There are three key Telecom Expense Management pillars that allow for a significant reduction in telephone bills
Having a striking savings in monthly telephony costs, one option indicated by Telecom experts is to implement telephony management, such as the Telecom Expenses Management (TEM) or Telecom Expense Management methodology.
In telephony management, three pillars support all other activities and implementation responsibilities, they are the Telecom inventory management; the contracts negotiation with the operators; and invoice auditing.
From the report generated by the analysis in the telephone services use processes, the Telecom Expense Management will give the guidelines and design the reduction cost percentage that your company can obtain.
Know the fundamental activities for the telephony management
1 – Inventory – If the company does not yet do the Telecom Expense Management, the first step is to build the inventory. At this stage, there are some questions that will guide the data collection and structuring:
Who is each mobile phone user?
How many extensions are registered in the telephone exchanges?
Which cost center should be assigned to each resources?
After the inventory construction it is imperative to adopt processes that guarantee its maintenance. By updating the inventory it will be possible to maintain the concession policies and use of Telecom resources adhering to the company needs.
Keeping inventory data up to date is the biggest challenge for your business!
2 – Contract negotiation with the operator – This process is complex and sometimes time-consuming. Telephony company contracts have a specific terms variety and services that can hamper customer understanding and identify key negotiation points.
In order to conduct a contractual negotiation, your company must define the this negotiation baseline, that is, what will base the tariff definition and, consequently, what can be saved.
In addition, you should evaluate your needs in the Service Level Agreement (SLA) terms and technical support, which in turn will ensure the quality services availability.
In telephony contracts, it is also difficult to define your company real needs and to identify whether the proposals received are in line with the market for the same size companies, both in tariffs terms and in service levels terms. Therefore, it is necessary to make a Benchmark, by which will be analyzed the business competitors models.
After building the inventory and negotiating the contracts, it’s time to audit and challenge Telecom’s invoices.
3 – Audit – When your company adopts recurring and systematic auditing processes, it is ensuring that the amounts charged are in accordance with the contract and that there is no charge for blocked services or resources already canceled.
In the audit, each error and its root cause are identified and then the contestation process is opened with the operator so that the undue amounts are negotiated and retrieved. After this step, an action plan is executed so that errors are reduced in the next invoices.
Reducing costs and improving services
With these steps, your company will feel in the budget of the Telecom Expense Management advantages, both by reducing costs and improving the services provided quality. And these savings can be quietly calculated and projected during inventory analysis.
There are specialized consultancies in this service type, which can help your company at all stages. So, do not waste time taking action in the high telephony costs face. Manage your accounts and know what percentage of telecom expense reduction your business can reach.
Luciele Ceconello – Project Manager – luciele.ceconello@napit.com.br
