5 Critical Functions of Cradle to Grave Telecom/Wireless Expense Management

Why settle for less cost/time savings, when you and your telecom team can exceed corporate expectations with life-cycle management of your company’s wireless environment? Optimizing your enterprise’s entire telecom/mobile device inventory is not just a dream it must be a requirement. Did you know most organizations’ telecommunications budget is often one of the top three corporate budget items? Critical to your company’s competitive edge and fiscal bottom-line success may very well be Telecom/Wireless Expense Management (TEM/WEM). The wireless discipline is also known as Mobility Device Management (MDM).

Unfortunately, many companies assume they are either managing their wireless assets acceptably or getting enough out of their internal efforts to render unnecessary any additional initiatives. This mindset is most often not only counterproductive to your company’s fiscal best end result but also seriously flawed in remaining competitive in the current difficult business environment. Your rival corporate entities likely have understood mandatory life-cycle Telecom/Wireless Expense Management (TEM/WEM) is vital to their expense reduction strategies. If not, they will soon. Your team would be wise to prioritize this TEM/WEM approach as well.

If your team’s telecom/wireless efforts are anything other than cradle to grave management, your company’s telecom/wireless spend and employee time commitments are likely greater than is necessary for your business usage and required services. Check out these 5 Critical Functions of cradle to grave TEM/WEM solutions.

5 Critical Functions of life cycle TEM/WEM Services

1. Invoice/Financial Management

From invoice receipt to payment an automated solution is key to an affective life-cycle management of your telecom environment services. Once the electronic/paper billing is received the data must be fed into an automated software solution for the establishment of the TEM/WEM process. Core to this course of action is a centralized data base from which your team can manage all aspects of financial, accounting, and bill payment workflow. Such solutions must provide the right processing tools; exception reporting capability, carrier contract & corporate rules validation, as well as cost/split allocations and a robust reporting tool with a telephony aptitude to utilize it. This application will form the foundation to a true Cradle to Grave TEM/WEM approach.

2. Order Management

Centralizing and automating your device procurement process is essential to corporate control and the establishment of an accurate asset management process. This practice permits only corporate selected devices from which the employee/end-user can choose and only corporate hierarchy/cost center/device type approved services/devices into the inventory. The following related procurement services include:

• Procurement/eProcurement- All telecom services should be ordered centrally and accounted for from inception from within the app.
• Wireless – All vendor devices are selected from a corporate approved online catalog covering all accepted corporate carrier, device and accessories types.

The look and feel of the online wireless catalog should be client/company specific to give the end-user a comfort level expediting and enhancing their selection experience.

Additional Best in Class wireless ordering portal features are:

• selections from all corporate approved carrier/device/accessory types available and up to date.
• corporate policy should be required and accepted by end-user.
• corporate approval process automatically requested and certified before order placement.
• all approved device and accessories are shipped to the selected address.
• Procured devices/accessories are received by the correct end-user within all carriers promised SLA’s.
• the entire process is duly noted.
• optimally all above transactions should be hierarchy/cost center driven; i.e. Catalog device/accessory types are dependent on where the subscriber/end-user sits in the hierarchy.

Provisioning(wireless) – Automated and/or live wireless support ensures:

• correct device voice and data provisioning/set up
• timely end-user device training
• accurately entering transaction, device/accessory, end-user data, and cost center/hierarchy info into the wireless asset inventory.

All such disciplines save the end-user/corporate telecom team (WEM solution provider) both time and the company capital due to proven automated process efficiencies.

3. Inventory/Asset Management – Combined with the aforementioned eProcurement solution, wireless support/Help Desk is no less vital to maintaining an uncorrupted asset inventory. Maintaining the ongoing reliability of the data on who has what device, and what cost center/project(s) should account for it completes the loop for wireless inventory management.

Help Desk (wireless) – On-line or live wireless support provides the ongoing accuracy company’s must require. Inventory Management requires controlling the distribution of your wireless device population while allowing your end users/telecom team to get back to work on their core responsibilities. Help Desk aids in resolving these time-consuming issues/distractions, saving your enterprise substantial time and money.

From centralized/automated device selection/approval, procurement order entry/processing, provisioning, all Moves, Adds, Changes (MAC’s), reporting, and data analysis, Help Desk/Wireless Support seamlessly maintains the integrity of the device/end-user/cost center data and helps to ensure its correctness.

If data originally recorded needs to be changed or has been changed, your wireless support team provides that essential link to maintaining or accounting for device/accessory/cost center info so vital to wireless inventory management.

4. Vendor/Contract Management – The centralized data base relating to contract management is key to keeping current with carrier pricing, plans, terms and pricing. Quick visibility into such data will help your telecom team be able to access your current status and compare to the latest competitive offerings. Such info across all vendors should include:

• your vendors info
• vendor contracts
• carrier contract info including terms/plans/pooling
• contract validation data and processes
• carrier (specific/comprehensive) usage
• carrier (specific/comprehensive) spend
• reporting capabilities available for review (by right, role & responsibility) to all required company staff
• Company Wireless Device/Accessory Policy and validation processes

5. Expense Management/Optimization – Finally all of the previous disciplines are designed to optimize your telecom/wireless expenses and contribute to a radically reduced spend. Comprehensive Usage/Spend Reporting, Exception generating capability, and analytical expertise will help you achieve the highest level of expense management success resulting in optimum savings generation. Your Expense Management strategies should include:

• Cost Avoidance/ Optimization – ensures enterprise should only be paying for necessary services, devices, accessories, features options required for the optimum operation of corporate telecommunications goals.
• Audit Services – invoice validation, contract compliance, trending analysis
• Report Management – contract/business rule compliance/corp. policies, pooling, dispute management, trending, zero use features/devices, feature option adds needed, features not needed, and additional ad hoc reporting capability is required.

Businesses utilizing these 5 Critical Functions of Cradle to Grave Telecom/Wireless Expense Management services will dramatically increase time/cost efficiency while radically reducing corporate telecom/wireless spend spectacularly.