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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.
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.
Wireless Expense Management Reporting Many medium to large organizations utilize a variety of mobile management software and wireless inventory solutions whether purchased or created internally. Specifically on the Wireless side, we see many of those companies strive to provide the managers and directors with the ability to see wireless information of the employees under their leadership, using their expense management tools. This information ranges from summary detail (employees wireless plans, usage, features, device, costs associated) to actual calling detail. This detail proves important so managers can see user spend variance, approved voice and data plans and features, see call detail as needed, validate the users that are hitting their wireless budget, and ultimately reduce telecom expenses. To get this data, it's necessary to receive the appropriate electronic reporting monthly from your wireless vendors. The major hurdle with this is that all vendor electronic reporting formats are different. This is where the expertise of the Telecom Expense Management company like Valicom can assist. We have the ability and proven expertise to take those different electronic reports from any vendor and filter them into one customized format that can be uploaded into your management system, thus allowing you to utilize this visibility for users with all of your wireless vendors. Wireless data visibility is a great way better manage your wireless expenses, and provide a clear picture of what is hitting your wireless bottom line.
 Last but not least in our six part journey on telecom cost management is one of the biggest hurdles to getting a good deal. Telecom contract negotiation. You MUST negotiate with your vendors, no matter how large or small your firm is. And preferably BEFORE renewal time arrives. Do some homework on what you’re paying now, what competitors are offering, and what current marketing specials your vendor is offering. That will give you some idea of the pricing landscape. But realize that no one is going to give you a great deal right off the bat. They have all the cards, and you're just guessing. That is why it never hurts to get some telecom benchmarking data from a TEM firm, so you know what you should be paying. Then take that information to the bargaining table, or put out a new RFP. A telecom audit team can help with you with that too, if you want to bring in the big guns. But the main point, no matter how you go about it, is to never shy away from asking for a better deal – you won’t get anything if you don’t ask. These few tasks are just the beginning of a path to strong telecom expense management. But even baby steps can offer savings, that over time can grow.
Almost there. And you're probably sick of me talking about all this extra WORK I think you should do to reduce telecom expenses. But then now you know why some people give up and outsource it to a telecom audit team. But it's also why we built our new Clearview TEM software tool that we deliver via the web. It's easy to learn, not too expensive and it makes all this a whole lot easier.  But that's not what you're here to read about. So onward and upward. What's Step Five, you ask? Stepping on the smart phones. In other words - managing your wireless expenses, mobile phone management, mobile management, whatever you choose to call it. It means implementing a wireless policy. Standardize what your people can buy, what plans they can utilize, what features they have, etc. This allows you to better negotiate and track wireless costs. As your wireless device options continue to erupt, the ability to properly manage these devices and their associated costs will continue to be a challenge to all organizations. Gartner states: "Defining corporate user requirements and policy is essential for all sizes of organizations, and although every company will need a unique policy, there are key areas that every policy should contain." Wireless expense management is the current focus of most Information Technology and Telecommunication departments. To help with this task, we offer a Wireless Policy template to get you started. Stay tuned for Part Six - Talk softly but carry a big stick. Contract negotiation......
 In part four of managing your telecom costs, we talk about the Deadbeat. Not necessarily a person, but an asset. If you have phones/lines/pagers/devices that aren't being used, or are being used a whole lot less than you are paying for, then you have a problem. This is something else your telecom invoice auditing and telecom inventory management can tell you. Do you have too many phones? Too many wireless minutes? Lines that don't go anywhere? Each one you can identify is a place to SAVE on your telecom costs. Shut them off, adjust them, merge them, whatever you need to reduce business expenses. And note that a good telecom expense management software tool can make this a whole lot easier, as it has some visibility tools that take the work off your eyeballs. Next up in managing telecom costs? A good wireless policy. In other words, learning to say "NO".
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.
As we discussed yesterday, in Plugging the Hole Part One - the main challenge of telecom expense manaegment is to get all your data in one place so you can actually see what you're doing. Whether you're using a spreadsheet, a box of 3 x 5 cards (which we don't recommend for obvious reasons) or a telecom expense management software designed for the job, you need to figure out WHAT to put in there. WHAT do I have to keep track of to make this work?  Well, first and foremost is inventory. What do you have? And this is critical, as your telecom invoice auditing depends on knowing what you have so you know what to pay for. The POTS lines sitting around on desks, the smart phones riding around in your salespeople's pockets and the hefty data plans that go with them, pagers, cell phones, circuits.... all of it. Get it down and get it allocated by GL code so you not only know what you have, but who is responsible for it and who's gonna pay for it! Next up? Auditing - figuring out if you are actually paying for what you think you're paying for.... Stay tuned.
