Waiting until your telecom expenses are out of control before your find a company to help manage them is a prescription for problems that can be avoided. It would be like neglecting maintenance on your car and expecting it to work properly. Neglecting car maintenance will lead to problems that you will soon see with poor gas mileage and strange sounds until one day the engine won’t start. Much like car issues, problems from neglecting telecom expense management may not be noticeable until it is too late.
Failure to proactively implement a Telecom Expense Management (TEM) program, can lead to over paying for carrier expenses due to billing errors. Recently, a large healthcare company purchased another firm with rehabilitation centers and doctors offices. After the merger, the administrative people that managed telecom bills were let go as part of an effort to cut costs. In another case, reorganization at a government agency led to relocation of personnel responsible for processing bills while the rest of the staff continued to work at the facility. In both cases, their systems did not flag missing bills. Delays in paying the phone bills led the telecom carriers to disconnect these lines causing costly business disruptions.
Another factor to consider is the time that it takes to set expectations with another firm that will help manage telecom expenses. You may need some time to find a provider that meets all of your needs, and it will take a while for them to learn how you operate. If your telecom expenses are not currently managed, it will take some effort to build an inventory of your services and mobile assets. Finding all of the contracts and contacts from each telecom carrier will present challenges for organizations with multiple locations.
A good TEM program will centralize management of billing and automate bill validation. With telecom bills, it may be impossible to recover refunds for billing errors if you wait too long. There is the issue of finding the documentation to support claims for disconnected services. Finally, the stature of limitations and contracts may limit how far back in time you can go when submitting billing claims. When a car goes neglected for a long period of time, it can become more costly to repair it. Similarly, waiting until your telecom expenses get out of control to find a TEM program can be more costly than proactively managing your expenses.
