Containing Telecom Costs

Cost Containment with Telecom Expense Management by Peter Verhoeff

While Telecom Expense Management (TEM) also known as telecom cost management (TCM), is becoming fairly well known, not every enterprise has yet taken advantage of its many potential benefits.

There are two main aspects to effective TEM: * Catching billing errors from the carriers (often in their favor) * Optimizing the company's utilization of telecom resources

Billing is a complex issue, with many factors entering into it. The cost of your telecom bill depends on the number of calls, their duration, their destination, the time of day, as well as what plan has been agreed upon with the carrier.

Carriers are in business to make money and they will bill for whatever they think they are entitled to bill for. Sometimes they bill for resources or services you did not get. As is the case with taxes, while the company should pay its fair share, the object is not to pay more than is needed.

Overpayment is not limited to billing errors, though. Without a well-controlled system of handling telecom billings, it is not uncommon for enterprises to run up additional and unnecessary charges for late payments.

For many enterprises, however, most of the cost savings will come from making the best use of existing resources. This is particularly true of new technologies, such as voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and mobile devices. Lack of know-how is the main cause of these areas being relatively uncontrolled in many companies.

One large corporation, for example, found during an audit that it was still paying for thousands of cell phones belonging to people who were no longer employed there.

Often, when switching to new technology, the company will temporarily run both systems in parallel until the new system proves out. That approach makes sense, but management might then forget to discontinue the old system, resulting in much unnecessary expense.

The same is true for branch locations that are being closed. The company typically will take care of most of the details, but might omit to notify the carrier and make sure they are no longer being billed for the discontinued service. When ordering telecom services, a company may overestimate required resources, resulting in overpayment, or underestimate needed resources, resulting in lost business. TEM can help find and correct these errors.

The above are a few examples of how a Telecom Expense Management (TEM) system can improve a company's return on investment.

Author, Peter Verhoeff, writes articles on the business benefits of call accounting and call detail record technology. More information can be found at http://www.telsoft-solutions.com.