In Europe, many businesses are looking to strengthen their telecom infrastructure to prepare for the future. Uncertainty caused by the surge of remote working in response to the COVID-19 pandemic means that keeping telecom environments secure, compliant, and cost-effective is more important than ever.
What is Telecom Expense Management?
Telecom expense management (TEM) is a service that enables IT, procurement, and finance departments to improve processes. This includes the lifecycle of ordering, provisioning, support, and cost management.
This is all enabled by a dedicated TEM provider, who can work with your teams to optimize processes. When a TEM provider is also experienced in managing global resources, they can bring multiple benefits to even large international businesses.
TEM gives your organization better visibility across all telecoms services including fixed and mobile telephony, Internet of Things (IOT), and public cloud licence tracking.
Depending on your chosen TEM partner, telecom expense management can also include handy BI reporting tools, helping to strengthen your C-suite level decision-making.
The Missed Opportunity of TEM
The world has rapidly changed over the last year, and many businesses have had to rely heavily on their telecoms environment. For enterprise organizations, telecoms have not just played a supporting role - they've kept operations afloat.
From navigating the challenges of a remote workforce to global communications, your telecom environment is the pillar that your business operations rest upon.
Yet, many businesses in Europe lack control and visibility of their telecoms environment, and TEM could be the solution.
TEM is a well-known service in many parts of the world, with the U.S. market being one of the most mature. For some businesses, it is considered essential for managing telecoms and identifying opportunities to optimize processes. Because of this, the global telecom expense management market is expected to reach $1.89 billion by 2027.
Why is this?
Telecom Expense Management for European Enterprises
Managing your telecom infrastructure is time-consuming for internal teams, especially when your environment crosses multiple country borders, currencies, or languages.
It's more difficult to manage vendor relationships or dispute billing without language support or regional knowledge. For example, if anomalies occur between a telecom service invoice and a supplier's agreed contract terms, it can easily be mis-managed by teams without local understanding.
Managing multiple providers is also a challenge. Some companies consolidate as best they can, while others prefer to leave decisions at a country-level. Either way, a TEM provider can support your business by giving you centralised reporting and insights. Both of which are vital for supplier management and negotiation, as well as delivering savings.
How Can TEM Services Help?
A telecom expense management provider has the knowledge and industry expertise to assist with and improve your telecoms management, all on a global scale.
They will work with you to consolidate your TEM processes and data into a single platform. This ensures that all of your critical decision-making data is in one place, giving teams better visibility of spend across various countries, languages, and currencies.
This empowers your teams to begin optimizing your telecoms spend with the assistance of your chosen TEM partner. TEM providers will audit your telecom environment invoices line-by-line, and will identify inconsistency or anomalies across your telecom inventory. In this case, knowledge is power.
With better data of your telecoms spend within a centralized system, they'll spot cost-saving opportunities and handle inefficiencies in billing for you. This reduces the burden on your internal teams to spot important, yet time-consuming, cost-saving opportunities while managing their workloads.
TEM services can support and optimize your entire telecoms lifecycle, including:
- Auditing and reporting
- Procurement processes
- Invoice management
- Inventory management
- Mobility lifecycle management
- In-region knowledge and advice
Take Back Control of Your Telecom Costs with Telecom Expense Management
A TEM provider will work with you to get the best value out of your telecom estate. From sourcing and deployment of telecom assets, all the way to eventual disposal or recycling of devices. But in Europe, the benefits and value of a TEM partner are often overlooked.
Discover how TEM works to immediately minimize costs and improve processes for your teams in our latest e-book.
