MANAGED SERVICES

From the April 2007 
issue of Communications News

Manage your telecom expenses

Outsourcing can provide industry expertise not available within the enterprise.

by Dave Olsson


 

In today’s hypercompetitive marketplace, outsourcing offers a solution for enterprises wanting to leverage externally specialized and skilled organizations to manage complex, non-core business tasks so they can focus on core, strategic competencies within their business. Telecom expense management (TEM) is emerging as a business process outsourcing (BPO) option where companies may–on a menu-driven basis–outsource the entire telecom lifecycle. In addition to supporting enterprises’ voice-over-IP (VoIP) readiness programs, outsourced TEM services can provide companies scalable capabilities and expertise.

TEM services should provide automated solutions and expertise through robust, graphical business analytics and dashboards, cost-management and chargeback capabilities, asset and inventory management, and invoice audit and processing management. Outsourced TEM services also can help facilitate VoIP planning, adoption and ongoing operations, easing the expansion and implementation of high-impact technology initiatives.

According to one study, enterprises spend nearly half of their IT budget on local, long-distance, high-speed wireline and wireless services for office, mobile and remote communications–up from 10 to 15 percent 15 years ago. Of that, between 10 and 40 percent is potentially wasted. Many factors should be assessed when considering what, when and how to take advantage of new communications initiatives and investments such as VoIP.

Providing the foundation for understanding current telecom and non-telecom infrastructures and expenses, TEM can streamline and organize the communications topography. This allows companies to create a benchmark for making technology and business decisions by helping to comprehend existing assets, expenses and resource utilization and where to go next. A TEM solution examines how companies are utilizing communications resources and assets.

The foundation for a successful TEM solution begins with understanding the organization’s specific business needs, and results in the development and implementation of an integrated people, process and technology solution that is aligned to those needs. This strategic approach ensures that TEM solutions are developed in alignment with specific enterprise needs, are implemented in accordance with business priorities, and maximize the use of internal and external (outsourced) resources, yielding maximum results.

By establishing an organization’s TEM-related business needs, TEM outsourcers can provide clients with detailed expert knowledge in specific areas that a client has identified as key priorities. This enables the TEM provider to determine whether or not the client’s objectives can be achieved, and to quantify the expected results (both cost and resource savings).

Key questions when making the decision to offload functions to outsourced partners include:

  • What key functions can be offloaded to maximize value?
  • What is the business case for outsourcing?
  • What is the return-on-investment time frame?
  • Can the existing staff be redeployed to handle more strategic tasks?
  • What is the value of executing the more-strategic tasks?
  • Is there a hybrid or shared responsibility model that may be more appropriate?
  • Customer benefits of business process outsourcing include:
  • improved efficiencies and reduced administrative hassles;
  • access to telecom industry expertise; and
  • single point of accountability.

Regardless of the delivery method (license or outsource), the adoption of TEM technology has enabled customers worldwide to achieve results producing quantifiable effects, including:

  • one company realized a 35 percent savings in its annual telecom costs;
  • another firm eliminated spreadsheet-driven and manual processes linking hundreds of spreadsheets;
  • a third company reduced legal compliance processes from a half-day to just minutes; and
  • another saw a 73 percent reduction in a 138-step telecom order-to-pay process–to just 37 steps.

Outsourcing TEM tasks, including VoIP evaluation services or implementation, can allow an enterprise to gain access to external telecom industry expertise and the ability to pinpoint accountability. TEM technologies also can help organizations automate processes, increase operational efficiency and adopt additional best practices.

Dave Olsson is the CEO of AnchorPoint, Framingham, Mass.

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