Telecom Expenses

Nearly seven years ago I was introduced to the concept of automated telecom expense management (TEM). Nearly 30 years ago I was introduced to the concept of telecom billing being messed up. The question is "Why the gap in time"?

It has been widely established that any telecom bill, fixed or mobile, of any size is probably in error. The really cool part is that it is very predictable in which direction the errors are, and it is certainly not in the favor of the enterprise. Most billings from the big telecom providers are in error from 1o% to over 30% in favor of the carrier. Some larger enterprises spend north of $50 Million on voice and data transport facilities and other services. The net result is there is $5 Million plus to be had by doing a good job managing these expenses. Imagine those savings falling strait to the bottom line.

The process to achieve this used to be complex but has gotten a lot easier these days. It used to be that you had to hire a very smart person, who was a little suicidal, to look through your bills to find the errors and to argue with the carriers to get the money back. These days you can implement one of a number of software applications or sign up for a service to do the function for you ( for a rather hefty fee). The carriers have become accustom to providing the bills in electronic form, although they are not very willing to do so initially. The key is to know what your "inventory" of telecom assets looks like and then be able to match it against the actual expenses. Only those that match get paid and the rest get disputed until you get a refund. This can take many months but the money usually comes back eventually. Once the initial reconciliation is done, change control becomes very critical. One would assume that change control is part of your everyday processes so we will not dwell on this.

Telecom Expense Management (TEM) is ideal for delivery as a service (SaaS) or as a stand alone application but does need special attention to detail as billing formats vary widely among the carriers, and among each service they provide. Remember that most carrier billing systems are actually a collection of inherited applications from many decades of mergers, with very little integration. That said, it is well worth the effort with the ROI never in doubt.