Telecom Expense Management Article

Five Feature Sets Essential to Any TEM Solution

As companies throughout the global marketplace continue to implement communication platforms that support connectivity throughout the enterprise, managing a number of different vendors, services, and plans is often a necessary evil. To ensure such management is able to control spending, telecom expense management (TEM) is necessary.

Simply implementing a TEM solution is not enough; the enterprise must select a solution that enables it to continue with day-to-day communications without interruptions. To ensure this overall goal is met, the enterprise should look for five broad features that will allow for the creation of a comprehensive, complete system for managing telecommunications expenses.

A Single Unified Platform

The management of wireline and mobile services with a single, unified platform will ensure that the business keeps track of mobile phones and services in addition to the traditional or IP-based PBX. Business phone systems in operation today include cell phones and other mobile devices, making this type of management a requirement.

Workflow Orders, Inventory and Invoices

A key component of any telecom expense management system is inventory. With this telecom expense management function, the business has the necessary visibility into all telecom assets. The ability to monitor and track workflow orders, inventory, and invoices ensures the company can track what it has to ensure the TEM solution functions properly.

Mobile Policy Implementation

By enabling the company to implement a mobile policy, it can better keep track of use among all employees. By communicating its usage policies for mobile devices to all users, it enables the company to better keep in compliance with internal and external regulatory issues. For instance, if an employee goes beyond the allotted roaming minutes, management is alerted by the TEM system.

Auditing and Optimization

Two key components of TEM are auditing and optimization. The initiation of periodic audits of all assets is essential to telecom expense management. Such a system is also used to optimize service contracts and asset allocation to minimize costs and maximize efficiency. When auditing and optimization is easily completed within the system, TEM produces a strong ROI.

Multiple Currencies and Vendors

As with any global company, multiple currencies are common and the TEM system must be able to track spend in different regions of the world where different currencies are used. Assets and services provisioned from many different vendors must also be tracked or the TEM cannot deliver the anticipated value to the enterprise.

The TEM solutions available today are more robust and sophisticated than every before, but a lot of flash and fun features cannot replace the measurable benefit the solution must provide if any of these five are missing. It is important to remember that in order to gain any value at all from a TEM system, it must encompass the five feature sets listed here. When these five sets are maximized within the enterprise, the true benefits of TEM can be realized.