Telecom
Expense Management, once only the practice of the few large companies
who had an exceptionally large fleet of mobile devices, has become a
necessary practice for every enterprise. TEM helps address the
complicated demands placed on businesses by the ever-increasing use of
mobile devices by employees across all job descriptions.
wireless expense management
As
mindWireless has watched TEM morph and accelerate over the last 20
years we have seen this best-practice adopted with varying levels of
efficiency achieved.
Fortunately
today, there is a wealth of information and data on the best custom fit
of telecom expense management for specific enterprises.
The
sheer number of communication channels between companies and their
employees, their customers and partners, as well as the volume of
information they exchange, is exponentially increasing year-to-year.
Workforces are increasingly more mobile and more distributed due to
globalization and telecommuting capabilities. The spread of consumer
mobile technologies has resulted in customers driving the development of
new business models, including online and mobile commerce, which must
be “always on” and responsive
to
customer needs. The “consumerization of IT” is real and must be
reckoned with, mobile devices are no longer being sneaked into cubicles
and board rooms, as smart-devices are now the business status-quo.
A
fully functioning TEM program must take a holistic approach to managing
the cost and usage of mobile telecommunications assets and services, as
well as related processes, in order to maximize efficiency and minimize
the costs associated with managing the corporate mobile environment. A
comprehensive telecomm expense management strategy must carefully
consider and bring together the best fit of technology, processes,
people and policies to achieve success.
enterprise mobility management
The
end-goal of TEM is to gain the fullest-framed picture of the entire
mobile spend spectrum across business units, carriers, and service
types. With such a view management is able to control processes such as
invoice management, inventory updates, order placement, and contract
validation. Organizations can then and only then bring extensive
telecomm-spend under their control and achieve significant savings.
The Basics of Telecomm Expense Management
The
need for businesses to manage an internal mobile fleet is gaining
importance every day, so arguably every company can benefit from
starting a TEM program.
While
the art of telecomm expense management encompasses many activities,
there are two prime areas of initial focus that can bring significant
value to the surface: inventory management and invoice management.
Inventory Management
Responsible
and thoughtful companies strive to ensure that they are paying for
exactly the right assets and services. Success or failure in this
endeavor hinges on knowledge of exactly what their inventory comprises.
This can be one of the most challenging activities for an enterprise to
independently achieve, particularly for companies that are either
expanding rapidly into more locations and hiring more employees or
contracting and shutting down services. In addition, many companies rely
on cumbersome manual processes to maintain and update their inventory.
The double-edged nature of success and growth can be seen here when a
mobile fleet is involved: a growing company necessitates TEM work.
A
mobile inventory should provide granular intelligence about each asset
by location, service type and business unit. This inventory cannot be
static either; the data repository must be dynamically updated to ensure
accuracy. A well-maintained, centralized and accurate mobile inventory
(1) provides full-spectrum visibility of the mobile-telecom environment,
(2) facilitates better usage analytics and bill validation, and (3)
helps identify opportunities for optimization of costs and deployment
design.
Invoice Management
Ignorance
of mobile spend is extremely common among large companies. This is
partly due to the fact that they are the unfortunate recipients of
hundreds, sometimes thousands, of invoices monthly for their mobile
telecom assets and services. Keeping an accurate and up-to-date
inventory of telecom assets and services is a constantly moving target;
there are thousands of corporate rate plans; and most carrier contracts
involve complex terms and conditions. As such, invoices can be tens to
hundreds of pages long depending on the type of asset or service. Of
course, this makes manual processing an extremely cumbersome and
expensive task.
In
addition, carriers have confusingly large billing systems and invoice
formats, making the invoice management process even more tedious. The
large volume and complexity of telecomm bills makes it difficult to
normalize, aggregate and analyze expenses. In short, carriers are not to
be relied on or trusted with sole responsibility over a company’s
invoice management.
Efficient,
third-party-aided invoice analysis gives companies the ability to
conduct accurate audits to ensure on-time payments, reduction of late
fees, detection of billing errors, and early discovery of erroneous
charges, as well as identification of opportunities for long-term cost
optimization. Enterprises that employ appropriate technologies to
automate invoice acquisition, loading and tracking (and facilitate
efficient approval processes) can ensure accurate and cost-effective
end-to-end invoice management—as well as gain better visibility across
their mobile assets and services.
Next Level TEM
Telecomm
expense management is a continuous and repetitious life-cycle process,
efficiency increases the longer it is in operation. With TEM there is
substantially more value to be gained by enlarging the program to
include other key telecom activities and introducing best practices.
These activities include sourcing and contract
management, ordering and provisioning management, expense management and advanced mobile expense and device management.
Sourcing and Contract Management
Another
key process in which companies can see dividends via
improvement-of-practices is to bring greater discipline to management of
sourcing and contracting for telecom assets and services. In emergent
TEM organizations, sourcing may be done by procurement generalists with
moderate expertise in the mobile category. In today’s modern mobile
landscape there is the reality of geographically-dispersed carriers and
contracts with little oversight over enterprise-wide telecom spend,
resulting in little consolidation activity. With more advanced
organizations, sourcing will be done by procurement specialists with
moderate experience in mobile sourcing. They will have better visibility
into overall spend by type of service, and will undertake some
competitive bidding among carriers for larger geographies. Typically, a
mature TEM organization will have a dedicated, specialist
telecommunications sourcing team in place with a deep understanding of
enterprise-wide telecom spend by carrier, geography, and type of
service. A prospering sourcing practice allows enterprises to secure the
best possible contracts with carriers offering the most advantageous
rates, and terms and conditions.
