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Telecom Cost Management Experts: Cost Savings for Sale

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Telecom Cost Management Featured Article


September 17, 2009

Telecom Cost Management Experts: Cost Savings for Sale

By Amy Tierney, TMCnet Web Editor


At a time when businesses are more budget-conscious than ever, the need to develop a firm strategy to handle telecom expenses is becoming more important. That’s why more enterprises are seeking out effective telecom cost management solutions with one goal in mind: to save money.

 
Implementing a telecom cost management system will not only help organizations be more efficient, but it will also boost employees’ productivity, the head of a Louisville, Ky.-based professional services firm told TMCnet in an interview.
 
Russ Maney (News - Alert), principal and co-founder of Xponential Group – a firm that consults on a range of technology-related needs for businesses – said one of the problems businesses face today is finding companies that address all of their cost management needs, across all of their often far-flung locations. In an interview with TMCnet – printed in full below – Maney discusses how one company, Tellennium, a telecom cost management and consulting firm, “sells cost savings” as part of its Integrated Telecom Management offering.
 
During the interview, Maney said one thing that is gaining momentum across the telecom expense management industry is wireless cost management. While a recent report found that more than half of businesses surveyed have no formal wireless cost management program, more than 20 percent of responding firms have started using such programs within the last year.
 
Our exchange follows.
 
TMCnet: With telecom expenses playing an increasingly prominent role in enterprises and SMBs whose employees are communicating constantly – whether that’s through mobile means such as netbooks, EVDO cards or smartphones, or through VoIP calling – there’s a lot of competition among specialists who can identify the best plans, carriers, and technologies for those communications. Tell us why Xponential Group recommends Tellennium for telecom cost management. What’s unique about Tellennium’s telecom cost management offerings?
 
Russ Maney: The short answer is: Because Tellennium’s value only starts with telecom cost management or “TEM.” Telecom billing errors are so pervasive these days that many TEM providers can audit a company’s telecom bills and identify some savings. Tellennium offers Integrated Telecom Management, which includes telecom cost management, but is much more. 
 
Proper integrated telecom management starts with the day-to-day telecom invoice processing and accounting. Tellennium’s clients can have all of their invoices, for all of their wired and wireless services, sent to a dedicated Tellennium post office box or e-mail box. Tellennium personnel scan or enter all of the voluminous information in these invoices into Tellennium’s Integrated Management System (TIMS). Right there is the first value: all of a company’s telecom bills, from all of its various providers and for all of its various locations worldwide, are all now in one organized, easily accessible, online database. And, TIMS can even be integrated with the client company’s own accounting systems, so this information is automatically divided into and properly allocated to all of the company’s various department, division and other accounting codes. This bill processing service alone removes a huge burden from client accounting staffs. In addition, should the client want them to, Tellennium can even pay their client company’s invoices on their clients’ behalf.
 
Then, once this information is easily accessible and analyzable, Tellennium personnel can perform in-depth audits, to make sure every single charge is proper and appropriate. Tellennium’s own client surveys show that their TIMS-enabled telecom auditing saves its clients and average of 28 percent of their total telecom spend. For a company that spends $50,000/month for all of its various telecom needs, that’s a savings of $168,000 per year.
 
However, that’s just making sure that the client company is paying the correct amounts for what the telecom services it is currently buying. What if the client company is buying the wrong services for some of its needs? Tellennium can also perform Circuit and Service Usage Analyses, Rate Structure Applicability and Contracted Rate Adherence Analyses, and Network Mapping and Design Analyses to determine what the client company should be buying to meet its needs, to optimize its telecom spend. With Optimization, audits only identify part of the value of truly intelligent and integrated telecom purchasing.
 
Nevertheless, automated bill processing – together with outstanding audit and optimization – don’t fully relieve all of a typical client company’s telecom headaches. What about the day-to-day moves, adds, and changes necessary to keep up with ever-changing workforces and business needs? Tellennium can manage those for its clients, too. TIMS can also be a repository for all of a client company’s telecom hardware inventory records, service contracts, and employee telecom assignments, for both wired and wireless communications. Hire a new salesperson and need to issue her a company cell phone? Tellennium can handle it. Transferring an employee from one location to another and need to cancel his old office phone number and set up a new one? Tellennium get it done. Data and voice carrier contracts getting ready to expire for at a particular location? Tellennium can provide advance warning and help negotiate the new contract.
 
Finally, employee needs, business demands, and telecom service offerings are constantly and perpetually changing. The inefficiencies identified by a typical telecom audit are like cockroaches. Unless you are vigilant and have a good, ongoing prevention program in place, they will creep back in, often in greater numbers than before. Tellennium performs all of the services described above on an ongoing basis, becoming their clients’ fulltime telecom managers. And, Tellennium guarantees that, because of the savings they know they will identify and the management headaches they know they will prevent, their services will never cost their clients a penny. In fact, Tellennium’s clients enjoy their worry-free services while simultaneously spending less overall on telecom.
 
