Peter Drucker, the management consultant, once said, “what gets measured, gets managed.” The challenge with telecom expenses is individuals incur them, but organizations fail to measure these expenses or they manage costs at the wrong level. With telecom expenses, the link between individual consumption and accountability is broken.
When individuals have no visibility into their telecom use, they fail to see the impact of their behavior and there is no incentive to moderate use or reduce spending. In fact, we have seen situations where the managers of wireless expenses had large expenses because they were completely unaware of what they were spending and the calling plans were inappropriate for the managers’ needs.
Creating a link between visibility and accountability requires a good Telecom Expense Management (TEM) solution with granular reporting that a good call accounting will provide. It must:
- Capture all fixed and mobile activity
- Link call detail to the individuals who incurred the expenses
- Accurately allocate charges making adjustments for department transfers and turnover in personnel
- Identify outliers with exception reports that flag expenses which are inconsistent with peers who perform the same job, role, or function
- Provide accessible web reporting to all employees with their call activity and charges
The more employees know about their expenses and consumption, the more likely they will reduce these items. The right TEM solution will help, but you need to go further by capturing data that call accounting systems provide which allow you to allocate charges to individuals. With the current economic conditions, corporations and government are demanding more accountability.
