Telecom expenses form a large part of a business’ expenses. Reducing these expenses will help it raise its profits. The recession introduced the world to a new kind of expense reduction: ‘cost-cutting’. The term has lost its honor in the current times. Telecom expense reduction need not be done by adopting these ‘cost-cutting’ measures but by sensible, practical ways. Let me explain what I am talking about.

We need to start right. A bad vendor or a bad plan will make us incur more expenses in spite of all the expense reduction measures you take. Don’t go for a vendor or a plan just because someone else too has opted for it. Find out what your telecom needs are, see if the vendor’s services align with them. Compare different vendors and plans before making that final decision.

My next point is similar to the infamous ‘cost-cutting’. Start monitoring the usage. You may never need to implement monstrous privilege-curbing measures to reduce expenses if you make sure the telecom services are not being misused or abused. And if the business’ legitimate usage is high, find another plan!

Start looking at your bills. Look at the previous ones as well. You will be surprised to find how many errors you have ignored in the past and how they have become a regular feature in your bills. You will actually be able to recover lost money if you start reviewing your bills properly.

Keep a lookout for problems in the telecom services and their unavailability. You have to get optimum service from the telecom services, not compromise.

Make sure you keep revisiting your telecom needs and the services to see they align. You have to go for a different plan as your needs grow.

This is the simplest plan for reducing telecom expenses.

Because a telecom management company will save you much more than you can save on telecom expenses on your own.

Expense management invariably involves an audit. But when we manage expenses on our own, we often ignore conducting proper audits. We depend largely on cutting down costs by curbing usage. And this is also a big deal. The reason I recommend outsourcing the expense management of your telecom network is simple: You focus on your business and let the professionals take care of expense reduction for you.

Outsourcing is really a good idea when it comes to managing your telecom expenses. I know what you are thinking: You will end up spending a fortune on trying to reduce expenses. Well, that would definitely be a paradox. But no, professional management is not expensive. In fact, it will cost you on a contingency basis, taking its payment from the savings it realizes for you. Oh, did I not mention it? Professional telecom expense management looks not only at reducing your expenses but also at recovering costs that you have incurred earlier.

The telecom industry has made telecom expense management a standard system. The system of Telecom Expense Management (TEM) retains its essence in its name but is popularly referred to by its acronym. Now, TEM is essentially what you get when you outsource your expense management.

TEM includes auditing, usage management, bill review etc. It brings in automation in areas such as invoice processing. TEM really makes your life simpler by letting you concentrate on your core business. If you haven’t deployed TEM in your organization yet, start looking for good telecom consultants.

When I see people talking over the cell phone everywhere – on streets, in restaurants, in cars, while buying groceries, while walking on the pavement – I wonder if their companies are paying their bills. And guess what? Most of their companies are.

Now, why does an organization provide its employees with wireless devices? To help its business. Some people definitely don’t use these privileges only for professional reasons. And with so many wireless devices across cities, states, even countries, it becomes difficult to manage these devices. And wireless expense management becomes a far-fetched idea.

Let’s look at what an organization needs to do in order to manage its wireless expenses.

• Tracking of usage: You have to begin by tracking each and every wireless device in your organization. You should know its type and its location. Next, track how it is being used. You should be able to tell if the services are being misused or abused.
• Review of current contract: Take time to look at your existing wireless contract again. Revisit the wireless services and plans and find out if they align with your organization’s wireless needs. If they don’t, it’s time you changed your vendor or plan.
• Review of bills: Look at what you are paying for the wireless services. Review the previous and the existing bills and see if there are errors. Sometimes, a consistent error becomes a feature of the bill. Make sure you study the bills carefully.

Continue tracking the usage and expenses regularly. Also, review your telecom needs periodically. If wireless management is too complicated for you to handle, hire a telecom management team.

When we outsource tasks, we do it so that the company we have outsourced it to performs the tasks in the most effective, beneficial, and economical way. Outsourcing is often triggered by our limited knowledge about the task, but that should not be the sole reason for the action. When you outsource anything to do with your telecom network, make sure you get the optimum benefits of your action. For this, you need a telecom management company that doesn’t simply understand your needs, but understand them the best.

