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Mitigating The Drawbacks of Self-Service Telecom Expense Management Software

Thursday, September 9, 2010 by Nancy Peckham
In my last blog, entitled "The Benefits of On-Demand Telecom Expense Management Software," you were left with the thought that, not only are there benefits, but also potential disadvantages of on-demand telecom expense management software. This blog will outline those drawbacks and how you can mitigate them. 

Lack of security, disaster recovery and data ownership issues can be detrimental for businesses acquiring Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions of any kind. When selecting a SaaS telecom expense management provider, companies should insist on strong security protocols, disaster recovery infrastructure and ensure that the SaaS agreement includes a provision that states that the data remains the property of their organization. The data center that houses the hosted solution should be state-of-the-art, fully secure and SAS70 compliant. This will protect the confidentiality and integrity of your data and make sure that it is always accessible when you need it.

Finally! There is a cost-effective solution to address the unanswered need in the mid-market for TEM solutions. SaaS technology providers allow for the processes, tools and training to gain greater control over business telecom expenses, and at a fraction of the cost of traditional telecom expense management solutions. During the due diligence process, mid-market companies need to make sure that the SaaS application is secure, fully protected and that the end user maintains ownership of the data. If all checks out, the answer is quite obvious to the question: "To SaaS or Not To SaaS?!"

This is the last of my blog series on the topic of TEM SaaS Solutions. To read more about this topic, register for Valicom's whitepaper entitled "Can TEM SaaS Solutions Lower Your Telecom Expenses For Mid-Market Companies?" OR register to watch the streaming telecom expense management webinar sponsored by Valicom about this topic.
 

The Benefits of On-Demand Telecom Expense Management Software

Wednesday, September 8, 2010 by Nancy Peckham


In my last blog entitled "To SaaS or Not To SaaS...??," I provided just a few of the advantages of utilizing on-demand telecom expense management software. Those outlined were just the tip of the iceberg. Here are a few others.  

Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS, can be easy-to-learn and simple-to-use, while still possessing robust capabilities. Through online training and client support teams, the user can expand their use of the tool as their knowledge increases. Upgrades are installed automatically as they are rolled out, usually at no additional charge. SaaS telecom expense management solutions can scale up or down with the users’ volume requirements. And SaaS TEM technologies come at a much lower price point than more traditional TEM solutions. Thus SaaS is a low-cost way to access the low hanging fruit of expense reduction without the infrastructure, IT support, and high learning curve required with on-premise software.

There is also the issue of deployment time. According to recent analyst research, it can take anywhere from 8 – 10 months to implement traditional telecom expense management applications. This can be dramatically reduced to days or weeks with SaaS because of the ease of deploying a web-based solution vs. on-premise or outsourced options. Custom reporting can be easily configured and installed at any time, as the product is delivered online. In addition, SaaS tools can capture and analyze usage and fixed costs from billing and produce exceptions reports, outlining potential errors and other savings opportunities. Clearview, Valicom's self-service telecom expense management software, offers these benefits and many more! 

While there are many benefits, there are some potential drawbacks of telecom expense management software-as-a-service. To learn about these disadvantages and how you can mitigate them, register for Valicom's whitepaper entitled "Can TEM SaaS Solutions Lower Your Telecom Expenses For Mid-Market Companies?" OR register to watch the streaming telecom expense management webinar sponsored by Valicom about this topic.
 

Plugging the Hole Part Three - "I paid for what!?" Telecom Invoice Auditing

Monday, August 30, 2010 by Lacinda Athen

As we covered in Part One and Part Two, we know we need a way to create visibility into our telecom spend, and we know we need to track our inventory.   Now what......

When you're trying to manage business costs and reduce telecom expenses, a ripe place to look is at your telecom invoices.  Maybe they are just going to accounts payable, getting paid and disappearing into the cosmos.  No good.   You need to get those babies and really LOOK at them.   Otherwise, you're giving the telecom vendor a chance to run off with your money, and you're not even trying to stop them.

Forrester Research estimates that billing errors average 5% to 12% of ongoing telecom services budgets”. We would concur with that. In our 20+ years of doing telecom audits, we’ve found that over 35% of invoices have some type of error. And if you’re not watching for them, you don’t see them.

