The Year Ahead: TEM is More Critical to your Business than Ever

By Tanya Seda

In 2020, enterprises began to face a unique set of challenges when managing their telecom assets: the sudden shift to a work-from-home (WFH) model due to Covid-19. On the one hand, businesses still needed to control expenses: analyze, dispute, and pay invoices as well as manage services and mobile devices for their WFH employees.

On the other hand, with many WFH employees using a blend of personal and work-issued devices, this added considerable complexity into the mix: ever-evolving requests to deliver new technology without breaking the budget or creating security challenges. Not surprisingly, many enterprises are struggling to keep their heads above water, let alone optimize and control their telecom investments during these challenging times.

For a great many businesses, outsourcing telecom expense management (TEM) has proven to be a valuable solution. As we start 2021 implementing a comprehensive TEM solution is, inarguably, an imperative given the challenges ahead. Why? Simply put, a TEM partner allows them to deliver the necessary services the organization needs while meeting strict budgetary constraints, security, and employee safety requirements. Let’s take a closer look at the four primary benefits of TEM moving into 2021 with WFH added services:

1. TEM Helps Streamline Operations. Without an integrated TEM solution, invoice and inventory management can absorb much of your resources in a time-consuming, never-ending, and complex effort. A strong TEM solution will streamline the process to optimize telecom spend and services, which allows you to free up and better use your resources for greater productivity in more core business areas.
2. TEM Reduces Telecom Costs and Helps Avoid Unplanned Expenses. TEM is highly effective at driving down telecom costs and increasing efficiency. A strong TEM partner will automate invoice loading and processing, identify invoice errors, recover overpayments, prevent late payment penalties, provide chargebacks, and negotiate with carriers. Many of our customers have been surprised and impressed with how our TEM services have been able to stay ahead of, and manage, the range of new WFH services that are being expensed by employees.
3. TEM helps with Strategic Planning for IT Finance. TEM provides visibility into all areas of telecom spend and the value of services, which allows for more strategic IT financial planning. A strong integrated TEM solution will analyze all communication spending, improve reporting and accountability, and deliver insight into how to best maximize telecom, cloud, mobility, and WFH services moving forward. A TEM’s solution has business intelligence that allows enterprises to make more accurate and informed budgeting, investment, and purchasing decisions.

It’s hard to find a lot of positives coming out of the year we just left behind; the sudden business shifts, the need to pivot to an almost universally remote workforce, and certainly the continued expectations of business performance. One silver lining that did emerge, however, is that for our TEM customers, we were able to keep them on top of their communications expenses and able to manage the unexpected and complicated to a work world that was as far from “work as usual” as could be. For those companies who have not yet taken the step of outsourcing the management of their communications expenses, 2021 represents the right time to explore and consider the huge value add that a TEM partner can bring.