With the global IT market set to reach $5.1 trillion in 2024, an 8% increase from 2023,¹ managing your technology expenses has never been more essential. But as modern IT and telecom environments grow more complex, gaining visibility into spending and identifying savings opportunities can be challenging – especially for multi-location businesses.

Telecom expense management (TEM) solutions eliminate complexity and help businesses take control of IT and telecom costs. Read on to learn what TEM is, its benefits, and how to get started with the right provider.

What Is Telecom Expense Management?

Telecom expense management is a cloud-based service that aims to optimize an organization's IT and telecom expenses. The goal of TEM is to simplify IT and telecom management by centralizing all bills, inventory, contracts, orders, and expenses into a single platform, enabling multi-location businesses to overcome challenges such as:

• Juggling multiple bills and service providers across geographically dispersed locations.
• Finding and correcting billing errors and discrepancies in invoices.
• Making informed decisions about telecommunications services and solutions.
• Uncovering savings opportunities and areas of improvement.

TEM services typically include billing automation, inventory and contract management, and service usage analysis, while some telecom expense management providers offer dispute resolution and service adjustments. By gathering your IT and telecom information in one place, TEM providers offer complete visibility into complex enterprise environments for strategic decision-making and cost savings.

Benefits of Telecom Expense Management

Telecom expense management solutions give your staff the tools and support they need to improve your organization's IT and telecom infrastructure. Key benefits of working with a TEM provider include:

Improved Visibility and Control

For many businesses, the biggest benefit of telecom expense management is improved visibility into IT and telecom expenses across the enterprise. Centralizing bills, inventory, contracts, and usage data eliminates financial blind spots and provides actionable insights to help control costs. Your IT department gains clear visibility into underutilized services, outdated inventory, and contractual waste for every location and carrier, enabling them to reduce telecom costs and increase efficiency.

Centralized Multi-Location Environments

Managing hundreds or thousands of unique IT and telecom environments is a challenge for businesses with multiple locations – whether domestic or global. Disparate accounts, assets, services, policies, and processes across your various branch locations can lead to:

• Limited visibility into total IT and telecom spend and a loss of aggregated buying power.
• Increased vulnerability surrounding security gaps from multiple unique technology stacks.
• Difficulty assessing true local usage needs and rightsizing your services appropriately.
• Lost productivity from a lack of access to centralized data.

An effective telecom expense management solution consolidates all aspects of multi-location IT and telecom management, including inventory, contracts, ordering, and more, into one system. Streamlining these fragmented, disjointed technology environments saves time and money while allowing for data-driven strategic planning.

Comprehensive Billing Management

TEM automates the entire billing lifecycle – from invoice receipt and validation to dispute resolution and payment disbursements. These services eliminate manual errors by validating charges against your inventory and contractual terms. Your IT teams can easily identify errors and unused services instantly to prevent revenue leakage and uncover cost savings opportunities.

Reduced Security and Compliance Risks

TEM provides end-to-end visibility into your technology ecosystem, including all IT and telecom assets, services, and security protocols. This visibility helps centralize control over sensitive data access points and minimize vulnerabilities. The right telecom expense management solutions help strengthen cyber security by:

• Identifying unused cellular and network connections for termination.
• Detailing all access points into your IT and telecom environment.
• Managing inventory lifecycles and refreshes to eliminate outdated technologies.
• Deploying processes for timely secure disposal of obsolete equipment.
• Implementing strict approval protocols governing all telecom and IT accounts and services changes.

With telecom expense management, your IT leadership can gain continuous insights to proactively mitigate risk and keep your tech environments compliant with industry regulations.

Streamlined Inventory Management

Telecom expense management provides a centralized system to track your IT and telecom inventory, assets, and services. With global inventory accessible, your teams can identify unused or duplicate equipment for recovery across all sites and carriers. TEM also facilitates move, add, change, and disconnect order processing to align your inventory with changing business needs.

Future-Proof IT and Telecom

Carrier offerings are constantly evolving, so it can be difficult to know which new services can help align your environments with business goals – while avoiding solutions that will simply add unnecessary telecom service costs. TEM providers continually analyze your technology stacks and service agreements to identify optimization opportunities surrounding:

• ROI assessment on emerging solutions like SD-WAN, 5G, IoT, and cloud services.
• Technology migration guidance as legacy solutions sunset.
• Applications and sites where new services can enhance productivity and user experience.

By staying on top of the latest telecom and IT advances, your telecom expense management provider can guide strategic modernization initiatives that support your organization’s growth trajectory.

Save Money With TailWind’s Telecom Expense Management Services

Implementing an effective telecom expense management strategy is vital for any organization looking to optimize its IT and telecom infrastructure. However, finding the time to streamline your multi-location environments can be tough without outsourcing TEM services to a trusted provider.

TailWind's telecom expense management and audit services are designed to help multi-location enterprises navigate the challenges of managing telecom and IT. We provide dedicated support throughout the TEM lifecycle as your single point of contact, with detailed reporting and web-based account access so you can experience technology management made easy.

Trust TailWind to deliver:

• Telecom Billing Automation - We’ll automate your billing by consolidating and validating all invoices, developing standardized approval processes, and more. 
• Inventory Management - Our team will manage your telecom inventory, including service type, contract dates, and tracking and verification of provider orders.
• Service Usage Analysis - We’ll analyze service usage at each location to determine circuit efficiency, market competitiveness, and cost-saving opportunities.
• Contract Management - We’ll consolidate your telecom contracts and provide guidance to avoid early termination penalties, unwanted costs, and auto-renewal fees.
• Dispute Resolution - Our team handles dispute resolutions with service providers and provides weekly reports to keep you informed and determine your next steps.
• Moves, Adds, Changes, and Disconnects - We’ll manage your move, add, change, and disconnect orders to ensure service adjustments always meet your needs.

Ready to transform how you manage your multi-location IT and telecom expenses? Contact TailWind today to get started.

Sources:

1. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-10-18-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-it-spending-to-grow-8-percent-in-2024