Truly great telecoms expense management (TEM) is transformational. It can consolidate, manage and optimize a telecoms environment, reduce costs, eliminate overpayment risks, and streamline processes to free up valuable staff time. But, while TEM can revolutionize an enterprise, arguably, the value of a TEM provider is greater still.
With insight into the global telecoms marketplace, visibility into vendors, and an in-depth understanding of invoice management, market-leading TEM providers are perfectly placed to help organizations process, dispute, and settle invoices.
While organizations may wish to retain total control over their cash flow, it's actually not always the best business approach.
Here are four reasons why you should consider allowing your TEM provider to settle your invoices.
1. Significantly Reduces Late Fees
Late fees are an economic burden for enterprises. With unexpected outgoings, even large companies can begin to feel the strain of an unoptimized telecoms environment.
A study of late fees among global enterprises released in 2015 discovered that enterprises without a TEM provider averaged over 1.2% of their spend in late fees – and enterprises who had a TEM provider but didn't allow them to pay the bills still averaged over 0.8%.
Investing in a TEM solution makes it possible to locate inefficiencies – providing a snapshot of the telecoms environment to identify where the problems are – but this insight doesn’t necessarily guarantee to put a stop to the late fees themselves. To ensure additional outgoings are mitigated altogether, it’s important to allow your TEM provider to pay the invoice on your behalf.
Organizations must deal with the monthly influx of carrier service invoices – each one complex and potentially mired in error. Due to this complexity, large enterprises can frequently find themselves adrift in a sea of paperwork, at constant risk of missed invoice payments and the headaches that accompany them.
With prior knowledge of your telecoms environment and first-hand access to TEM resources, your TEM provider has the expertise and resources available to ensure that all invoices are accounted for and paid in full on time, making certain that unnecessary late fees are significantly reduced.
2. Avoids Service Interruption
Service interruptions are very similar to late fees in their root cause – missed payments – but, often, have far more alarming consequences.
For enterprises, if service is interrupted then call centers go down, customers can't get in contact, credit cards can't be processed, and significant revenue is lost. In fact, a single interruption has the potential to inflict significant economic and reputational damage, potentially costing an organization millions of dollars.
A TEM solution allows companies to marry missed payments with service disruptions and gain insight into the telecoms environment. But, even with a better understanding of their telecoms assets, there's still no guarantee that existing personnel have the time or capability to act accordingly.
An enterprise's telecoms environment can be infinitely complex. Due to the influx of recent trends, such as bring your own device (BYOD) and remote working – increasing both the number and diversity of invoice bills – organizations are finding themselves more snowed under with carrier service invoices than ever.
To make sure service interruptions are prevented, enterprises must put their trust in the hands of a TEM provider and allow its specialized team of professionals to process, manage, and pay all invoices on behalf of the organization.
3. Eliminates Misapplied Payments
A multinational enterprise’s telecoms environment is complex, intricate, and vast, and keeping afloat in the sea of invoices, and potential errors therein, can be time-consuming and arduous.
Traditionally, when paying an invoice, an enterprise will send a paper check to a vendor. This check will then be transferred into a lockbox where human beings open the envelope and enter the check into the payment system – often transferring account numbers inaccurately or applying payments to accounts in incorrect amounts.
By sending electronic payments directly to the bank, organizations can avoid the financial complexities of lockboxes, checks, and wire transfers as well as the forms of human error that accompany them.
Choosing a TEM provider who offers direct electronic payment to a company's bank, and providing them with the ability to make electronic payments directly to carriers on your behalf, eliminates the possibility of any misapplied payments and creates cost-savings for your enterprise.
4. Global Multi-Currency Support
Multinational enterprises receive vast quantities of invoices every single day, from countries all across the globe, in a range of different languages and currencies.
Even with a central finance team, systematically consolidating complex billing information from multiple sources in different currencies into a single repository is challenging.
By leveraging the services of a TEM provider who can accept funding in a single currency – but also provide payment to vendors in local currency – can reduce foreign exchange risk to your enterprise while making the payment process much easier and faster for internal resources.
The Only Global Solution
With true telecoms expense management, you not only enjoy a transformational, cost-saving service but you can also take full advantage of the remarkable experience, expertise, and knowledge of your TEM provider.
To maximise this value, it’s crucial to provide your TEM vendor with the opportunity to process, manage, and settle invoice payments on your behalf – armed with this additional resource, it can further consolidate and optimize your telecoms environment and generate further cost-savings for your enterprise.
Telecom expense management is an ever-changing environment where clients and providers adapt to new demands. For an independent analysis of the market direction and key challenges, read the 2023 Gartner® Market Guide for Telecom Expense Management Services.
Topics: TEM