The research gurus at Gartner released a report today stating that the mass move of businessess to Windows 7 is going to mean a serious hit to IT budgets. The need to migrate from Microsoft Windows XP and Windows 2000 to Windows 7 in a tight time frame will create an extra budgetary and resource burden on companies from 2011 to 2012. “We estimate that large and midsize organizations worldwide will migrate approximately 250 million PCs to Windows 7, during the migration timeline..." said Charles S mulders, managing vice president at Gartner.
This spike in spending will come not only from expected software costs, but also from hardware upgrade costs and IT consulting expenses. And that money in your budget has to come from somewhere. Unless you have a giant pool of profits sitting around, which in this economy isn't likely, where is it going to come from? We have a suggestion. One of the best ways to make money appear out of nowhere is to NOT SPEND IT. Cut costs somewhere else, and re-allocate. It's magic, like pulling a rabbit out of your hat. And one ripe spot to cut business expenses is in telecom. If you can reduce telecom expenses through a telecom audit, or managing your wireless costs better, maybe find a few invoice errors that add up to savings.... then you can spend that money on some new PCs. Valicom can help you do that. We've been saving businessess money on telecom costs for almost twenty years. Want to know what we might be able to save you through strong telecom expense management? Just contact us for a free consultation and see if we can help fund your Windows 7 upgrade.
Building a business from the ground up is hard work. Keeping it standing can be even harder. With the diverse economic pressures coming to bear on modern business owners, it is often hard to stay on top of best practices in managing your expenses. Payroll, insurance, shipping, training, bathroom tissue, paper clips…. the bill seems to get bigger every day. Add to that the complexities of running a business in today’s technology-saturated marketplace, and the impact to the bottom line grows yet again. To compete effectively, you have to have the right tools. This means telephones, smart phones, pagers, expensive high-speed internet connections, laptops with wireless capabilities, the list goes on and on. And, over time, the list not only gets longer as new gadgets hit the market, but the number of people within your organization who needs these things goes up. And while most firms see the value in upgrading their technology infrastructure, they often don’t realize how ripe with opportunity this sector of their spending might be. Opportunity for savings. Steps to Reduce Telecom Expenses So what should you be doing to reduce your telecom expenses? Here we'll start a discussion of the “must do’s” in telecom expense management. Step One: Get all your telecom data in one place Whether you use a simple spreadsheet, or a streamlined web-based telecom expense management software, you want to put all your info where you can see it. Invoices, order changes, cancellations, additions, inventory, etc. You need visibility to generate good management because, as they say, you can't manage what you can't measure. And you can't SAVE if you don't KNOW. Getting the fine detail from your telecom vendors, your internal departments, accounting, IT - anywhere that might have part of the puzzle, helps you see the whole picture. Once you can get a handle on that, then you can move on to the next steps.... Stay tuned for Part Two: The Flood of Stuff (telecom inventory management)
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 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)
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.
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.
In an earlier blog dated July 20, 2010 entitled "What are Mid-Sized Organizations Doing About Controlling Telecom Expenses?," we left you with the question: "What are the keys to telecom expense management (TEM) program success for small to mid-size businesses (SMBs)?"  Well, according to the AOTMP report entitled "The Value of TEM to the SMB," the following are the keys to TEM success for SMBs: * "Focusing on program activities presenting the greatest opportunity for savings" * "Implementing TEM tools, such as TEM technology and supporting program initiatives.” These tools and technologies include licensed software, hosted solutions and SaaS options. * “Securing program support from skilled resources, which may include internal staff, consultants and/or third party subject matter experts, to drive program initiatives.” This report further drives home the significant economic benefit of implementing a TEM program for SMBs. AOTMP states that “SMBs with a TEM program save 22% more than companies who do not.” The majority of middle market companies spend anywhere from $150k to $5M in annual telecom expenses. 22% savings on these expenses would equate to $33,000 - $1,100,000 in annual savings for these companies. Now wouldn't you like to add those savings to YOUR bottom line?!! To read more about this topic, click 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. Enjoy!
The market for Telecom Expense Management software is getting crowded. Not much more than five years ago, our challenge was mostly centered around educating organization that Telecom Expense Management companies existed and that there is an entire industry whose goal is to reduce business costs, perform telecom audits and provide telecom cost management software. Now, the word is out and the challenge has shifted to differentiating one expense management solution from another.
