TELECOM EXPENSE MANAGEMENT
Companies are experiencing an explosion of wireless devices and mobile expenses are skyrocketing. Managing voice and data plans, wireless invoice auditing and wireless plan optimization all combine to make wireless expense management an enormous task. Whether you need help building an accurate asset inventory, or assistance negotiating contracts to ensure best pricing, Easytel has software tools and managed services to address the problem.
Wireless Expense Management Options:
Wireless Comprehensive Invoice Auditing
Benchmarking
Contract Compliance
Wireless Inventory Management
Wireless Invoice Processing
Wireless Optimization
Procurement and Order Fulfillment
Wireless Carrier RFP Management
Wireless Policy Development
Benefit from Easytel's experience, defined workflows, and ability to share best practices. You can choose to take advantage of Easytel's powerful tools to help with wireless expense management with our on-demand subscription service or as part of a Managed Services package.
Invoice Auditing
Managing and monitoring your telecom and wireless invoices are both key factors in telecom expense management.
To conduct business today, we know you need tools and you need technology. This means telephones, mobile phones, pagers, expensive high-speed internet connections, laptops with wireless capabilities, the list goes on and on. And, over time, the list not only gets longer as new gadgets hit the market, but the number of people within your organization who needs these things goes up. All of that leads to complexity, and complexity can lead to errors.
Why do you need invoice auditing?
Forrester Research estimates that “billing errors average 5% to 12% of ongoing telecom services budgets”. We would concur with that. In our 20+ years of doing telecom invoice audits, we’ve found that over 35% of telecom invoices have some type of error. And if you’re not watching for them, you don’t see them.
Our service – is designed to automate getting telecom invoice data into the system, and once it’s there, help with reviewing the invoice for accuracy. During the telecom invoice audit process, common issues can become visible, problems like:
3rd party billing
Slamming & cramming
Low and/or no usage lines
Usage rate compliance
Long-distance charges on local invoices
Installation, termination & repair charges
Easytel can also help you set custom validation rules, so you can track your telecom invoice data the way you want. Then, once the errors or over billings are identified, the process of working with your telecom vendor to recover that money can begin.
This enhanced visibility also allows you to evaluate if you’re getting the best deal for your various services and devices, or if you have more infrastructure than you need. That can save money too!
Benchmarking
bench·mark – noun
A standard by which something can be measured or judged.
In other words, how much *should* this telecom item cost us?
When you’re trying to price telecom services, benchmarking data is well worth the effort and cost to obtain. This data provides you with a clear picture of where your services could be from a pricing standpoint, and also helps you make RFP savings estimates by service type. This allows you to decide where to apply the most effort during the RFP and telecom contract negotiations to maximize strategic cost reductions. Telecom benchmarking also supports the best practice of having a goal for what you want your pricing and contracts to look like when the RFP is over. That is hard to do if you don’t know what you could be saving. The bottom line is that benchmarking is a key part of good telecom expense management. Don’t go into your next contract negotiation blind!
Easytel's Telecom Audit Teams have the experience and the industry knowledge to get you the benchmarking data you need for your next telecom contract renewal.
Contract Negotiations
Telecom carriers are in business to make money. YOUR money, to be more specific. And as most contracts are for several years, they can take more of it than they should, for a very long time, if you don’t negotiate your telecom pricing well.
Easytel has been helping firms save money on telecom expenses for over twenty years, and a big piece of that savings comes from getting the best deal in the first place. Our telecom expense management software can help you gain visibility and control over your telecom expenses, so you are better prepared next time you step up to the negotiating table. However, if you like to speak softly but still want to carry a big stick to the party, then let our Telecom Audit teams help.
We can be involved in telecom contract negotiation on a variety of levels… some clients prefer to leverage Easytel as a consultant to bounce ideas and information off of, while others turn the entire negotiation over to us.
Either way, we can put people in the ring who have years of experience and a working knowledge of what is possible. In other words, we not only know how low the carriers can go, we also know how to fight smart.
Our Telecom Teams can help you prepare, distribute and analyze the results of a telecom RFP specific to your telecom needs. By comparing multiple carriers’ offers, we can put together the best plan to minimize your spend while maximizing features and flexibility.
Inventory Management
At the core telecom expense management is maintaining a detailed, up-to-date telecom or wireless inventory. Telecom inventory management usually includes:
Organizing and updating telecom and wireless inventory data
Listing all devices, plans, circuits and lines you have
Tracking all telecom orders and changes
Interpreting and entering CSR data
Properly associating telecom inventory with locations, users, GL Codes, etc.
To accomplish this efficiently and effectively, we created expense management software, which was designed with this specifically in mind. At it’s core, it is a customized database for storing your telecom inventory of lines, circuits, wireless devices, and anything else, short of the kitchen sink.
Bill Payment
The perfect complement to telecom bill auditing and cost allocation is a telecom bill pay service.
Paying telecom and wireless bills takes time, energy and money. Cutting and mailing checks incurs a monthly cost and ties up staff time to process each one and ensure it gets paid – properly and on time. Even if your firm does electronic transfer, there are still many ways it can go wrong without anyone noticing.
With Easytel's Telecom Bill Pay service, once the invoice data is loaded into the TEM software, the audit performed and the expenses approved, the bills are paid and a data feed sent back to the accounting system. Each invoice is paid with an individual payment, eliminating a common problem where lump payments are all applied to one invoice, leaving others unpaid to incur late fees and penalties.
Telecom Bill Pay can be used whether our Audit Teams are doing the auditing and cost allocation or your in-house staff does it using Easytel's software.