Report Reveals Growth Trends and Roadblocks in Telecom Expense Management Industry
February 02, 2015
By Tracey E. Schelmetic
TMCnet Contributor
Effective telecom management is critical to business today for a number of reasons. For starters, the costs have spiraled in recent years as networks have gotten larger, more complex and far reaching. Telecommunications costs are now a huge part of doing business. And as any large company can testify, telecom billing errors are rampant, and without a process to spot them, many organizations are likely overpaying by thousands of dollars each year. The savings in catching errors alone often justifies a full-time salary for a telecom expense manager for a large company. Secondly, it’s also important to keep a close eye on telecom costs to avoid employee abuse, which may be particularly rampant in this era of company owned cell phones and laptops.
Another little-considered but important reason for having a good process in place to manage telecom resources is as a security measure. Expense management is built on identifying assets and issues across the entire telecom infrastructure, which helps a company better understand it and protect it.
For all these reasons, the telecom expense management landscape is in growth mode, according to a recent report by Transparency Research entitled, “Telecom Expense Management Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 – 2020.” The report segments the industry into a number of subgroups, including usage management, sourcing management, reporting and business management, ordering and provisioning management, invoice and contract management, inventory management and dispute management.
New trends in the market include better customization for verticals, including manufacturing, healthcare, retail, BFSI (Banking Financial Services and Insurance), automotive, transportation and logistics, and media and entertainment among others. Companies that participate in the telecom expense management market are continuing to compete based on how well they customize their solutions for these verticals.
“The increasing number of business organizations across the globe looking to invest in efficient infrastructure management solutions is the prime factor fueling the growth of infrastructure solutions market,” wrote the report’s authors. “The infrastructure solutions market demand is majorly contributed by the North American region due to the presence of large number of players offering customized infrastructure solutions.”
However, Transparency Research also noted in its report that problems with interoperability are putting the brakes on the industry’s growth potential.
“As the enterprises are becoming sophisticated in carrying out their operations using BYOD devices, telecom expense management solution efficiencies are affected in delivering high value functionality and interoperability with the Human Resource (HR) information systems and ERP,” wrote the report’s authors. “Such limitations restrict their use thereby restraining their growth potential.”
Edited by Stefania Viscusi