Managing your telecom expenditures can quickly get out of control if you don’t have adequate processes in place to protect your income. In the blink of an eye, you can lose hours upon hours of hard work and massive chunks of profit that could have otherwise been spent growing your business. TEM (Telecom Expense Management) is paramount to the success of your business.
In fact, the TEM market has grown into a $1.14 billion dollar market in 2014 and is expected to nearly triple in size over the course of the next four years. Technology is accelerating and evolving as fast as lightning, and failing to properly manage the life cycle of your equipment and your capital expenditures can bring the growth of your business to a grinding halt. The following are the pillars of TEM and an explanation of why they are critical to the future of your business.
Managing Your Inventory
Taking up-to-date inventory is the centerpiece of managing your complex telecom infrastructure. You need to know how many pieces of equipment you have and their useful lives to plan for the future. New models surface every month, and you need to have an accurate understanding of your inventory and how it is performing to adequately meet the demands of your customers and your business.
Though you may think you have a thorough knowledge of your inventory, you won’t be able to make decisions until you take inventory to quantify your equipment and record where all of your resources are allocated. In today’s high-tech world, many resources are pooled, and a failure to understand where your resources are allocated could leave you unable to adequately support new clients and failing to meet future needs.
Invoice Management
The largest flaw with modern computing is that everything was created by humans. To err is human, and despite the most rigorous procedures and record keeping, billing mistakes are a part of life. Unfortunately, billing errors eat up profits but give you nothing in return. They essentially cause you to flush money down the drain. You need to be constantly vigilant to make certain you are not being unduly charged for the services you have cancelled or never ordered in the first place.
Contract Management
To be successful in any telecom dependent industry, it takes years upon years of technical understanding and an ability to keep up with current technology trends. With so much invested in keeping up with technology, there is little time to educate yourself with the intricate details of contract law and telecom expense management. Unfortunately, ignorance of the best practices for contract negotiation doesn’t exempt you from the consequences of your contracts. It is in your (and your organization’s) best interest to seek the counsel of a specialist in telecom contract negotiation.
Managing your telecom infrastructure’s life cycle and costs is paramount to the success of your organization. Our dependence on technology is only increasing, and knowing how to keep costs under control will only become more important with each passing year.
[author_bio username=”Ken” name=”yes”]