Hiring any telecom consultant is not good enough. Hire the one that can provide you what others cannot. Let’s look at factors that make one telecom management company better than another.

• A good telecom consultant will charge you on contingency basis when it comes to savings-based services such as Telecom Expense Management (TEM).
• A good telecom management company will not focus on selling products to you, whether its own or commissioned ones. Its focus will primarily be your needs. I recommend going for a company that does not own products.
• A good consultant will be able to show you cost-saving figures from the past. It will be able to show you real savings that it realized for its other clients.
• A good telecom management company should be able to provide you with rock-solid references. Checking the company’s past performance will help you figure out if it is any good.

When looking to handover the management of your prized telecom network, make sure it goes into strong hands.

It may not be true for all organizations, but some organizations forget about the telecom network once it has been put in place and the services are deployed. Yeah, they continue to pay all the bills. But they don’t look at expanding the network, understanding its own needs, or optimization of any kind. Their disregard to looking after the network breeds from their assumption that the telecom vendors are doing their job and they are obliging with paying their bills on time. Only if they knew how much they would save by just looking after their telecom network. Let’s look at what an organization should know about its telecom services.

• It should keep reviewing its telecom needs. A periodical review will make it aware of the need for expansion or reduction of any sorts.
• It should analyze if the current telecom plans align with its needs. It has to revisit the telecom contract if the needs are not being properly met.
• An organization should always be aware of its infrastructure. It should know the status of its inventory and manage it properly.
• It should know if the telecom services are being used properly. It should find out if there is any misuse or abuse of the services.
• It should be aware of every element in the bills. An organization should review its bills and make sure there are no errors. It should also make sure that it pays only for what it uses.
• An organization should be aware if the telecom services are unavailable at times and its frequency.

Yeah, keeping track of so many things is not easy. And organizations not only need to keep track of these things but also need to manage them effectively, with a focus on reaping maximum benefits off the telecom network. Now, all this definitely calls for help from professionals. Hire a good telecom management company and you don’t have to worry about anything.

Some organizations are adamant when it comes to adopting a new technology. Why should I go for anything that comes in the market? I don’t need it! You may not, but would you know whether or not you need it unless you are open to it? VoIP too saw resistance initially but gradually businesses realized its benefits. There was still a problem though. They didn’t know how to manage the VoIP network. This made several organizations back out from deploying it.

Yeah, VoIP management is not easy. But that should not make you worry. You can hire telecom consultants to manage it for you. No, it won’t cost you a fortune. It will be a fraction of what VoIP deployment will save for you. Let’s us look at what all VoIP does for you.

• Your telecom expenses reduce significantly. VoIP saves money, and saves it big time!
• Integration is here! VoIP integrates voice and data services. You no longer need to maintain data and voice networks separately.
• You spend less on operations. With one network for data and voice networks, VoIP brings down the infrastructure and operating costs.
• VoIP grows with your business. Modifying the VoIP network with your growing needs is easy. VoIP offers you high scalability.
• It lets you move! You can relocate your VoIP network without much problem.

Don’t be too late in deploying VoIP in your organization. And let a professional team take care of the deployment and management of VoIP. This will not only save you the tension but also help you reap the optimum benefits.

Most of us crib about rising expenses at home but do nothing about it. And I am referring to any kind of expense. Often, we don’t even monitor the expenses, let alone trying to reduce them. In an organization, the absence of expense management can prove fatal. While organizations look at most of their expenses, some of them fail to look at their telecom expenses. The area is ignored because businesses make the following assumptions:

• The expenses are directly proportional to the services being used.
• The bills give us the right figure on what we should pay.

Now, let me tell you the problem with these assumptions.

• The expenses don’t necessarily reflect the usage. You have to understand the usage to know if you are spending right.
• The bills are not sacrosanct. They need a close review to find out if there are errors. The vendor may not be making intentional errors, but you are paying for any kind of errors in the bills.

I recommend a thorough, professional management of your telecom expenses. And there is nothing better than the widely accepted Telecom Expense Management (TEM). TEM reviews previous and current bills and finds out if you have been paying more than you should. It also ensures that you pay for only those services that you use and not for the ones that have been added to your telecom plan. TEM also helps you track the usage of the services. You get an idea if there is a misuse or over-use of the telecom services.