Now an experienced telecom audit team member is going to be better at this than you are, just because they've looked at 10,000 of these things, but here are some items you can look for.  
  • Does what you're being billed for match what you have? 
    (Hint, go back and look at that inventory you already set up)
     
  • Are you paying what you contracted with that vendor to pay?  This requires some legwork, but it's worth doing to make sure you get what you negotiated.  (we'll talk about telecom contract negotiation more later)
     
  • Did they charge you a setup fee you weren't supposed to pay?   The same goes for taxes or line fees or any other nonsense that shouldn't be there. 
     
  • Did you get credit for anything you noticed previously and called them about?
     
  • How about cancellations, additions, changes of service, deleted lines, etc.  This ties into telecom inventory management.  If you don't know what you have, you don't know what you should be paying for.
     
  • What about slamming and cramming?  Did you get switched to some other carrier, or is your bill full of third party services you didn't order?   We hope not, but you better check.
     
This is just the tip of the iceberg of a real deep dive telecom invoice audit.  But it's low hanging fruit and a key step in managing your telecom expenses.  It just gets harder if you have lots of monthly invoices to look at.  That's where a good TEM software or a telecom audit team could help.  Just a thought.  :) 

Next up?  Separating the wheat from the chaff... identifying the deadbeats in your budget. 



A good TEM relationship is about more than just auditing.

Thursday, August 19, 2010 by Philip Haven
For many companies, the best approach for managing telecommunications expenses and reducing costs, is to outsource the whole process to an experienced TEM consulting firm.  Often, in these engagements, the focus is primarily on auditing and cost reductions.  And while these activities are certainly paramount to an TEM project, there is another equally important side to these engagements.

Most TEM firms can achieve cost reductions and provide standard auditing services for their clients - they wouldn't be in business if they couldn't.  But only a few, such as Valicom, bring a truly unique and personalized approach to the TEM engagement.

Valicom's project teams pride themselves on learning your business and becoming a seamless extension to your staff.  Having this kind of relationship with your TEM firm means that you will realize more savings and cost reductions, while incurring less disruption to your internal processes, and enjoying a more transparent project.

So when it comes to selecting the right TEM firm to meet your needs - make sure you consider the culture aspect of the firms in question.  Finding a TEM like Valicom can go a long way to establishing a foundation for success for years to come and providing a solid shared strategy for continued cost reductions and expense management.

To SaaS Or Not To SaaS...??

Wednesday, August 18, 2010 by Nancy Peckham

To be or not to be? That is the question... What Shakespeare was contemplating with this famous quote from Hamlet, was "Is it better to live or to die?" Can this same philosophy be contemplated with the use of software-as-a-solution, or "SaaS" technology? Well, while it is not a matter of life or death, mid-market companies have experienced numerous benefits to utilizing SaaS solutions to automate various functions within their organizations.

Along with a rapid growth in cloud computing over the past few years, there are several areas where SaaS has been widely adopted by mid-market corporations seeking low costs, better management and deeper visibility into their expenses.  These areas include sales automation or CRM (Salesforce.com), web conferencing (Webex.com), web development and blogging (Wordpress) as well as other general applications, like the GoogleDocs suite. SaaS is quite new to the world of managing telecom expenses, with little awareness of its availability to the mid-market, and few telecom expense management suppliers offering it.

The utilization of SaaS telecom expense management technology can be beneficial to mid-market businesses for several reasons. SaaS eliminates the hardware, security and professional management issues and costs of running software in-house, so it’s faster to deploy, cheaper to maintain, and easier to upgrade. Using an on-demand telecom management tool, along with training on best practices, eliminates dependence on telecom providers or TEM service firms.  Companies do not need to hire an expert as their internal staff becomes the expert.

To read more about the benefits of utilizing telecom expense management software as a service SaaS for your organization, register for Valicom's whitepaper entitled "Can TEM SaaS Solutions Lower Your Telecom Expenses For Mid-Market Companies?" OR register to watch the streaming telecom expense management webinar sponsored by Valicom about this topic.