 The good news here is that the consumer has choices and is in a position to be a little picky. When it comes to this pickiness, the savvy buyer is wise to make sure that any telecom expense management software solution can serve as an audit workbench as well as an information repository. This is to say that any TEM software is going to give you reports, trending, and a way to organize your expenses at a glance. What can differentiate a select few from the many are additional tools to give you the power to perform telecom auditing, expense analysis, and other activities to reduce business costs.
Even if you use a third party telecom expense management firm to help you today, who knows what the future holds? Today you may outsource certain functions that tomorrow you may want to take in house. All things being equal, a true workbench that provides customizable audit screens, issue tracking and resolution, and tools for optimizing telecom expenses, in addition to access to information, could save a lot of time and money in the long haul. Let the telecom expense management workbench be your key to hammering the fat out of your telecom expenses. –SAM
www.valicomcorp.com
In recent times, the old problem of “too many Chiefs and no Indians” has become a rare problem indeed. While eliminating Chiefs sounds great to the San Diego Chargers, Chiefs are now greatly outnumbered and not enough of us in the world of Telecom Expense Management are hailing to the Chiefs still standing. We’re talking about Chief Operating Officers, Chief Financial Officers, or even non-chiefs who still need expense analysis capabilities that don’t drag them into telecom auditing details. These Chiefs want snap-shot views for macro-level telecom cost management, reducing telecom expenses, and generally getting a handle on telecom expense control.
Enter the management dashboard, a feature which should be an effective part of any telecom cost management software. A proper dashboard will keep live telecom trending information that is current and accurate. It provides a quick and easy-to-understand view of telecom expenses and how best efforts to reduce telecom expenses are actually working. Most of all, the dashboard should be readily available and easy to access with telecom expense trending information being available when and where needed.
With a proper dashboard, telecom expense management can be attacked from both a detail level as well as a management and any expense management solution will address this. Find the right Telecom Expense Management company and you too will find paradise by the dashboard light. –SAM
www.valicomcorp.com
 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.
A  ccording to Healthcare IT News - physician adoption of smartphones is experiencing exponential growth, as reported in " Point of Care Communications for Physicians," a new study from Spyglass Consulting Group. The report reveals 94 percent of physicians are using smartphones... This represents a 60 percent increase from 2006, based on Spyglass' findings in a similar study published that year. They are migrating to the new wireless devices to help them manage their data flow, connect with colleagues and improve patient care. It also allows them to better allocate their time, as they no longer have to check various avenues of communication - voice mails, email, SMS messages, text, etc - but can have it all delivered in one place. This means less opportunity for critical patient data too fall through the cracks, generating better, more efficient care.
For us, the possible recipient of this improved physician performance, this is great news. But for the IT and finance departments at your local healthcare clinic or hospital, it means one more line item in the budget to manage. And a pile of wireless devices and data plans to juggle. All of which costs money, often more money than it should... This is where efficient telecom expense control, wireless device management, and employee wireless policy solutions become critical. Implementing a telecom expense management (TEM) software platform to organize and audit those telecom costs can save up to 30% of annual wireless telecom budgets, freeing that money up to pay for other things. Like healthcare! Read the full article here. And feel free to download a copy of our Wireless Policy Template or check out a demo of our TEM software platform Clearview.
OK, excluding the wide array of jerky products, what’s the coolest thing about the 7-11? Easy: it’s ALWAYS open.
In all the hubbub over Telecom Expense Management, one subject that gets lost is the topic of openness. In other words, does your telecom management solution truly support the way YOU do business?
Asking a TEM software vendor to perform modifications is fine and, sure, sometimes a few tweaks are needed in order to ensure you can reach your strategic cost reduction goals and get the telecom expense analysis completed accurately and expeditiously. Still, there’s something to be said for understanding what your telecom expense management software was really engineered to do. Some specifics in this regard include:
- Does your telecom expense management system handle only carrier expenses or can it also house peripheral items like phone system leases, hardware specs, and other areas that should logically be grouped with telecom carrier expenses?
- Is your system equipped to handle your current account coding structure and expense allocation strategy?
- Is it flexible enough to adapt easily if your business environment changes?
- If you outsource telecom management functions, can your provider adapt to changing needs for telecom expense reporting and trending?
- Can your telecom software mimic the workflow your company uses to process telecom invoices and related data?
These are all key questions to consider in evaluating telecom expense management solutions and, again, openness is the key to the lockless door at the 7-11. -SAM
www.valicomcorp.com
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