TEM focuses on recovering costs and reducing future expenses. Going for an expense management system for your telecom network will help you make bigger profits.

Telecom management is a big deal. After all, it involves not only monitoring the telecom services but also acquiring the right service and optimizing it. A typical telecom lifecycle is comprised of the following phases:

• Procurement and contract negotiation
• Inventory Maintenance
• Invoice Processing
• Audits and Analysis
• Monitoring and Troubleshooting
• Reporting and Documentation

Now, a proper telecom management system is one that focuses on all these phases and manages them effectively. Organizations are now implementing something called Telecom Lifecycle Management (TLM) that encompasses all phases of the telecom lifecycle. TLM is an obvious term for the management of your telecom network, but is the system any good when deployed? How different is it from the popular Telecom Expense Management (TEM)? Let’s find out.

Now, while TEM focuses on saving money by managing the telecom costs and expenses of an organization, TLM looks after the management of the technical aspects of the telecom network apart from managing its costs. Thus, TEM forms a part of TLM.

While most companies offer some kind of TLM or the other, the standard, widely-accepted TLM is the one that employs the most-effective software and the best practices in the industry to provide an end-to-end management for all your telecommunication services.

TLM looks at optimizing the performance of your telecom network. At the same time, it looks at making maximum savings possible in terms of the cost incurred in managing the telecom services and the expenses. As TLM provides overall management, you get a better visibility of your network.

For a professional telecom management team, looking after the telecom network is what they know, and they know it well. In spite of our best intentions and effort, we miss several important areas when we manage the telecom network on our own. In today’s post, I will introduce you to the five biggest mistakes we make when we take things into our own hands.

Mistake #1: We don’t compare the telecom vendor we choose with others.

We often go for the vendor we come across first, without comparing it with others. We may not be using the best service that suits our telecom needs.

Mistake #2: We don’t study the telecom contract properly.

Irrespective of the way we select our vendor, we sign the contract without understanding it completely. We don’t ask the vendor to explain the contract to us, and even if we do, we don’t ask for detailed explanations if we don’t understand something. The fine print is almost always not looked into.

Mistake #3: We pay blindly, without studying the telecom bills.

We assume that we are paying for what we use, and that the vendor is sending us correct bills. While your vendor may not cheat you, you may be paying for certain unnecessary services. The bills may even have errors that we don’t pay attention to. Ignoring bill reviews may cost us dearly in the long run.

Mistake #4: We don’t review the usage of the telecom services.

We assume that the telecom services are being used the right way, and never really look into it. However, we may be ignoring instances of over-use, and misuse.

Mistake #5: We renew the telecom contract blindly.

We don’t see whether or not our current telecom services align with our projected telecom needs, and keep renewing the existing contract.

These mistakes can be avoided if we hire the services of a team that understands our infrastructure, analyzes our needs, and looks at acquiring a telecom service that optimizes the telecom network.

Well, you must manage your VoIP network, just don’t manage it on your own. Even if the idea of VoIP management doesn’t scare you, it does not mean you can handle it. This post tells you why.

• It is complicated. Yeah, VoIP is a complex technology. It is a relatively new technology. Even if you have been handling the earlier telecom network on your own, it doesn’t prepare you to handle the complexity when VoIP is added to it. Moreover, the management of VoIP needs to start even before its deployment.
• The internal team doesn’t have adequate knowledge. You have to agree that your internal resources are new to VoIP. They really don’t have the know-how to understand and manage your VoIP network. What is the point deploying VoIP but not reaping enough benefits from it? As a business organization, your primary purpose of acquiring a VoIP network is getting business benefits from it. You can’t count on an inadequately-informed team for that.
• You may not have the perfect welcome dais for VoIP. If you have been handling your telecom network internally, and if it hasn’t been managed properly, you will have difficulty accommodating VoIP in it. You need to get the existing network perfected in order to deploy VoIP.
• You are letting other important work take a backseat by getting resources from other departments to handle the network. Typically, you don’t hire a team from scratch for VoIP management. You get people from other departments and domains. While these people may have some skills, you may not be utilizing them the right way.

Hiring the services of a telecom management company will help you ensure that your VoIP network is managed properly and you get optimum benefits from it.