Till next time! :o)

Aim for better data instead of more data

Wednesday, August 18, 2010 by Philip Haven
When it comes performing a telecommunication expense management audit, it's often easy to get sucked into the process of constantly pursuing more and more data.  On the surface, it sounds good - more data sounds like more decision making power, right?  Not necessarily.

One of the main barriers to TEM is often time and labor.  This is in part due to the challenges related to aquiring some types of telecom data from the carriers.

It's important to review the pros and cons of the different types of data you could get from the carriers for your different services, and determine whether the advantages relative to your audit outway the costs of getting and maintaining the data.

This is a great example of the 80/20 rule in practice.  Often, 80 percent of your savings and cost reductions will come from 20 percent of your audit efforts.  Always make sure that you aren't spending too much time processing data for the less productive 80 percent.

What Deployment Models Are Used For Telecom Expense Management Solutions?

Tuesday, August 10, 2010 by Nancy Peckham
There are several models used by mid-market companies for telecom expense management. These models include manual processes performed internally, outsourced services, homegrown applications, on-demand software-as-a-solution (SaaS) solutions and on-premise vendor solutions.


 
Manual processing includes the use of spreadsheets and other labor-intensive processes to manage telecom expenses. Outsourced services involve a 3rd party that performs all or part of the end-to-end processing of telecom bills including processing and paying the invoices, auditing and analysis for savings opportunities, management of assets such as lines, circuits and devices, and providing deliverables and reports for informational purposes.

Homegrown applications include the development of an internal database to assist organizations in managing their expenses. SaaS involves providing self-serve, web-based software and back-office services that enable corporate business analysts to perform telecom expense management in-house, implementing savings opportunities themselves. On-premise solutions involve licensed software that is loaded on a server at the customer’s premises for the purposes of managing telecom costs.
 
So, what are the common approaches to managing telecom expenses today? To find out more, check out this link to my earlier blog on this topic entitled "Mid-Market Companies' Current Approach to Managing Telecom Expenses" or download Valicom's whitepaper entitled "Can TEM SaaS Solutions Lower Telecom Expense For Mid-Market Companies?" or register to stream a webinar sponsored by Valicom about this topic.

Err On the Side of Caution When Auditing Your Telecom Invoices

Thursday, July 29, 2010 by Nancy Peckham


Since the break-up of the Bell companies in the early 80s, there have been many new complex telecom technologies, services and plans and a variety of telecom providers that have entered the telecom space. With these complexities, come opportunities as well as threats for telecom users. One of the threats that has come with divestiture has been inaccurate billing, usually caused by the use of legacy billing systems designed to handle a basic, simple mix of circuits and services, and utilizing codes that were developed by the Bell companies around those services. 

As more complex, negotiated rates and services have come about with more competition, there is a propensity for errors in data entry of contracted rates and for legacy billing systems to apply the inappropriate charge, most in favor of the telecom supplier. To make matters worse, in the past 20 years, there have been numerous mergers and acquisitions among telecom vendors requiring the merging of disparate billing systems. This has dramatically exacerbated the problem.

Telecom users in North America spend a significant amount of money on telecom services and equipment. Telecom services are defined as “fixed”(also known as “wired” or “wireline”) including local, long distance/800, conference calling, wide area network (WAN) and internet; and “wireless” including cellular, blackberries, PDAs, smart phones and pagers. According to Forrester, “typically 3% to 6% of an enterprise’s gross revenues are spent on telecom services with 72% of the average North American enterprise telecom services’ budget spent on landline and 28% on wireless services.” 

These companies are challenged with the management of carrier billing that is complex and fraught with errors.  Forrester estimates that “billing errors average 5% to 12% of ongoing telecom services budgets.”  In addition, during the past 20 years of auditing telecom invoices, Valicom has found that over 35% of invoices have some type of error, discrepancy or overcharge in them. Based on this, it is prudent to err on the side of caution when auditing your telecom invoices.

To learn more about the best approaches to performing telecom audits and expense management functions for your organization, read Valicom's whitepaper entitled "Can TEM SaaS Solutions Lower Your Telecom Expenses For Mid-Market Companies?" OR go this link to download a streaming vido of the webinar sponsored by Valicom about this topic.

