An industry report recently released outlines telecom expense management best practices and standards for both enterprises and suppliers.

 

The Telecom Expense Management Industry Association’s report, “Developing an Exceptional TEM Program: Best Practices for Enterprises and Suppliers that Raise TEM Performance through Key Performance Indicators and Industry Standards” enumerates industry standards and key performance indicators, or KPIs.

 

TEMIA (News - Alert) is developing a series of papers on KPIs, benchmarks and standards written for enterprises, government, TEM suppliers and other organizations.

“TEMIA’s educational initiatives and focus on publishing best practices and developing KPIs demonstrates how TEM companies can influence the industry for the betterment of our clients. TEMIA is poised to build upon the successes we have achieved and help our clients’ maximize their investments by streamlining their relationships with their technology supply partners,” said Larry Foster vice president and general manager for PAETEC (News - Alert) Software Corporation, a division of PAETEC.

 

Foster also serves as president of TEMIA and chairman for the committee that focuses on standards, KPIs, metrics and benchmarks.

According to Greg McIntyre, president of Tellennium, the hard dollar benefits of telecom expense management are quite clear and easy to define.

 

“Our organization averages 28 percent in credits and savings for our clientele and 84 percent of it comes from erroneous billing/charges and services not used,” he said.

 

The soft dollar benefits include “dramatic” time savings for both finance and IT/telecom in many areas: finance; telecom invoice processing time; invoice approvals; allocation and payment; imaging, filing, archiving, and storage; IT/telecom; centralized reporting and search availability for all services and equipment; centralized move, add, change tracking; proactive notifications; and location details.

 

“Other items also include improved Sarbanes-Oxley compliancy,” McIntyre added. “Since telecom expense and the associated equipment touch so many aspects in every organization, there are enormous tangible benefits throughout every enterprise.”