Save the Most Money with the Least Effort with Telecom Cost Control

TEM vendors check your carrier service fees, maintain inventory, automate billing and contracts, and integrate telecom billing with your accounting system for tighter control.

Fremont, CA: Redundant lines, carrier overcharges, and many other issues crop up while managing a company's telecom costs. It's one area where there's often money that can be saved if you have the time and workforce to trace it. Numerous companies don't. Here are a few big-ticket items to look after if you want to save money, and it won't take months to understand savings.

4 AREAS WHERE OPTIMIZATION PAYS

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Considerable savings can be accomplished by streamlining and calibrating the following resources:

CARRIER CONTRACT

At least, telecom managers should review all carrier agreements every 18 months to two years. This incorporates a deep dive into discounts, pricing, rate, credits, and other terms. It's valuable to outsource this to an experienced telecom analyst, as one discovery generally yields thousands of dollars of savings every month. They may also be able to negotiate effectively with your carriers for extra savings.

SUBSCRIPTION AND SERVICE

Nobody wishes to do this job, but the more frequently you peruse the rolls of users and reconfirm each line against a present employee roster, the earlier you stop paying for a line nobody is utilizing. If your business is a large one, this should be done every month. Smaller companies with fewer company-owned devices might do this three to four times a year without loss due to deadlines that haven't been reallocated or cancelled.

COMPLIANCE MONITORING (THIS HAS TO HAPPEN IN REAL-TIME)

The billing or compliance team should track billing accuracy and trigger overruns or discounts as part of the day-to-day accounting tasks. Are the invoices correct? Did any excellent corrections come through the billing incorrectly? Are you obtaining discounts you've earned on usage or upgrades? This also incorporates negotiated fee waivers that involve management intervention with the carrier.

DEMAND MANAGEMENT

If your company doesn't have a documented device and service management policy, that's your beginning point. An analyst with no customer-facing or after-hours obligations doesn't require the same equipment and service as a journey VP who sleeps with their business phone within earshot. Department heads are usually the business owners of the telecom budget for their direct reports. This isn't forever a great idea. Centralizing control over who gets what service and devices prevent generous managers from scoring employee goodwill on the company's dime. This works side-by-side with developing and documenting your business policy on the assignment of telephony resources. Like this, nobody can claim they're receiving unfair treatment.

Based on these four categories, compliance monitoring and demand management yield up to 10% savings. Comparatively, contract optimization can save you up to 30%, and subscription optimization gets you up to a 25% reduction in monthly charges.

WHERE TO INVEST FOR ADDITIONAL SAVINGS

More serious savings could cost some money before you see a distinction in your bottom line. On average, about 50 % of telecom bills contain errors that cost you 3 to 5 % more than you should be paying.

A TEM (telecom expense management) service does this for you. TEM vendors check your carrier service fees, maintain inventory, automate billing and contracts, and integrate telecom billing with your accounting system for tighter control. The TEM model has moved from cumbersome software upgrades to SaaS, which may cost you up to 2% of the telecom budget. Anyone who's gone through an unsuccessful, drawn-out implementation knows a great deal when they see one, and this is it.

MOBILE MANAGEMENT

TEM pricing is often per device based on monthly billing, and you may have to sign a multi-year contract. Bandwidth management can save money if your company pays for one or more T1 lines. Instead of purchasing a second line when performance tanks, it's smarter to determine who's eating up your bandwidth and, when needed, issue cautionary notes on usage or limit access to the offending parties. (These employees could be streaming videos on a company-owned device on company time, which could also trigger disciplinary action against deadbeat employees.)

Every effort you can make to reduce your telecom spending nets real money so your company can gainfully invest in other areas.