Telecom Expense Management

TEM or Telecom Expense Management is now on the agenda of many Finance, IT and Purchasing departments.
They want to reduce telecom costs through telecom audit, improved telecom bill management,
better telecom contract management, telecom inventory management, timely telecom reports,
tariff and usage optimization.

TEM gives you back control over your telecom expenses and environment.

Without proper oversight organizations will invariably overpay for telecom services through billing errors, paying for unused services or by paying uncompetitive rates. With Telecom Expense Management you take back control over your telecom expenses and environment. 


Telecom Expense Management: get visibility, control and savings.

Industry analysts like Gartner, Aberdeen, Forrester and others identified already years ago voice, data, and wireless costs, typically a company's third largest non-payroll expense, as a frontier with vast potential for significant expense reduction opportunities. This potential stems from the lack of visibility into and control of communication expenses attributed to complex contracts, distributed inventory, and erroneous telecom operator bills.

Why Telecom Expense Management?

Telecom Expense Management began due to a need to control monthly costs associated with the use of fixed phone lines. Now, TEM has evolved into a management system which helps not only with managing telecom services but also mobile services. In many ways, TEM has come to incorporate elements of both Telecom and Technology Expense Management, often unified into one platform depending on the vendor. You can do a variety of things with TEM if you choose the right solution, and making the right decision can allow you to have all of your data and assets managed for you in one platform.

A few vendors, such as Convergence, will manage much more for you than just telecom. This includes IT, cloud management, Machine to Machine (M2M), and many other assets. 

Communication expenses are now growing at a worrying pace of 10% to 15% annually on average. This growth not only comes from the rapid increase in mobile and data communications, offsetting the decline in fixed voice costs, but also from the rapid adoption of new services such as conferencing, video communications, internet services, employee home office & mobile connections, VoIP, WiFi and messaging services and Unified Communications and Collaboration Services.

Challenges in Telecom Expense Management

The management of large telecommunications expenses has historically lagged behind the changes in telecommunications technologies.

Specifically, Telecom Expense Management (TEM) capabilities haven’t kept pace with the volume of services consumed, the volume of invoices received, and the complexities in allocating these costs enterprise-wide. Add to this, the fact that most organizations are not receiving optimal rates and services from the rapidly changing telecom operator community, and the problems typically encountered include:

  • Billing inaccuracies
  • Increased labor costs
  • Numerous inefficient carrier relationships
  • Higher than necessary rates
  • Time and resource intensive cost allocations
  • Underutilized/excess inventory
  • Lack of integration into enterprise systems
  • Incomplete understanding of telecommunications costs

Telecom Expense Management solutions

TEM solutions address the full telecom service life cycle based on the Convergence Telecom Expense Management framework.

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They enable companies to better plan telecommunications spend, source optimum contracts, ensure that they buy services against those contracts, monitor user and vendor compliance, provide telecom bill audit and accuracy, and analyze overall spend for ongoing improvements.

Solutions may include, but are not limited to: call accounting, auditing, usage reporting, cost center allocations, spend analysis, process analysis, benchmark studies, inventory analysis, requirement analysis, sourcing, contract negotiating, contract compliance, rate plan optimization, technology and architecture optimization and supplier performance measurement.

Utilizing Convergence’s professional services and technology platform to automate the previously labor-intensive TEM processes, organizations can now operate an automated “procure to pay” process for their enterprise-wide telecommunications operations. As a result, Convergence clients track, manage, and more effectively deploy telecommunications resources and support services across their entire enterprise.

Telecom Expense Management (TEM) provides optimization and benchmarking of your Telecom Tariffs, Dynamic Audit of your telecom invoices, optimization of telecom business processes and improvements in call behavior among other cost saving benefits, resulting in direct savings on your telecom expenses in a 20% to over 40% range.

In fact, Convergence clients experience rapid return on their TEM investment with ROI results in excess of 500%, and they develop the sustained ability to better manage and optimize their telecommunications resources.


TEM: A well defined concept with a growing functional footprint

The practice of TEM encompasses the business processes conducted by IT and finance departments to acquire provision and support corporate telecommunications assets. Stated otherwise, telecom expense management is the build-out of services, or the acquisitions of third-party services, to manage the supply chain for telecommunications.  

