When weighing up telecom expense management (TEM) providers, it can seem like each supplier is dangling the same core benefits in front of you. They reel you in with cost savings or the promise of newly-optimized telecom infrastructure. But choosing the wrong provider could harm your organization
Common Enterprise TEM Challenges
Frequent vendor churn in the TEM market has shaped short-term, unstable suppliers that struggle to create meaningful changes for their customers. Then they get bought or merged into new companies – leaving businesses at a loss.
Effective TEM requires providers to dig deep, not just rework the surface layer of a business’ telecom infrastructure. Many companies discover too late that their chosen provider can’t perform in-depth auditing at inventory level on a global scale – despite offering a supposed global service.
Global organizations face a choice between multiple national TEM providers for each of their locations and a single, global TEM provider. So, how do you distinguish between the good, the bad, and the ugly?
What’s the Difference?
National TEM Providers
Country-specific providers are located where they offer their services. By leveraging country-specific or region-specific TEM providers, enterprises must coordinate the efforts of multiple vendors – each of whom has unique processes, software, and reporting – to create a patchwork global solution.
Country-specific TEM providers benefit from deep local expertise in local data laws, language, and telecom vendors to get the best deals for their customers.
Global TEM Providers
A global TEM provider has its own service delivery resources in each region. This enables them to use common processes, software and reporting to deliver a consistent global experience.
Global TEM providers also focus on unifying regional resources to deliver common global governance and reporting throughout your organization.
Finance teams get greater visibility over a business’ globally-reaching telecoms infrastructure – unifying processes such as
How Do They Compare?
Comparing the benefits and limitations of both types of providers can help you make an educated decision when choosing your next TEM vendor. Here are a few key areas to consider:
- Resourcing
- Payment Processes
- Stability
- Data & Security
- In-Depth Auditing
- Time Zones
Resourcing
Multiple National TEM Providers
Country-specific TEM providers have the regional resources to navigate benchmarking, sourcing, and procuring the best rates for your telecoms infrastructure, specific to their country.
With local knowledge on hand, they can easily overcome common barriers such as language, currency, country-specific laws or regulations, and formatting.
However, under-developed TEM markets might lack local resources in the countries that you want to target, leaving you with less visibility and a weaker reporting infrastructure.
Country-specific TEM providers may struggle to translate language or formatting to your other TEM providers, which creates reporting silos that further obfuscate your billing.
Global TEM Providers
Global TEM providers have in-region capabilities to locate important resources, obtain viable rates or terms, and assist in negotiating deals. As they are globally capable, they can navigate country-specific languages, laws, and currencies too.
Global TEM providers have a more robust process framework that allows their customers to easily scale into new regions. Rather than looking for a new local partner, a global provider simply scales their offering. This not only creates a powerful business partnership, it keeps things simple for anyone managing a vendor portfolio.
Payment Processes
Multiple National TEM Providers
By using country-specific TEM providers, you’ll have in-depth knowledge of local rates or currencies to manage your costs and obtain accurate billings.
However, this may become a problem when processing your costs globally, and barriers in understanding processes in other countries may lead to disjointed TEM management or poor visibility for identifying extraneous/unoptimized costs.
Global TEM Providers
Global TEM providers process multiple currencies using one centralized banking system. This removes the hassle of transferring costs from country to country. Fund transfers are more secure and transparent, so you can avoid costly payment mistakes or billing errors.
Stability
Multiple National TEM Providers
As previously mentioned, the TEM market is susceptible to frequent vendor churn. Smaller providers can grow quickly and either merge with or be bought by another company. This can be disruptive for businesses that invest time and money in providers today that might not be there tomorrow.
Global TEM Providers
Vendor churn is less likely to affect global TEM providers. They are bigger, more mature players in the TEM market. But that doesn't mean they're immune to change.
It's important to review the ownership history of your prospective TEM partner before making a decision. Customer history, length of service, and knowing whether they're publicly traded can help you make the right choice for you.
Data & Security
Multiple National TEM Providers
Data encryption and privacy laws vary from country to country, which is why the legal landscape of telecoms is so complex – especially with added language barriers.
If you choose to use multiple national TEM providers, each one will have country-specific knowledge of privacy or data laws to ensure compliance. But you will need to create an internal process to review and manage all your providers to ensure total governance and control.
Global TEM Providers
A global TEM provider delivers this layer of control and visibility for you. They deploy comprehensive data protection and cybersecurity programs with clear evidence of compliance with regional standards.
They must demonstrate that they operate within and understand the various cyber-security and data privacy frameworks around the world. And because these frameworks are changing at a rapid pace, global TEM providers are equipped to handle data security proactively, on a global scale.
In-Depth Auditing
Multiple National TEM Providers
An end-to-end, data-rich audit is crucial if you want to optimize your telecom infrastructure. However, the vendor you use can only drill down as far as their visibility. Country-specific TEM providers have an in-depth knowledge of their country to accurately assess your network but may not have the scope to extend that visibility to other countries. In some cases, this can have costly consequences.
For example, one large oil and gas company found charges for telecom services that turned out to be running in a location it had closed 10 years ago. This was because the organization's TEM billings were international and its data services were regional.
As the international audit and regional auditing processes were isolated, the connection between a closed location and rolling charges had not been made, and the local TEM provider missed these extraneous billings from another country.
Global TEM Providers
With visibility across an entire telecom infrastructure, global TEM providers can perform more thorough audits to pinpoint cost optimization opportunities. They can also deploy solutions across the telecoms portfolio, so all regions benefit from the insights gained from audits.
Time Zones
Multiple National TEM Providers
When country-specific suppliers only offer support during local office hours, it can leave your other teams waiting for assistance. In time-critical situations, this can become burdensome when things go wrong.
Global TEM Providers
For an international company, it’s important to factor time-zone differences into your worldwide communications. Global TEM providers are equipped with in-region support teams, so each region has access to resources working within their standard operating hours, speaking their language, and understanding their local situation.
The sooner you can access support, the easier it is to manage a crisis – and the sooner you can return to business as normal. Moreover, teams with an international scope will be better equipped to negotiate language barriers across countries.
Does Global TEM Outweigh the Multiple National Approach?
Global TEM simplifies the chaos of communicating between multiple, separate national providers who may format important information and data differently. Additionally, the right global TEM solution provides unmatched levels of stability.
Most importantly, they perform detailed audits, down to inventory level, across your whole global infrastructure to optimize your telecoms regularly, enhancing your visibility.
