Five Steps to Successful Telecom Expense Management Implementation
October 08, 2008
By Anuradha Shukla, TMCnet Contributor
Third-party telecom expense management (TEM) has become a very viable option for companies with call centers and wireless services that don’t have very strong organizational support and supervision. A telecom expense management system can produce a great return on investment and can be purchased for in-house use, leased as an online application, or be completely outsourced to the software provider.
There are five main steps involved with successful telecom expense management implementation: gathering telecom invoices, gathering telecom tariff and contract data, taking a complete telecom inventory, automating the process of data gathering, and finally analyzing and reporting the results, noting any anomalies.
1. Gather all telecom invoices — It is critical to collect all telecom invoices as these help companies understand what the carriers are billing them for. Telecom expense management involves taking the hundreds or thousands of paper and electronic invoices, finding all the errors, and getting credits back from the carriers.
2. Gather all telecom tariff and contract data — The second step in TEM implementation is collecting all telecom tariff and contract data to determine each specific charge. This also helps in comparing the charges with the other vendors. Companies can then choose to investigate if they don’t understand what a charge is for.
3. Take a complete telecom inventory — The telecom expense management provider is responsible for taking a complete telecom inventory that allow companies to have a complete grasp of their telecom costs.
4. Automate the process of data gathering — Companies must automate the data gathering process so that data can be fed directly into the telecom expense management system without manual data entry or other human intervention.
5. Analyze and report the results, noting any anomalies — Once the data is collected, the telecom expense management provider analyzes the information, identifies the anomalies, and reports on the areas to be corrected.
Other benefits of telecom expense management systems include providing accurate records of what equipment and services are in use, complete historical records of each inventory item, and early detection of telecom misuse, abuse and fraud. Further, telecom expense management facilitates telecom audits, and faster provisioning and troubleshooting.
To learn more about TEM, please visit the Telecom Expense Management channel on TMCnet.com, brought to you by Rivermine (News - Alert).
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Anuradha Shukla is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Anuradha’s article, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Mae Kowalke