strain of managing and coordinating telecommunications provisioning on a global scale is therefore best handled by a third-party TEM provider.
As well as possessing expert knowledge of the industry in a more general sense, the best TEM providers have service delivery resources at their disposal all over the world — software packages, reporting tools, processes, cultural insights, and plenty more besides. These help multinational businesses establish and maintain a reliable telecommunications network in every applicable market, while also unifying important processes like benchmarking, data protection, billing, and procurement throughout their telecom estate.
Lastly, with support teams located in each of these regions, there’s the added peace of mind that comes from knowing there’s always someone on-hand to resolve issues as soon as they arise, 24-hours a day. Problems are no longer deferred until normal business hours in whichever country your headquarters happen to be located, minimizing disruption and saving your organization a fortune in lost hours.
Why Choose Cass?
At Cass, telecom provisioning (covering both mobile and fixed-line infrastructure) is fully integrated into our wider TEM services. This enables us to deliver a truly end-to-end service that helps our clients gain a comprehensive overview of their telecom estate and reduce costs.
To discover exactly how much money you can save on your telecom spend with Cass, head over to our dedicated blog post using the link below.
Topics: TEM
