What is Technology Expense Management?

10 April 2018 | Posted by Cass Information Systems, Inc.

Technology expense management helps enterprises get a better handle on their assets and services.


It improves visibility into technology inventories and reduces inefficiencies to create cost savings. But, while adding this to your current telecom expense management services might sound like the perfect idea, caution is advised.

Why Technology Expense Management?

At an enterprise level, technology plays a major role in how organizations operate. From networking and storage to infrastructure and cloud services, the amount of new technology to manage is growing fast.

But the more technology grows, the harder it is to retain full visibility of your IT inventory. This problem intensifies when you incorporate current industry trends.

The Rise of XaaS

Today, every type of product and service is being transformed by software – then supercharged by connections. As a result, businesses are moving away from buying assets and putting stock in a phenomenon known as 'everything-as-a-service' or 'XaaS'.

Embracing this shift can help organizations be more agile and save costs on traditional on-premises assets. However, it also means they have much less visibility and control. This can increase the risk of spend overruns, reduce profitability, and significantly impact the bottom line of income statements.

Curious about the state of telecom expense management in 2023? Read the latest  Gartner Market Guide to learn more.

How Technology Expense Management Delivers Savings

Technology expense management offers enterprises an opportunity to cast a better eye across all their services.

It aims to identify all IT services being consumed, who is consuming them, and whether they're consuming them efficiently. Then inefficiencies can be located, managed and rectified, enabling organizations to gain control over their IT services. 

Technology expense management also helps businesses to drive down spend via:

  • Recovering billing anomalies, detected through invoice audits 
  • Cancelling unused services, which are highlighted by usage data 
  • Optimizing underused services, also highlighted by usage data 

The value of well-delivered technology expense management is clear. Across several industries, specifically financial services, specialist companies such as Apptio and Nicus offer a solution where the benefit is undeniable.

But not all solutions are born equal.

Technology Expense Management Isn't An Add-On Service

It's becoming more common to see telecom expense management companies tack on a technology expense management provision for no other reason than to jump on the bandwagon. There's often no evidence to suggest that they're fit to deliver the service.

To deliver a truly valuable expense management service – whether it's technology or telecom expense management services – providers must offer their expertise and support as well as their products.

Telecom expense management vendors will almost always lack the information, knowledge and resources to provide effective insight into the XaaS shift. So, choosing to put your faith in a telecom expense management provider to identify and eradicate inefficiencies across all your IT services may be a big mistake.

And this has major implications beyond the scope of just technology expense management.

Is Your Telecom Expense Management Service Provider up to Scratch?

To fully understand IT service rate structures, contracts and invoices, providers require specialist skills and technical expertise.

If your current TEM vendor lacks any of this insight across physical assets or XaaS offerings, they haven't just dangerously overestimated their ability to provide a comprehensive technology expense management service. They're also likely failing to perform telecoms expense management properly as well. 

Technology expense management in the telecom industry is often just a bolt-on for companies who are trying to distinguish themselves in the telecom expense management (TEM) environment. In reality, technology expense management is a service that should be offered as part of telecom expense management.

Choose Cass for Telecom Expense Management Services

In short, no matter the buzz technology expense management may be creating, telecom expense management vendors must be assessed in the same way they always have: how good they are at performing telecom expense management services.

At Cass, technology expense management is nothing new – in fact, we've been managing the costs of a wide variety of IT and XaaS costs for several years. However, our focus remains on providing enterprises with superior telecom expense management services that generate tangible cost-savings for enterprises. 

With a history of steady growth, years of enterprise-level expense management experience – including fourteen years within the telecom market – and an unparalleled customer retention record, it's little wonder why we're the premier choice for enterprise organizations. 

Want to learn why Cass is a vendor of choice? Learn more about the representative vendors in the telecom expense management industry in the latest Gartner® market guide. It contains vendor profiles in the context of an up-to-date analysis of the market to help you choose the right partner for your needs.

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Topics: TEM

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