At the heart of any TEM solution is an automated software platform used by the business or by an external service provider managing a company's telecom invoices and assets. This platform ties into relevant business applications and software (for example, enterprise resource planning - ERP, customer relationship management - CRM, supply chain management - SCM, HR and call accounting) to facilitate the management and payment of carrier invoices. Gartner describes the component services of TEM as:

  • Sourcing — What users buy and at what price.
  • Ordering, provisioning, support — Ensuring the use of structured workflows and authorizations for the commissioning and deployment of telecom assets. This may include help desk operations for ordering, provisioning and break/fix depot repair.
  • Inventory — Scalable, flexible data repository of telecom assets and asset management of mobile devices.
  • Invoice management — Invoice reconciliation (that is, invoice, inventory and contract). This includes the receipt of invoices and treasury services for payment.
  • Usage — The ability to optimize service contracts, track consumption of telecom assets and allocate them to, for example, business units, departments and individuals.
  • Dispute — Ensuring the recovery of credits and managing short-pay and no-pay decisions.
  • Business intelligence — The ability of departments, such as IT and finance, and of business units to generate data that can be acted on. This is achieved by maximizing the value of information from the supporting TEM service components, and drawing on complementary business applications (for example, ERP, HR and SCM).

Additionally, Gartner defines TEM solutions in 3 categories, which are tracked in the MarketScope published on a regular base:

  1. TEM application — The customer acquires applications to improve self-management (applications may be vendor-hosted).
  2. TEM managed service — The customer is primarily self-managed; however, customers gain access to SaaS, and invoice data entry is managed by the vendor.
  3. BPO — This is vendor-managed. The minimal service to be considered BPO includes vendor invoice management, inventory management and dispute management. For mobile environments, this includes ordering and provisioning and generally the most-predominant outsourced function.

Telecom Expense Management

 

 

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The assets managed include local and long-distance services, mobile circuits and transport for all corporate facilities, offices and remote workers to enable communications between employees, customers and partners. These assets may include cellular and desktop phones, as well as calling cards.

While Gartner does not include in TEM solutions element management for telecommunications infrastructure such as PBXs and key telephone systems, Internet Protocol telephony equipment, and other voice communications infrastructure and states that element management is covered in a typical network IT engagement, Convergence does include infrastructure expenses in its TTEM offerings.

Business intelligence is key to TEM's future, to provide analytics to improve forecasts on spending for technology migrations, support sourcing strategies and negotiations with providers, price benchmarking, and plan usage scenarios for enterprise telecom services.Thanks to its origins in Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence, Convergence’s TEMExpert Business Intelligence solution provides in the most powerful analytics in the TEM market.


Introducing TEM

The practice of TEM encompasses the business processes conducted by IT, procurement and finance departments to acquire provision and support corporate dispersed IT and Communications assets. The practice has evolved in recent years from Telecom Expense Management towards Technology Expense Management. Stated otherwise, technology expense management is the build-out of services, or the acquisitions of third-party services, to manage the supply chain for IT and telecommunications. 

TEM services enable enterprises' IT, procurement and finance departments to order, provision, support and manage costs of large-scale corporate communications, associated IT services and their inventories (such as fixed and mobile telephony and data, cloud license tracking, and loT connectivity). TEM services also include business intelligence and reporting suitable for supporting C-Level strategic decision making.

Technology Expense Management

Organizations are adding technology services and IT assets at an ever increasing pace. This makes it challenging for IT executives to ensure end-to-end visibility, optimize usage, and minimize inefficiencies. Everything from storage to computing and infrastructure is offered as a service, which limits IT’s control and visibility. The risk of increased  spend overruns, reduced profitability, and a significant impact on the bottom line are addressed by Technology Expense Management. TEM  helps drive visibility and control, optimizes inventory and ultimately reduces costs.

Cloud Expense Management

Cloud services such as Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS), together defined as XaaS promisse near-instant productivity and capacity. Organizations have however little visibility into or control over their cloud solutions’ true cost. Self-provisioning tools, often without IT’s knowledge may result in increases in productivity. But provisioned services may become redundant, contracts left unmanaged or unoptimized, and businesses may be unable to manage or audit the lifecycle and usage of these services. Enter Cloud Expense Management.

Telecom Expense Management

Telecom Expense Management is a mature practice for managing Telecom Expenses. Convergence is an European leader in providing the software and technology-based services that provide any size enterprise and not-for-profit organization as well as government with razor-sharp visibility, transparency and control of their organization-wide Fixed Voice, Mobile Voice and Mobile Data, Data Communications expenses, telecom infrastructure investments and telecom maintenance costs. 


