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 of hard work and massive chunks of profit that could have otherwise been spent growing your business.
Technology is accelerating and evolving fast. Failing to properly manage the life cycle of your equipment, capital and telecom expenditures can bring the growth of your business to a grinding halt. What can you do? Telecom Expense Management (TEM) is well worth the investment and usually pays for itself in short order.
The following are the three areas of TEM and 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 life span to plan for future endeavors. 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 document where all your resources are allocated.
If you haven’t been keeping a pulse on your inventory and actively managing your expenses, you will have to start with an audit to fully understand your service and equipment expenses as they currently stand.
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; not to mention taking advantage of current tech innovations that present themselves to the market place.
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. Additionally, you want to make sure your pricing reflects what you contract states too.
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.
If your annual IT/telecom budget is over $400,000, then you should look into an audit and TEM service. Expect to find ways to save a huge chunk of money without making any sacrifices to your communications infrastructure. The truth is, you’re probably paying a lot of extra money for no reason.
Need help with a telecom audit or TEM services, we’re there for you! Call or email us at sales@p2cm.com or 703-391-2172.