We’ve turned the corner into a new year and hopefully into a gradual upturn in the economy. However, cost-cutting remains in the forefront. No one’s out of the woods yet.
The good news is that you can transform telecom expense data into cost savings right now. This goes without saying, but yes, you do need a Telecom Expense Management (TEM) solution in place to generate proper reporting which leads to my next point.
Start Reporting!
You’ll improve decision making, increase visibility, generate ROI, and deepen stakeholder buy-in. Most importantly, you’ll have the intelligence needed to optimize telecom expense management for immediate cost savings.
Here’s how to ensure that your TEM reporting is successful and thus delivers the cost savings you’re after.
- Customize report content based on your audience. Reports should meet the specific requirements of different groups: executives, finance, Telecom/IT, and managers/users. One report does not fit all. Each of these audiences needs different information sliced up to satisfy specific needs. Reporting should start at a high-level for executives and then drill down to individual usage.
- Standardize regular reports, but make sure you have ad-hoc reporting capabilities. Make sure you can easily run standard (usually monthly) reports on high-level information (like Vendor Summary) as well as detailed information (like Traffic Utilization). These will cover most needs, but you’ll never get around needing ad-hoc reporting, so make sure those are easy to generate as well.
- Automate the reporting process to avoid time-consuming and error-prone processes. By automating reporting processes, Telesoft customers typically see savings in: 1) expense validation and dispute management 2) streamlining of AP 3) improved accountability and 4) optimization. Take note that automating the telecom expense management lifecycle from invoice management to reporting brings a 10-30% reduction in annual telecom expenses!
- Ensure action is taken on the information and measure overall reporting effectiveness. This one’s self-explanatory, but let me close by saying that making modifications based on actual experience is always a good rule to follow.