Technology Expense Management provides in solutions that increase visibility, improve management and streamline control of enterprise-wide costs for connectivity, mobility, hardware, software and cloud services.

In most organizations, finance, IT, and Telecom support teams simply do not have the time, resources or the necessary experience and tools to effectively manage monthly technology expenses on an ongoing basis.

"CIOs and other technology managers face turbulent times where both economic and accounting challenges will drive the need to control costs, either as part of a sustained cost-reduction effort or to act as responsible financial stewards for digitally-drive businesses."

TEM Market Analyst

Our Experience

Convergence Analytics has over 15 years of experience in Telecom Expense Management. We executed over 250 projects with over 100 customers and achived a 99% success rate.  From a strong IT background, we use proprietary and third party software to consistently provide efficiencies and savings with Managed Services and Professional Services. We are serving large national and global customers and work with US, South American and Asian partners to support their global customers with our international experience across EMEA countries.

Our Philosophy

We love to use technology to create value for our customers and bring simplicity where complexity reigns. We bring clarity, control, compliance, and cost savings across our customer’s global technology expenditures. We leverage decades of experience in Data Management and Business Intelligence to provide data integration and expense reporting and even shadow billing solutions to help our customers get a grip on technology expenses. But we go the extra mile and provide technology enabled solutions that produce actionable savings. In our Business Consulting solutions we often work on a contingency basis, which assures our customers of guaranteed exceptional ROI results from their TEM initiatives. Through best practices, spend visibility and automation, we keep the digital footprint under control and cost-effective.


Convergence Analytics Solutions

Telecom Expense Management (TEM)

Telecom Expense Management Solutions enable companies to better plan telecommunications spend, source optimum contracts, ensure that they buy services against those contracts. In addition Telecom Expense Management monitors user and vendor compliance, provide telecom bill audit and accuracy, and analyze overall spend for ongoing improvements.

Mobile Services Management (MMS/MDM)

We take care of your Mobile Services Management. Our services dramatically reduce the amount of time your organization spends managing mobile services and devices. In addition to lowering your mobile expenses this service also lowers your operational expenses in managing the mobility lifecycle from sourcing to procurrement to device management to helpdesk.

TEM Audit & Recovery

Identify and recover billing errors and overcharges for your technology and telecom services as well as unnecessary services and excess rates. The scope of an audit engagement depends upon customer requirements. At a minimum, it consists of a detailed validation through shadow billing of both fixed and mobile services, equipment charges, taxes and surcharges.

TEM Strategic Advisory Services

The Convergence Advisory Services Consulting solution helps organizations to achieve substantial savings from Technology Expense Management solutions and processes. Convergence experts help your team to optimize expenses incurred from communications services, cloud infrastructure and subscription-based technology services. Sourcing is a key part of the service portfolio..

Cloud Management (CEM)

Cloud Expense Management has become the next frontier in managing Technology Expenses. Shadow IT and decentralized, self-service cloud services easuliy get out of control. Teams are setting up their own cloud services, bypassing the IT department and  organizational budget controls, while putting sensitive data at risk of breach, causing compliance risks and already lead to huge cost inefficiencies in most organisations.

IT Asset & Cost Management

Organizations are under pressure to keep track of actual IT costs and the business value of IT investments. Visibility into the cost of services is challenging and control difficult as financial data is scattered across the organization. IT Asset and Cost Management keeps track of the financial costs. It provides insight into what is being spent, and where and why costs are being incurred through analytics and reporting. 

Internet of Things (IoT)

IoT represents a new challenge in Technology Expense Management. It helps in process optimization, better production planning and control, supply chain restructuring, efficient asset utilization, product quality improvement, faster service delivery and customer service satisfaction. While it brings cost efficiencies, organizations need to track these costs and their impact through integration in TEM programs.

Application Development

Convergence offers a comprehensive portfolio of resources for development. Whether you want to augment your in house IT staff with experienced developers, assign a development project or outsource to our outsourcing service in SouthEastern Europe, we provide a solution. Our experts will work with you to gather requirements and help to plan, design, develop and implement a custom application that fits your needs. 


Find out how Convergence Analytics solutions can help you

Learn how Convergence Analytics can help you in your Technology Expense Management journey and start saving.

Get in touch now.



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