TMCnet: We hear that Tellennium Group has earned recognition as one of the United States’ fastest-growing companies, and has found particular prominence in the telecom industry, as the 114th nationally ranked company in that category. It would seem that telecom cost management services walk a fine line these days – as providers such as Tellennium are asking businesses to spend money in recession in order to save money to navigate that recession. What sort of effect, if any, has this down economy had on Tellennium’s business?
 
Maney: If anything, the recession has been good for Tellennium. This is partly because they don’t ask their clients to spend a penny. They sell is cost savings – exactly what most companies are in the market for right now – and guarantee the cost savings they identify and the credits the procure from carriers on their clients’ behalf will at least – and likely much more than – cover Tellennium’s fees.
 
Tellennium’s telecom audit services find billing errors and unused services for which their client companies are still being charged and correct these errors. Tellennium’s optimization services ensure that, once these errors are corrected, their client companies are buying what they should be buying to best and most efficiently meet their needs. Tellennium bill processing and payment services save their clients the internal resources it would take them to do these tedious tasks on their own. Tellennium’s moves, add, and changes management services save their clients other internal resources it would take them to do those tedious tasks. Bottom line, saying that you will save an average of 28 percent of your telecom spend, be relieved of your telecom management headaches, and sleep well knowing your telecom spending and infrastructure optimized going forward is very attractive message in today’s economy, as shown by Tellennium’s rapid growth.
 
TMCnet: We already touched on the role that mobile communications – whether that’s through WiFi (News - Alert) that leverages VPNs, smartphones that enable e-mail communications or mobile VoIP communications – are playing in SMBs and enterprises. Talk to us about the percentage of Tellennium’s business that’s wireless-based. What’s the future of wireless expense management as a portion of the larger telecom cost management field, in Tellennium’s view?
 
Maney: Overall, spending on wireless costs are increasing and becoming a much larger percentage of nearly every company’s telecom spend – overtaking wire line services spending in many cases. Therefore, wireless cost management is a rapidly growing portion of the overall telecom expense management industry. However, despite this recent rapid growth, telecom expense management providers' wireless management expertise and their focus on it still lags their wire line management expertise and focus. According to the Aberdeen (News - Alert) Group, 52 percent of enterprises have no formal wireless cost management program and another 21 percent have a program that is less than a year old.
 
For Tellennium, the percentage of its business that is wireless cost management is typically equal to each client’s spend on wireless, since Tellennium seeks to optimize its clients’ entire telecom spends, for data, voice, video, hardware, software and services, whether they be wireless or wireline. Merely focusing on one aspect of a company’s telecom spend, even if it is a large and ever-increasing category like wireless spending, will miss opportunities to optimize the entire infrastructure. For example, in many cases, wireless technology spending should be increased, to save even more money on wire line services. The future isn’t on wireless expense management. It is on Integrated Telecom Management, where all technologies new and old are used collectively in the ways that provide the best overall value.
 
TMCnet: What sort of expense reduction can Tellennium guarantee? Just how is that achieved?
 
Maney: Tellennium’s guarantee is simple: At a minimum, its client companies’ net cost for Tellennium’s services will be zero. As in, whatever savings Tellennium identifies will at least pay for (and likely greatly exceed) the cost of Tellennium’s services. Of course, the savings enjoyed by Tellennium’s clients vary by company. Nevertheless, on average, across all of Tellennium’s clients, it saves clients 28 percent of their (pre-Tellennium) telecom spend.
The savings come from several areas:
  • Identified and eliminated service and equipment provider billing errors
  • Service provider credits for cancelled services that providers continued to bill for
  • Optimized and right-sized future telecom purchases
  • Avoided internal bill processing, accounting and payment costs
  • Avoided moves, adds, and changes internal management costs and external fees
TMCnet: It stands to reason, given the economies of scale, that enterprises have more discretionary funds for services such as telecom cost management. What is Tellennium’s sweet spot in terms of client size? What is the company’s value proposition, and how does that differ, if at all, for prospective clients of different sizes?
 
Maney: Tellennium’s sweet spot in terms of client size is actually smaller than other providers whose services approach Tellennium’s in breadth and depth. The typical Tellennium client spends $50,000 or more on total telecom expenses – and that means for everything: wire line data, voice, and video; wireless; equipment; services; maintenance; management; etc. However, they will serve clients who spend as little as $25,000 month in total telecom expenses.
 
Regardless, Tellennium’s value proposition doesn’t vary. The provide Integrated Telecom Management, to remove the entire telecom management burden from their clients, maximize their savings, and optimize their spending going forward. This includes: 
  • Telecom auditing and expense management
  • Telecom infrastructure and spending optimization
  • Invoice processing, accounting and payment
  • Moves, adds and changes management, and
  • Independent consulting

Amy Tierney is a Web editor for TMCnet, covering unified communications, telepresence, IP communications industry trends and mobile technologies. To read more of Amy's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Amy Tierney


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