Cyberwarfare - How Tight is Your Ship?

Friday, July 23, 2010 by Lacinda Athen

A recent issue of The Economist,  the venerable British business publication, discussed the advancing threats from cyberwarfare.  As if IT people don't have enough to worry about, it had some interesting statistics about infected computers out there on the international grid.  Even here at home, with our higher security standards, millions of US machines are infected with something, creating mass sleeper botnets.  Botnets that nasties from overseas can use to unleash chaos on our power grids, financial databases and just about anything we rely on that's delivered via the internet.  

Here's an interesting image that shows the distribution of infected machines.  (see the whole earth map image in the article, I just included US & Europe)




As the article says "The internet was designed for convenience and reliability, not security. Yet in wiring together the globe, it has merged the garden and the wilderness. No passport is required in cyberspace. And although police are constrained by national borders, criminals roam free...  Enemy states are no longer on the other side of the ocean, but just behind the firewall. The ill-intentioned can mask their identity and location, impersonate others and con their way into the buildings that hold the digitised wealth of the electronic age: money, personal data and intellectual property."

Most of this digital mayhem is wrought through malware.  Lots and lots of malware.  Something you need to keep OFF your employees computers, wireless and mobile devices, part of which means having a good wireless policy and a mobile management plan in place. Malware can infect a smartphone almost as easily as a dekstop PC.  Here's an alarming graph of the growth of malware...



The article goes on to discuss how different governments, the US included, are amassing an army of cyberhackers to both defend our national IT infrastructure - and attack, should the need arise.

I think it's an interesting discussion, because we all know that one of IT's main concerns has always been security.  (and if it's not, it should be)   And I feel that the services we deliver play a part in that.  By implementing strong telecom expense control, it frees up IT resources for other areas, like security and business continuity.  A solid telecom inventory management solution also helps keep track of everything you have, so you can identify unused or underused machines and phones, removing them from your hardware pool before they become a problem.   And if you're not really sure whether you have a "tight ship" or not, maybe you need to reach out for some help.  A telecom audit can usually identify 30% savings or more in your annual telecom budget.  Renegotiate some contracts, get a good handle on your inventory, and then you'll really know what you have to secure. 

To read the rest of the Economist article, click here.

Gartners Outlines a "Bill of Rights" for Cloud Computing & SaaS Services

Thursday, July 22, 2010 by Lacinda Athen


With the explosive growth of cloud computing, as we've discussed before in Cloud computing to grow at 5 times rate of traditional IT, there is also growing concern about the business practices of vendors offering such services.  

Gartner recently released a list of what they feel are the "Seven Rights and Responsibilities for Cloud Computing Services".  Items that cloud computing customers and vendors should agree upon.  In my eye, they are sound, smart guidelines.  Having worked with the financial industry for years, and being a stickler for security and good business continuity practices myself, I just see common sense here.

But it's a good list to put to any telecom expense management provider you may be working with.  If your main focus is saving money through telecom expense analysis and tasks like mobile managment, you shouldn't have to spend time worrying about the security of your telecom asset and contract data.  You want to ensure the solution you choose is housed in a tightly controlled, secure environment, and that you maintain ownership of your own data.  Valicom understands all this, and addresses it in our security policies

But if you want to run this by any other vendors you use, here is the list. 
 

  1. The right to retain ownership, use and control one's own data
     
  2. The right to service-level agreements that address liabilities, remediation and business outcomes
     
  3. The right to notification and choice about changes that affect the service consumers' business processes
     
  4. The right to understand the technical limitations or requirements of the service up front
     
  5. The right to understand the legal requirements of jurisdictions in which the provider operates
     
  6. The right to know what security processes the provider follows
     
  7. The responsibility to understand and adhere to software license requirements

To read the full article, with details on the Seven Rights, visit the Gartner Newsroom.



What Are Mid-Sized Organizations Doing About Controlling Telecom Expenses?

