At the center of any successful telecom expense management (TEM) program is a well-managed inventory. For enterprises, the ability to accurately track and report on all telecom and cloud assets across their infrastructure is invaluable, and makes it easier to identify key areas for cost-savings and optimizations.
For large businesses, it's important to know where your inventory is. Effective telecom inventory management will take the complexity out of managing a global telecom inventory, but the real value is the ability to locate assets fast and having easy access to a centralized view of your entire telecom infrastructure.
But you can't control what you can't see, and most enterprises lack the tools and time to maintain an accurate inventory across their entire infrastructure.
With this in mind, here are some of the best practices for global-level telecom inventory management.
Get a Unified View of Assets
Today, many organizations are spread across disparate business units with varying geographical locations. This means that activities like telecom inventory management, TEM, and provisioning often occur in silos, closed off from other systems.
Lack of communication between these silos makes it harder to share information about additional infrastructure, devices, lines, circuits, and more. And this can easily lead to errors or inaccuracies when it comes to updating your global telecom inventory.
Enterprises need to know:
- Who has what devices and where
- What wireline assets are needed against existing assets
- If there are obsolete resources
- The configuration at each of your locations
To get a unified view of their entire telecom inventory, enterprises should look for a managed service provider that can track, manage, and report on all their fixed, mobile, and cloud assets down to feature level on a centralized platform.
This allows for easy integration of inventory records with telecom provisioning, providing a single platform to view data, which, in turn, improves the accuracy of billing.
In addition, the right telecom expense management services, will provide the ability to engage with their entire telecom inventory and all relevant invoices in one place. This saves considerable time and prevents any potential data loss from disparate business locations.
Keep on Top of Changing Services
New technology, infrastructure, and devices are deployed constantly, and this means telecom inventories are always changing.
And as more assets become dispersed across their infrastructure, a consistent management approach becomes increasingly more pertinent to maintaining an accurate inventory, which is essential to identify any expense leaks or resource drains.
Often, the best way to stay on top of these changing services is by enlisting the help of an experienced telecom expense management services provider. They will be able to capture and monitor all data, and can often account for 100% of a client’s inventory at the onset of a partnership.
The right telecom expense management vendor will continue to manage enterprise inventory on a daily basis, based on MACD activity (Move, Add, Change, Disconnect), which gives enterprises the visibility needed to compare invoices with ongoing services.
Only active services are paid for and unnecessary resources can be removed and allocated elsewhere, based on changing requirements and business needs.
Automate Manual Processes
Telecom inventory management without automation can be incredibly challenging. From sourcing and procurement to invoice management, everything becomes labor-intensive without adequate software support.
And these manual processes are very susceptible to human error, which can cost enterprises large sums of money if left unmanaged.
Replacing manual data entry with an automated telecom expense management software is one of the best ways to eliminate this issue. Telecom expense management software removes the need for in-house teams to carry out common tasks like updating assets, managing invoices, provisioning and more.
This also takes the burden away from in-house teams and means they can focus their attention and resources elsewhere.
Choose the Right TEM Provider
Getting started with telecom expense management is often seen as difficult, but this is almost never the case, and is down to common misconceptions about the inventory management process.
Telecom inventory management is no easy feat, but with the right telecom management services, it isn't as hard as you might think.
Discover more about the myths surrounding telecom inventory management and download our free guide today.
