The Telecom Expense Management Industry Association has released a white paper titled "Your Exceptional TEM Program: Best Practices for Inventory Management Using TEM Metrics to Improve Performance."

In this case it's perfectly fine to judge a book by its cover, as that's exactly what it gives you.

TEMIA (News - Alert) is working to establish standards and key performance indicators, or KPIs, that "can be used by managers and personnel performing operational roles at enterprises and suppliers.," company officials say.

It's their belief - with which we concur - that customers need standards that can be used to help answer such critical questions as what are the critical factors that contribute to supplier performance and a better return on investment, and "how do my results compare to best practice metrics?"

The paper also deals with such issues as what service level agreements will drive results, and how to measure the success of the TEM tool.

To start off with, an effective telecom lifecycle management program manages the full lifecycle of a telecom expense, the study finds: It focuses on eight major service domains which include inventory management and change control, sourcing, procurement and fulfillment, invoice management, expense management (including validation and optimization), usage chargeback, payment, and reporting which provides business intelligence."

That's explained in greater detail in the paper itself.

The report also provides "explanations for performance measures and specific calculations for the inventory management domain," dealing with such topics as the business goals addressed by this domain, things that can be learned from KPI performance standards and actions to address positive or negative results from each metric.

As the paper itself explains in more detail, there are two different approaches to implementing TEM programs: "One approach focuses on building an inventory first before processing invoices. The other approach begins with processing the invoices and then building the inventory working from the invoices. "

TEMIA officials say they're not advocating one approach over the other, since "both approaches have benefits."