Telecom Expense Management (TEM) is essential for businesses seeking to manage communication costs effectively. While TEM provides a solid foundation for managing expenses, integrating specialized automation into the mix can significantly enhance these capabilities, transforming TEM from a reactive cost management function into a proactive strategic asset.
The Evolving Role of TEM
Traditionally, TEM has focused on tracking and managing expenditures after they have been incurred. While highly valuable, it’s difficult to get around the fact that this is not a real-time solution. Adjustments to telecom services and billing discrepancies take time to discover and then to deal with.
Enhancing TEM with Specialized Automation
Specialized automation can revolutionize the way businesses approach TEM by automating key tasks that are typically handled manually. This shift not only improves accuracy but also increases operational efficiency.
- Proactive MACD Management
- Challenge: TEM teams often discover disconnects (that “D” part of “MACD”) after they occur, which can lead to billing errors and unnecessary charges.
- Solution: Specialized automation can detect and report MACD activities in real-time, enabling immediate knowledge of circuit disconnects and, thus, no chance of months’ worth of flawed billing.
- SLA Compliance Monitoring
- Challenge: Ensuring compliance with service level agreements (SLAs) is crucial, but teams typically rely on carriers to self-report their performance, which may not always be fully accurate.
- Solution: Automation can independently monitor network performance, providing TEM teams with objective data on service availability. This allows for the enforcement of SLA terms and timely claims for credits, independent of carrier reports.
- Managing Fixed Wireless Overages
- Challenge: Overage charges for fixed wireless services can accumulate rapidly, and traditionally, TEM teams are only aware of these after significant costs have already been incurred.
- Solution: Automated threshold monitoring of data usage in real-time can ensure that TEM teams get alerted BEFORE thresholds are exceeded. This proactive management prevents overage charges and facilitates timely plan adjustments.
- Bandwidth Utilization Analysis
- Challenge: Many organizations pay for more bandwidth than needed due to a lack of real-time data on actual usage.
- Solution: Specialized automation can continuously analyze bandwidth utilization, enabling TEM teams to optimize telecom services accurately, ensuring businesses pay only for the bandwidth they require.
Integrating specialized automation into TEM processes marks a significant shift from traditional reactive expense management to a more dynamic, proactive approach. This integration not only drives cost efficiency but also enhances service reliability and network performance, proving indispensable for modern enterprises aiming to optimize their telecom operations.
Intelitrex works with TEMs to optimize your connectivity performance by bringing real-time visibility and control that traditional circuit and cellular management cannot achieve. With Intelitrex, you’re not just saving; it is a strategic leap forward for you to create business growth and innovation capabilities.
Are you ready to move beyond the conventional and unlock your business’s true potential? Contact us, or help us instantly assess your environment, and let’s talk about it.
