In an ever-connected world, streamlining telecom service provisioning activities – also known as move, add, change, and disconnects (MACDs) – is vital.
If you haven’t identified the most cost-effective and efficient methods for managing your domestic and international telecom assets, you’re putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage. Yet, many enterprises treat provisioning and telecom expense management as separate entities, adding an unnecessary layer of complexity that can lead to costly mistakes.
Hiring a telecom expense management provider alleviates many of these issues, and provides tangible long-term benefits for your enterprise.
Key Steps in the Telecom Provisioning Process
Dedicated telecom expense management providers centralize your provisioning process, using a combination of expert knowledge, advanced tools, global support, and more.
Key steps in the telecom provisioning process include a needs assessment, which identifies your organization’s telecom needs, service selection of the appropriate telecom services and carriers to meet those needs and implementation, testing and validation with ongoing management for optimal performance.
The Benefits of Integrating Telecom Provisioning with Telecom Expense Management
Greater Financial Visibility
As with every aspect of telecom expense management, the key benefit of hiring a reliable partner is a financial one.
Keeping track of costs (invoices, contracts, etc.) is tricky – especially if you have multiple offices located across the globe. This often results in a disjointed telecom infrastructure, increasing the likelihood of errors, such as inaccurate billing and overcharging.
Experienced telecom expense management providers review your telecom inventory to ensure all payment information is accurate, up-to-date, and scheduled. This helps coordinate efforts across multiple regions and gives you complete visibility over your entire technology estate.
By closely monitoring your MACD activities, telecom expense management providers help identify unnecessary expenses. This includes expenses resulting from carrier errors and discontinuation during previous provisioning events.
We’ve seen several examples of organizations that suddenly discover they’ve been paying for unused services for years due to the fragmented nature of their telecom infrastructure.
One global restaurant chain achieved 600% ROI from our telecom expense management services after experiencing late fees and service interruptions. Overall, we delivered $1.6m in cost reductions.
With disparate communication channels, the issue is more common in the digital age. Modern businesses must consider everything from instant messaging and social media to smartphone technology, BYOD services, and traditional fixed-line infrastructure.
It's easy to make potentially costly errors if you don't have in-depth knowledge of telecom provisioning. Outsourcing provisioning to a telecom expense management provider with dedicated global teams focused solely on mobile and fixed provisioning can improve inventory accuracy.
Improved Decision Making
Having a bird’s-eye view of your telecommunications infrastructure is hugely beneficial for formulating long-term provisioning strategies.
You may not have the time or resources to organize the data you collect, let alone draw any meaningful insights from it. But you achieve unparalleled database integrity by capturing all provisioning activities (including detailed notes, workflows, and approvals) in a single place.
This enables you to make more informed decisions across your communications infrastructure – which is impossible with traditional data management methods like Excel spreadsheets.
A Truly Global Perspective
Telecom provisioning difficulties grow with the size of the business.
Organizations with a global reach typically encounter more issues than those operating locally or nationally. This makes it problematic to maintain a productive working relationship with regional carriers.
While countries like the US and UK have advanced telecommunications infrastructure, access to high-speed internet and smartphone technology is far from universal. A telecom expense management provider is best suited to manage and coordinate telecom provisioning on a global scale.
Besides expert industry knowledge, the best telecom expense management providers have service delivery resources worldwide. This includes software packages, reporting tools, processes, cultural insights, and more.
These resources help you establish and maintain a reliable telecommunications network in every market, while unifying important processes like benchmarking, data protection, billing, and telecom procurement across your telecom estate.
With support teams in these regions, you'll have added peace of mind, knowing there’s always someone on hand to resolve issues, 24 hours a day.
Problems are no longer deferred until normal business hours in the country where your headquarters are located, minimizing disruption and saving your organization a fortune in lost hours.
Don’t let outdated provisioning methods hold your business back. Embrace a smarter, streamlined approach to telecom management and stay ahead of the competition.
Topics: TEM