Tuesday, July 20, 2010 by Nancy Peckham

In an earlier blog dated July 9, 2010 entitled "Top Pressures For Controlling Telecom Costs", we left you with the question: "What are mid-sized organizations doing about controlling telecom expenses?" Well here is the answer:

Not enough. Most mid-sized organizations have not deployed either internal or external telecom expense management (TEM) programs, usually because they do not have the trained staff to do it. Also, according to AOTMP
, "there is a common perception of greater effort and cost than financial gain" causing "small and medium size businesses (SMB) to shy away from implementing a TEM program." So there is a disconnect between need and solution. In trying to drive home the point, AOTMP further reports that, "the keys to a productive and financially beneficial TEM program are establishing an inventory of telecom services, features, configurations, charges and service providers,and maintaining invoice accuracy. Technology assists in unifying a TEM program.

This AOTMP research also reported the following top telecom priorities for SMBs.



So, what really are the TEM program keys to success for SMBs? You can find out by clicking on this link to register for Valicom's whitepaper entitled "Can TEM SaaS Solutions Lower Your Telecom Expenses For Mid-Market Companies?" OR go to this link to register to watch the stream of the webinar sponsored by Valicom about this topic.

 
 

Mid-Market Companies' Current Approach to Managing Telecom Expenses

Monday, July 19, 2010 by Nancy Peckham

Have you ever wondered what the most common mid-market approach is to managing telecom expenses today?

During a recent AberdeenGroup telecom expense management webinar sponsored by Valicom on the topic of SaaS TEM Solutions for the mid-market, there was an informal poll conducted with 75 mid-market attendees around the question “What is your current approach to managing telecom expenses?” The results of the responses are shown in the graph below:




This poll indicated that the majority of attendees used an internal manual processing approach to telecom expense management. Contingency audits comprised the majority of outsourced services available to mid-market companies, and other telecom expense management solutions are virtually non-existent for medium-sized businesses.

Greater telecom expense complexities drive larger organizations to deploy homegrown applications and on-premise software; however they tend to be too complex and costly for mid-market companies. According to Hyoun Park, Research Analyst, Telecom and Unified Communications at AberdeenGroup: "AberdeenGroup research shows a large need with middle market organizations for on-demand telecom expense management solutions. This TEM technology brings the control and cost efficiencies of large enterprise expense management to mid-market corporations who have historically lacked the internal resources and expense volume to realize benefits."

To find out more about the benefits of TEM software SaaS solutions for the mid-market, click on this link to Valicom's whitepaper entitled "Can TEM SaaS Solutions Lower Telecom Expenses For Mid-Market Companies?" OR go to this link to download a streaming video of the webinar sponsored by Valicom about this topic.

Cutting the fat out of TEM

Tuesday, July 13, 2010 by Philip Haven
As with so many industries, the TEM industry has fallen victim to overstated claims and bloated features.  Over the past 10 years, as more and more TEM startups have formed, the need to differentiate has become ever more important.

However, while so much has changed in the ways that telecommunications expense management firms market their services and products, the core goals behind the industry have largely remained the same:  lower telecommunications expenses.

Considering this, while reviewing a particular TEM's long list of feature's and benefits, it's important to continually ask yourself which items actually lend a direct advantage to realizing the greatest reduction in cost, as quickly as possible.

Once you've narrowed that list down - the only question left to answer are more traditional.  What kind of culture does this company have?  What are the company's values?  Does the company have a clear vision that drives the core goals?

If you're not careful, it's easy to get caught up in all of the bells and whistles - most of which probably won't change your bottom line all that much.  And in all of that distraction, it's easy to forget to evaluate some of the more low-level, core aspects to the TEM you are considering selecting.

Tracking Variable Cellular Costs

Wednesday, July 7, 2010 by Sara Demien
Variable cellular costs can add up quickly. Most of the time you don't know they are going to happen until they hit your bottom line. Then, OUCH! you certainly feel it.  If these costs aren't being watched and controlled it can happen month after month and really add up. Variable costs include text messaging, downloads, and - with most carriers new data plan changes -  data overages.

The traditional way to track and control these expenses would be to look through each carrier's invoices either by paging through paper or pulling reports from online billing access. It seems like the carriers make this hard to do, which may be strategic as they are big money makers. And since most businesses have more than one cellular carrier, pulling reports can become cumbersome.

