Telecom represents a significant expense for most organizations. To control and reduce that expense, organizations must understand how they are spending their telecom budget. Veramark has been helping their customers do just that for more than 25 years.

 

Veramark is a leading provider of Telecom Expense Management (TEM) solutions that enable organizations to manage and reduce expenses for voice, data and wireless services through a combination of audit services, consulting and software.

 

The publicly-traded, Rochester, NY company, has 85 employees. President and CEO Tony Mazzullo said the company’s modest size belies its impact in the TEM industry. “With 3,700 customer organizations under maintenance and using our solutions, we’re one of the largest telecom expense management companies out there.”

 

Veramark solutions also have a big impact on the bottom line. “Our customers realize between a 2 percent and 25 percent reduction of their monthly service charges,” Mazzullo said. “For our larger customers, that equates to millions of dollars a year in positive ROI.”

 

Mazzullo, who joined Veramark in January, is an expert on developing technology that generates ROI. He spent 25 years managing successful software companies, including two that he founded.

 

“Today, companies are looking for holistic solutions to their business challenges and telecom is no exception,” Mazzullo said. “Our customers want integrated solutions that maximize savings over the entire lifecycle of telecom services, carrier contracts, devices and infrastructure.”

 

Veramark TEM solutions include telecom procurement and provisioning, invoice processing and payment, asset and inventory management, and wireless management. The greatest value, Mazzullo notes, is obtained by combining these services in an integrated solution that optimizes resources and business process efficiencies.

 

To illustrate, Mazzullo cites a TEM solution that Veramark developed for a large U.S.-based retail organization with an annual telecom services budget of $150 million, “Our solution saved the company $5.7 million during the first 12 months. That’s a 3.8 percent reduction,” he said.

 

The savings were realized by identifying and eliminating services that were not being used, negotiating for cost-savings programs and volume discounts, optimizing multiple individual programs for voice and wireless, and by identifying and resolving billing errors.

 

When performing an initial inventory of services and expenses – typically the first step in Veramark’s TEM solution – Veramark consultants investigate and document telecom assets, invoices, and service usage patterns through interviews or other means.

 

“One thing we look for is unused assets,” Mazzullo said. “For example, if the organization is paying for a trunk line that is not being used, it can be eliminated.”

 

Some customers have hundreds of mobile phones and have great difficulty managing them, Mazzullo said. Veramark will evaluate service usage vs. service plans and billing, so customers can adjust usage to the plan or switch to another plan that is more cost effective.

 

Invoice processing and payment services also deliver a high return on investment, Mazzullo said. “By automating invoice receipt, validation, dispute management, and the approval and payment process, customers reduce labor costs and processing errors, eliminate overpayments, and gain valuable usages information that can be used in future contract negotiations – another area of huge potential savings,” he said.

 

Companies pay from $2,000 to $2 million for Veramark’s TEM solutions, depending on the size of the organization and the range of software functionality and services required, Mazzullo said. “Veramark’s solutions are modular and scalable,” Mazzullo said. “We provide cost-effective solutions for organizations of any size, from small companies that need a simple call analytics solution at a single location, to global enterprises that need integrated invoice, asset, and service management across multiple locations.”

 

Mazzullo sees the future of TEM in “communications intelligence” – essentially business intelligence for unified communications. “As unified communications continues to propagate across corporate, government and educational markets, so will the demand for solutions that capture communications data from diverse systems and translate it into actionable information,” said Mazzullo. “Veramark is poised to meet this demand.”