Ordering and Provisioning Management
Lack
of automation makes it arduous to implement custom approval work-flows
and processes which address the specific needs of each internal
organization and provide timely status updates to ensure end-user
satisfaction. In reasonably advanced organizations, this function is
more streamlined, where some mobile-procurement activity is managed in
an automated system, order approvals are tracked via email and there are
some help desk services provided to support the ordering and
provisioning process. More developed organizations take a best practices
approach to this function, assigning a specific mobile services team,
utilizing a multi-tiered product and service catalog and an online
telecom portal for entering new orders and tracking status. Approvals
are automated with customized work-flows, and managed help desk services
are available for additional end-user support. One of the key benefits
to this approach is ensuring that new orders and terminations directly
modify the inventory to keep it current on a day-to-day level. In
addition, enterprises can glean precious business intelligence to
identify delays and take corrective action to expedite the process.
The
best way to approach the improvement of a TEM program requires better
management of ordering and provisioning. This entails ordering and
setting up mobile services and assets. In many early stage TEM
organizations, this function is undertaken by a generalist procurement
department using manual processes, providing minimal provisioning
support.
Telecom Expense Management
Expense Management
Managing
end-user and business unit usage entails appraisal of invoice data and
employing call accounting practices to enable the allocation of mobile
costs to designated departments. This ensures organizational
accountability while identifying and reducing inappropriate mobile usage
and potential fraudulent usage. In advanced TEM organizations with
standardized processes, the intelligence acquired can also allow
department managers to manage and temper usage based on benchmark
information. Dispute management is the process by which organizations
can challenge erroneous charges and recover fees from carriers.
Advanced Mobile Expense and Device Management
The
exponential growth of mobile devices and their usage in the enterprise
has made it apparent that special attention must to be paid to the
management of mobile devices and wireless networks. Moreover, recent
trends in the industry, such as the increasing practice of “Bring Your
Own Device (BYOD)” are multiplying the management, data governance and
security concerns of enterprise IT managers. Real-life implementation of
BYOD programs are showing that more management is needed and not less.
As such, enterprises need forward-looking mobile expense and device
management systems and solutions to manage, track and optimize their
mobile and wireless spend while ensuring that corporate mobile policies
are enforced. To achieve these goals, companies must centralize the
ordering and provisioning activity and introduce appropriate approval
processes to streamline the ongoing management of mobile usage. This can
be achieved by using an online wireless portal that is tied to
corporate approved catalogs which efficiently integrates standardized
approval workflows. Wireless portals allow self-service ordering and
tracking of mobile assets and provide managerial visibility and control
of usage.
Other Important Needs
Companies
also need to address growing end-user needs with the support of help
desk services, which will help increase the productivity of end-users.
Knowledgeable,
friendly help desk support can be the difference between resolution of
an issue and spiraling inefficiency. In addition, enterprises should
evaluate adopting Mobile Device Management (MDM). MDM solutions assist
IT and app security policy management by accelerating time-to-resolution
for mobile device issues, providing support for individual-liable
(BYOD) and corporate-liable device management, separating and securing
personal and corporate data on the device, and through enforcement of
corporate mobile policies by controlling employee expenses and abuse.
5
elecom Expense Management
Enterprise Mobile Strategy Management
According
to a recent IDC study, worldwide smart phone shipments are forecast to
grow 40% year over year with more than 1.0 billion units shipped this
year alone. Two years ago, the worldwide smart phone market barely
shipped half a billion units for the first time, to double that number
in just two years highlights the universality that smart phones have
achieved. Not only are mobile devices proliferating at an unprecedented
rate, but their pervasiveness has changed the way consumer-employees
behave and businesses must respond to remain efficient and agile. Mobile
is fundamentally changing the way business is done as both customers
demand new commerce models from their vendors and employees demand more
flexibility from their employers with BYOD policies. This change
requires enterprises to “rethink mobile”. Enterprises need to manage
their mobile devices, including BYOD, to ensure both data governance for
security and end-user support for productivity. Businesses need to
devise and execute on comprehensive mobile strategies to ensure that
they can take advantage of advanced wireless technologies.
Summary: Benefits of Best-in-Class TEM
Companies
with strong telecom expense management practices gain greater oversight
and control over the wireless lifecycle spend, allowing them to
streamline their mobile operations and dramatically reduce costs.
- Lower Costs – Control rapidly increasing mobile and network spending.
- Gain
Visibility – Gain a holistic view of the mobile lifecycle across
business units, carriers and services including contracts, invoices and
inventory.
- Optimize Networks – Optimize mobile communication networks for reduced costs and improved service.
- Manage Mobility – Proactively manage mobile devices and corporate wireless costs for optimized savings and policy compliance.
With
over 20 years of accrued wireless management experience, mindWireless
is well equipped to face any and all challenges in the ever-changing
world of Telecomm Expense Management. Whether it is procurement,
inventory management, mobile device management, spend-optimization or
managed help desk support, mindWireless is the industry leader in
getting businesses back to work.