Valicom can help with this. As a part of our web-based Clearview software and bill payment services, we house all of this detailed billing information in one place for you. A one stop shop to look for the information you need to control your telecom expenses.  This information can be viewed by user (shown below), or pulled via one easy-to-use report.  Along with the usage information, the users monthly plans can be stored in the same tool.




There are even further uses for this information. Does your Department head have a question on how many minutes an employee is using? Would your IT team like to cancel unused aircards? This can all be done by using the information stored in the Clearview telecom expense management software tool.

If you would like more information please contact us to schedule a customized demo of how Clearview can work for you.

Google Voice open to all - cheap talk-to-transcript option plus lots more

Friday, July 2, 2010 by Lacinda Athen

Google Voice, which was until recenty in beta and only available via invitation, has been thrown open to the public.  

The free Google service offers some very useful features that can help your wireless crew while they are on the road.  And all without raising costs.  Just another creative way to reduce telecom expenses.  

One feature that could be very handy regards voicemail.  It offers call routing options and speech-to-text transcription, which allows calls to be stored and searchable. 

Another feature, a single phone number that forwards calls to multiple devices, such as a users' home, work and mobile phones, is making news as it elicited an immediate lawsuit (for patent infringement) from Frontier Communications.  Time will tell how that plays out in the courts. 

Other included options are low-rate international calling, personalized greeting messages, the ability to forward SMS messages to an e-mail account, call blocking and screening, conference calling, and mobile apps.

I would say that it's worth investigating as part of your wireless expense management program.  And if nothing else, you can use it yourself.  I plan to.... 

LA


 


Dude, It’s Like Totally Custom!

Thursday, July 1, 2010 by Scott Matchette

At the risk of losing my man-card, I must admit that I know nothing about cars. I can’t recite models and I can’t change my oil.   For me, turning on the air condition and radio represents a major mechanical coup.   It is with this complete lack of automotive authority that I express my surprise at what I saw at a recent custom auto show I attended.





You see, I don’t really understand how putting in after market features like leather wraps on steering wheels and hanging dice fuzzy enough to make Elvis jealous are considered “custom” unless the eventual owner of the car is allowed to choose these features. 

In the world of telecom expense management, this same rule should apply.   If you’re paying for telecom cost management software or any other expense management services, there are certain things that should be customized especially for you.    For example, if you outsource telecom functions, such as telecom invoice payment, your TEM provider should provide your with payment feeds in the format your AP system is expecting.   You should also have the ability to get telecom stats that are summarized in a report that has the format and data of your choosing.   Insist that your software has workflow capabilities that match the way you do business. In short, demand a solution customized to your environment. 

Insisting on customization helps you in another way too – by drastically pairing down the list of telecom expense management companies with whom you’re willing to do business. There are simply not many of us out there who have taken telecom cost management and made it customer-centric. Call us and let us put the “custom” back in “customer”. -SAM


Enterprises with a formal wireless policy spend 40% less per user on mobile voice services.

Monday, June 28, 2010 by Lacinda Athen

As if you didn't already know that a bunch of staff running around with Crackberries and iPhone envy were going to cost you a fortune.   But now there is data to prove it. It's just another illustration that mobile management can be easy, but you have to focus on strategic cost reduction if you really want to minimize wireless expenses. 

A recent AOTMP report "The Importance of Effective Wireless Policy" found that 69 percent of enterprises have a formal wireless mobility policy in place.  And that those firms with wireless mobility governance polices spent 40 percent less per user on mobile voice services.

What does this mean for you?  Probably that, without a wireless policy in place, the data-happy mobile staff in your organization are bleeding revenue and you don't have a band-aid.

Valicom can help with that.  We not only offer advice on cellular standardization to save money, but have a wireless policy template that you can use.  Consider it a free band-aid.  And if you're nice, we'll even give you a lollipop.



Actually, It’s Kind of Easy Being Green

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 by Scott Matchette

Telecom Expense Management discussions inevitably breed discussions about expense analysis, telecom stats, telecom technology and a lot of other geek talk.  But for the more ecologically conscious, another angle exists.   Consider filing your telecom expense control program under the heading of “Green Initiatives”.

