With another calendar year coming to a close, the wireless market is certainly one industry worth recapping. As the wireless evolution continues to progress at a rapid pace, consequently changing the way we work and play, it is more important than ever to stay on top of the mobile trends happening today. However, with a wireless plan implemented whether for a consumer or business, another aspect of management becomes equally as important: wireless expense management.
Wireless expense management (WEM) provider OneCall Manage, specializes in wireless management and provides a WEMaaS solution that completely automates the management of mobile devices and related expenses to global and domestic businesses. The company’s unique solution cuts organizations’ wireless costs by 20 percent of more in a fraction of the time as other WEM providers.
As 2012 is upon us, now is the perfect opportunity for OneCall to capitalize on the decisions that were successful in 2011 and continue to improve its offering in the New Year. TMCnet recently had the opportunity to catch up with the wireless management provider to reflect on 2011 and look forward into its predictions for the New Year. Read the full exchange below.
What do you see as being the biggest wireless and wireless management/advancements this past year?
The biggest advancement in wireless management is wireless management as a service. The availability of WEM as an on-demand, cloud-based service radically changes the pain/benefit ratio for customers. With conventional implementation models for WEM, you had to spend a lot of money, invest a lot of effort, and wait a long time to achieve any benefits. And, even then, the benefits were uncertain—so you were always at risk of losing your money, effort and time for nothing.
With WEMaaS, customers can assess potential benefits before they start spending money, time and effort. This eliminates risk and incentivizes telecom managers up and down the market to really start getting smarter about how they manage mobility—not just to save money, but to better leverage mobility as a platform for substantially improving the overall performance of the business.
What advancements were you able to capitalize on technologically in 2011?
For OneCall Manage, it was really a combination of existing technologies such as Java and Flash that we were able to leverage in an entirely new way to give customers the flexibility to “slice and dice” their wireless invoices online however they want to. This completely flexible online invoice reporting capability gives telecom managers unprecedented insight into their wireless spend so they can control costs, better align plans to user needs, accurately allocate LOB budgets and much more. It really enables telecom managers to make the kind of fact-based decisions they could never make before.
How do you see mobility in the workplace changing the way we work and do business?
This may not be the most diplomatic answer, but it doesn’t really much matter how we or anyone else claims to see the impact of wireless on the workplace. The fact is that we have no idea what changes are going to take place. The only thing we can say for certain is that the magnitude of that impact is going to be tremendous. So our job at OneCall Manage isn’t so much to envision any particular impact on the workplace. It is to make absolutely sure that no matter what the impact may be, our customers will absolutely be able to cope with it from a governance, risk and compliance management perspective. That way, they can capitalize on whatever positive trends come out of wireless in the next few years—while fully mitigating any potential and/or unexpected downsides.
What are your predictions for 2012 for the wireless expense management market?
We think we are going to see the continuing evolution of WEM from just a way to try and save some money on the monthly bill to a real decision support system that, as its core, transforms those monthly bills in a query-able database. Basically, your invoice becomes a window into user behaviors and usage trends—allowing you to treat wireless the way you would manufacturing, sales, marketing and every other critical aspect of your business. Telecom and LOB managers simply have to get more strategic about wireless, and the WEM market has a central part to play in that achieving that kind of strategic management.
What can we look forward to from OneCall Manage in 2012?
Without tipping our hand too much, OneCall is going to continue to expand our offerings to help customers optimize the day-to-day business value they get from their investments in wireless. This means more than just offering the industry’s best WEMaaS solution. It also means delivering integrated help desk and device management capabilities. Customers don’t want functional silos and they don’t want to enter into relationships with too many vendors. So anything we can do to make their lives simpler will definitely be part of our plans.
Does your company find social media to be a benefit in reaching out to your customers and starting discussions? If so, why?
Yes. If you haven’t already met our mystery blogger, Xavier Monet, we strongly encourage you to do so. You can visit his blog here or friend him on Facebook. It’s not only a great way to tap into the thought leadership at OneCall Manage but also a great way to interact with your peers in the wireless space.
Stefanie Mosca is a Managing Editor for TMCnet, with a particular focus in wireless technologies as well as mobile and IP communications. She holds a master's degree in journalism from Quinnipiac University and a bachelor's degree in communication from the University of New Haven. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page or follow her on Twitter (News - Alert) @stefaniemosca.
Edited by Jamie Epstein