Analytics Can Improve Telecom Expense Management
July 28, 2015
By Casey Houser
Contributing Writer
One of the most stunning costs associated with business operations is communications. There are many ways to stem the flow of monetary expense such as switching from an on-premise to hosted product, but there is only so much fat to trim before advanced tools need to make an appearance.
This is the discussion that arises behind Gartner (News - Alert)'s latest analysis of the global telecom expense market which Gartner says grew 1.6 percent last year. Analysis from Calero points to this research and notes that both the costs and complexity of the market is expanding. Even past analysis from TMC (News - Alert) has explained that the number of company employees mixed with the multiple ways in which they can connect—desktop and mobile across various operating systems—could leave IT admins scratching their heads. How, then, are businesses able to cope?
The short answer is: they need analytics. Once businesses have moved to hosted systems, cut ties with their on-premise servers, and have a variable contract that only charges for the calling minutes they use, the only way forward is to make minute changes. This is where analytics software can be extremely effective.
The previously-cited TMC article points to the telecom expense management as predicted to grow from $1.14 billion in 2014 to $3.43 billion in 2019. Such management tools can come with powerful analytics tools that give admins a level of visibility they otherwise never would have achieved. They can see first-party and third-party data at a glance and find out how exactly their companies use such information.
From their dashboards, admins can view real-time and historical analysis of key performance indicators and the level of communications usage versus expected usage. They can see which channels are most utilized and then manage future consumption of voice, video, text, etc. in a way that makes sense for lowering future costs. Reports can also make their way to board meetings where admins can display the exact trends that are taking place.
It is only with that fine-grained control that businesses can begin to lower their bills. The cost of communications may also be one of the highest segments of enterprise spending, but with the proper analytics tools, it does not have to be prohibitive.
Edited by Dominick Sorrentino