How can this be, you ask?  Well, any good telecom invoice management process, be it performed internally or outsourced to a telecom expense management service provider, should include a decided effort to convert as many paper invoices as possible into electronic format.    This is easier to do than you think and yields tons of benefits.



Electronic invoices get processed quicker.  This means more chance to catch errors before they become overcharges.   It also means fewer late fees and less risk of human error.   All of these things clearly will reduce telecom expenses on their own, but there’s more.   A recent study by one of our nation’s leading universities has created a formula for measuring the environmental impact of paper invoice processing.  Considering factors such as labor, waste, pollution, and other negative factors involved in processing paper, they concluded that there is an environmental cost of $1.14 per page that comes with paper invoices.    Think about how thick some of your telecom invoices are and then start doing the math.   Just make you’re sitting down when you do it.

There are so many reason to get control of your telecom expenses, but if you can reduce expenses and do the right thing by the environment in the process, why not do it?  Turn your company into a lean, green machine and give us a shout if you need help. 

- SAM



 

Working with the best TEM Industry Analysts - Aberdeen

Monday, June 21, 2010 by Jeff Poirior

Sometimes the critical success factor in telecom cost reduction efforts may all come down to the approach or the "framework" used to guide the process. How does your company stack up? Do you have the focus required to target your specific objective? Telecom cost management is not necessarily as easy as it sounds. This process requires a vast amount of industry experience and knowledge.
See full size image

During a recent webinar, where Aberdeen shared information specific to the TEM industry, they reviewed their methodology for identifying "Best in class", Industry average and Laggards. They refer to their framework as P.A.C.E. Which category do you want to be classified in? Who sets out to be average?


P.A.C.E. stands for:

Pressures
: top-down desire to reduction telecom costs

Actions:what action are you taking to realize the reduction and control?

Capabilities:
  • Process
  • Organizational
  • Knowledge Management
  • Performance Management
Enablers:
  • Technology
  • Professional Services
  • Managed Services
     

How much money can your organization stack
up using the best in class methodology? Identifying the "action" to be taken, then "acting" on it is the key. Don't miss the opportunity to reduce telecom expenses before the fiscal year end. there is still plenty of time if you take action now! Knowledge is power...

Living In the Past: Part Two - No more spreadsheets……

Wednesday, June 16, 2010 by Lacinda Athen

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Albert Einstein



abacusAs we discussed in Part One of “Living in the Past”, businesses should strive to keep an eye out for new tools and technology that can make their jobs easier.  And I don’t mean easier as in “I get to leave for the golf course half an hour early”, I mean easier like “We saved 30% of our telecom spend over last year, because now we can actually SEE what we’re doing”.   Most likely that Excel spreadsheet you’ve been using to manage your telecom expenses and wireless inventory isn’t doing anything more for you now than it was five years ago.  Albert would tell you that it’s time to move on…

So you ask me, “If I ditch my spreadsheet, how am I supposed to keep track of all this stuff?”.  Remember hearing about SalesForce.com, this great tool that is delivered via the web, and accessible from anywhere?   Well, guess what.  Just recently, that technology has been creeping into telecom expense management too.  Via hosted solutions, or software-as-a-service, you can upgrade from spreadsheets to a fully functional, easy-to-learn TEM platform that allows you to view telecom inventory, track telecom invoices, manage telecom vendor relationships, get a handle on order change management and optimize your wireless spend…  The options are as deep as you want to go. 

Imagine having a customizable dashboard that can display widgets showing exactly the data YOU want to see.  You can even pull them out to use when you have to present to your managers or company board, or if you’re a consultant, to your client.  Gain efficiency by keeping all your data in one place, and gain flexibility through users with various levels of access, so they only see what they need to see. 

Streamlining like this can save a ton of time, and as we all know (Without Einstein even having to tell us!Time = Money.   And that’s really the only equation you need to know.



Want to learn more about telecom expense management software-as-a-solution?  Try a short demo of Clearview.  With Clearview – you can see to the bottom of your telecom expenses