Knowledge is power. No one knows who came up with this famous phrase, but it’s one that certainly captures the essence of telecom inventory management.
What is Inventory Management in Telecom?
Telecom inventory management is the process of tracking and coordinating physical and non-physical assets, like service agreements, across your estate.
The more visibility you have, the easier it is to optimize your telecoms infrastructure and cut unnecessary costs. In the case of healthcare, availability can mean the difference between life and death. While in countless other industries, enterprises rely on telecom inventory management to provide reliable, high-quality, cost-effective services.
So, where does telecom inventory management fit into your enterprise and why is it so important?
Telecom Inventory Management Activities
At the enterprise level, the average service agreement is as dense as an asset list is long. Here are just some of the assets Telecom Expense Management (TEM) providers typically track for their clients:
- Air cards
- Conferencing services and equipment
- Data communications lines
- Lease and maintenance agreements
- Local exchange services
- Long-distance services including dedicated, private line, and virtual services
- Mobile devices
- Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)
- Network equipment
- Private Branch Exchange (PBX) and key systems
- Software Licenses
- Voicemail systems
- Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) equipment and services
When a telecom expense management provider engages with a new customer, one of the first activities on the agenda is to build a working telecom asset inventory.
A telecom asset inventory allows TEM providers to capture data quickly and compare it to carrier billing records. This allows them to account for 80-95% of your inventory within just a few weeks.
Whether the provider performs the ordering and provisioning on your behalf or not, it's important to track all Move, Add, Change, and Disconnect (MACD) activity. This helps you keep your telecom inventory up to date.
But telecom inventory management is more than a record-keeping exercise. An inventory isn't complete unless you can track:
- Where services are assigned and to who
- When they were installed
- When contracts are up for renewal
- What each service is used for
Why Telecom Inventory Management is Vital
Good telecom inventory management is crucial to enterprises for three key reasons:
- It ensures you only pay for the services you need
- It helps you avoid expense leaks and resource drains
- It standardizes processes across your enterprise
Let's take a closer look.
1. Only Pay for the Services You Need
One of the main benefits of telecom expense management is cost reduction.
Effective telecom expense management helps you identify and eliminate unused resources. Many enterprises have redundant assets. This could be because they don't know who a specific asset belongs to or what purpose it serves. Other times, they simply don't have an accurate inventory of their telecoms assets and don't know what's in their estate.
This can lead to situations where you end up paying for a mobile asset that the carrier recognizes as active, even though you no longer use it.
A telecom expense management vendor ensures your inventory is accurate and well-maintained. This gives you the insight you need to compare invoices with services, ensuring you only pay for the services you need.
2. Avoid Expense Leaks and Resource Drains
Today’s organizations must handle an increasingly complex estate of:
- Fixed telecoms
- Mobile devices
- Service agreements
- IT infrastructure
One key reason for this is the rise of BYOD solutions.
The BYOD market is expected to reach $485.5 billion by 2025. So, as your telecom estate increases in complexity, you need a systematic approach to keep assets under control and prevent expense leaks and resource drains.
According to one study, effective inventory management can reduce expenses in your TEM program by up to 15%.
What's more, telecom inventory management services lighten the burden on IT staff. When you engage a TEM vendor, you free up more time to focus on core business activities.
3. Standardize Processes
Assets and services frequently change in large businesses, with new lines and circuits added all the time.
In MACD terms, wireless services can move daily, fixed lines are added as new branches emerge, changes take place when scaling up and down resources, and disconnects happen when a branch closes.
Throw in the frequent connection and disconnection of corporate devices as employees join or leave, and you have an inventory that’s in constant flux.
This is where telecoms inventory management comes into its own. While many enterprises don’t have the tools, time, or knowledge to maintain database integrity, a telecom expense management provider does.
There's another issue at play here. Few enterprises work in a unified way.
When you have branches and business units spread across the globe, activities such as inventory management, provisioning, and TEM often occur in silos. This means you'll need to consult multiple systems and sources to build a clear picture of your telecom inventory.
Effective telecom inventory management means adopting software that can track, manage, and report on all mobile and fixed telecom assets, wherever they are.
At the same time, integrating inventory records with telecom provisioning and full-service telecom expense management creates a single version of the truth. This centralizes your billing records and improves inventory reporting which, in turn, helps you optimize operating costs and reduce overspend.
Time is of the Essence in Telecom Inventory Management
Customers are often amazed at the substantial savings and efficiencies they can unlock with effective telecom inventory management. But the equation is simple. The longer services and assets go unchecked the more money you waste.
So, when it comes to telecom inventory management, there really is no time like the present.
Topics: TEM
