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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 in order to get snap-shot views of 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
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.
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.
- The right to retain ownership, use and control one's own data
- The right to service-level agreements that address liabilities, remediation and business outcomes
- The right to notification and choice about changes that affect the service consumers' business processes
- The right to understand the technical limitations or requirements of the service up front
- The right to understand the legal requirements of jurisdictions in which the provider operates
- The right to know what security processes the provider follows
- 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.
With all the telecom carrier changes in the recent years slowing down, there are still a few recent items I'd like to share with you. - Qwest shareholders are currently discussing a decision on whether to merge their holdings with those from CenturyLink.
- Frontier just bought telephone lines from Verizon in 14 states.
- The Canadian government made a decision to open its telecom market to foreign investors. The Minister's yet written rules may bring big changes to the industry.
- Windstream will remain in Little Rock, Ark.
We suggest to watch for these types of Carrier changes to impact your billing. Whether it is as simple as a remit address change, or a major billing error due to a billing systems switchover it is always a good idea to do a telecom invoice audit and confirm your telecommunications is billed correctly. If you need help with your telecom invoice processing & payment, give us a call.
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.
When conducting telecom contract negotiations, large businesses know and expect to scrutinize all areas of those contracts prior to signing them. They not only review the contracts for pricing negotiation, but also for terms and conditions negotiation. The latter, the so called "T's and C's", are what we often see small and medium size businesses overlook. Whether you feel it's unimportant, or that the contract value is too small, you still have the opportunity to scrutinize this verbiage, and it can often be in your best interest.
Next time you review a vendor contract, evaluate those terms and conditions, and look for areas that are too far one-sided and benefit only the vendor. Then attempt to request some changes or redline the document. This can be helpful in many areas that can truely affect your business, such as termination penalties, minimum commitment levels, and pricing stabilization for new services down the line. There’s no harm in making an effort to further protect your company by negotiating these areas, and the worst that can happen is they say “No”. But you’ll be surprised at how often they’ll actually work with you on these changes, providing you with an overall more successfully negotiated contract.
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.
 Porsche just announced the possible release of a new hybrid model. A $630K hybrid! Now I'm all for going green, but that seems a little ridiculous. If all you're doing is driving to the mailbox and back, you don't need a ride like that. It made me think of some firms and the way they approach managing their telecom expenses. If you're a small to mid-sized business, and are drowning in paper invoices and trying to juggle too many wireless phones and data circuits, you do need some help. But really, how much help do you need? Many TEM firms out there take a kind of "one size fits all" approach. One size that fits great if you're a huge firm, or have lots of money to spend. If you just want a streamlined, fast way to get a handle on your telecom expenses, you need a tool, but you don't need a diamond-crusted one. In some cases, a hammer is really just a hammer. And we've got that hammer... Our Clearview telecom expense management software tool is designed to get you the functionality you need, at a price point that doesn't make your hair stand on end. Track all your telecom devices, have all your telecom invoices imported electronically, manage your orders and changes, store your contracts.... it's all there. But it sure won't cost you $640K. If you'd like to take it for a test drive, try our short online Clearview TEM software demo. That won't cost you anything at all!
To accommodate for the growing need for telephone numbers, the Wisconsin Public Service Commission approved the addition of a new area code of 534 in the 715 area. This is an area code overlay, which means the 715 area code boundary has not changed.
If you are in that area, effective July 17th, 2010, all calls must be completed by dialing the area code first...
In telecommunications we know there are an endless stream of merger and acquisitions with vendors (a couple very recently). This can create a lot of potential headaches, but it's also important to leverage these events as opportunities when looking for cost savings.
You'll want to make sure you proactively reach out to the existing account team to understand how the new changes will affect your organization. There can often be account team changes, escalation changes, billing changes, or even SLA implications. Being on top of these areas can keep you from experiencing problems with outage response time, for example. After a merger or acquisition, it can also be a good time to engage the vendor on potential contract re-negotiations. You may have more spend to leverage if you were currently utilizing both vendors involved, or there may be new pricing model available under a new vendor platform. It's important to uncover those opportunities when they arise and continue your efforts to reduce telecom expenses. And remember if you ever need any help with telecom contract negotiation or telecom RFPs, our experienced telecom audit teams can lend a hand.
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.
Recently, I have had the opportunity to talk with quite a few companies and their executives regarding their views on telecom expense management (TEM). Some have had previous experience with a TEM provider and others have not. The companies that have had previous experience communicated the following concerns: - The engagement was purely Contingency. This is a model where the company does not spend any money up-front. Instead, the TEM provider receives a percentage of the savings obtained.
- The Contingency approach can cause animosity between the company and the TEM provider. Sometimes large savings are discovered and there can be disagreements regarding who found the savings opportunity.
- TEM providers have not produced the expected results.
- The costs are too expensive.
- The software or tool is too complicated and require dedicated staff to stay current.
- Too many times vendors try to take a "one- size-fits-all" approach.
The challenge for companies that have had a bad past experience with telecom expense management, is to pursue an offering that can overcome the hurdles from the past and create a scope of work that will lead to a successful relationship for telecom expense control. Understanding the specific pain-points within the company, as it relates to telecom cost reduction, is still the key to the initial steps in a successful expense reduction analysis. Please consider reaching out to a representitive at Valicom for a " Clearview" of your company's telecom expense.
During a recent webinar, sponsored by Valicom, featuring AberdeenGroup research on the topic of SaaS TEM solutions for the mid-market, there was an informal poll conducted with 75 mid-market attendees responding to the question: “What are the top pressures your company is facing to control telecom costs?” The results are shown in the graph below:  As you can see, the majority of companies (72%) responded that organizational pressure to reduce operational (including telecom) costs, was the business driver to control telecom expenses. So the business need is there, but what are they doing about it? Find out what they are doing about it by clicking 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.
 Just as with medicine, companies often make the mistake of treating the symptoms, not the causes, when it comes to their telecommunications audit practices.
When approaching a telecommunications audit project, it’s important to first identify all of the potential ways that the telecommunications spend could be made more efficient, and cost effective. This could be compared to a basic physical performed by your family doctor. The purpose is to get a baseline understanding of the overall health of the telecommunications spend and to identify broad areas that require additional focus and improvement. During the next phase however, it’s critical to not just try to recoup savings and credits, but to also make adjustments to both how the company’s telecommunications technologies are implemented and billed, but also to how the company itself manages those assets and invoices. The message here is that a preventative approach is ideal for both an individual’s physical health, as well as achieving a prolonged and sustained cost reduction model for a company’s telecommunications expenses. By identifying the causes of errant costs and misguided uses of technology, a company can move forward with a stronger sense of what needs to be done to stay on top of keeping the company’s telecommunications expenses as low as possible.
 In the telecom world, since divestiture in the early 80s, there has been a proliferation of new choices, plans, suppliers and technologies. During this period, the internet, wireless services and wide area network technologies have transformed the industry. The internet was born in the 90s and has grown to unprecedented levels. The demand for cellular technology has skyrocketed, taking market share from traditional land line phones and bringing a plethora of voice, data and internet applications to individuals and businesses anytime, anywhere. Wide area data network technologies, such as frame relay and MPLS, have allowed for enormous amounts of data to be shared between corporate locations across the globe. All of this growth and opportunity in the telecom industry has left midmarket businesses ($10M to $500M in revenues) in a state of confusion, and with an unanswered need for greater control over their telecom expenses.Click here to read more about this topic from Valicom's whitepaper entitled "Can TEM SaaS Solutions Lower Telecom Expenses For Mid-Market Companies?"
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, 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
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