| Within the current business landscape, | | | | service provider bills. The challenge for enterprise |
| telecommunications have become not only a basic and | | | | customers is to be able to sift through their complex |
| necessary component of running a successful global | | | | and voluminous billing details to be able to identify |
| business but it holds tremendous strategic value as | | | | where these errors are. Most times, telecom invoices |
| well. In many industries such as airlines, banking, and | | | | are sparsely audited or simply paid in full to without any |
| financial services, building a robust and integrated | | | | sort of error checking activity. Without proper |
| telecom network is critical to establishing and | | | | expertise and dedicated resources to audit these bills, |
| maintaining a leadership position. However, in ensuring | | | | overpayment is likely to lead to additional wastage in |
| that telecom plays a strategic role within the business, | | | | telecom spend. |
| therein lays the danger of potential cost | | | | Telecom Fraud & Abuse |
| mismanagement and over-investment in the acquisition | | | | Telecom fraud and abuse are perhaps one of the |
| and management of telecom products and services. In | | | | more challenging aspects of managing telecom usage |
| fact, if there are very inadequate fiscal controls and | | | | throughout the organisation. Business and personal calls |
| policies in place to ensure that what is spent on | | | | are generally very difficult to differentiate which, in all |
| telecommunications is optimal with the highest level of | | | | likelihood, if no reasonable controls are put in place to |
| visibility and accountability, the consequences of | | | | limit personal calls, can lead to rampant abuse. |
| runaway telecom costs will certainly have a negative | | | | Employees who were issued company mobile phones |
| impact on the bottom line. | | | | may not return these phones upon their termination |
| Consider what may happen if little or no action is taken | | | | from the company and may continue to use the |
| to reign in runaway telecom costs: | | | | mobile phone service post-departure. In this latter |
| Assets and Service Inventory Disarray | | | | scenario, telecom fraud becomes an issue. In both |
| Without a coordinated centralised database facility to | | | | cases, without proper tools and policies to identify and |
| capture and actively manage all new and existing | | | | track anomalies in enterprise telecom usage, the |
| telecom assets and services across the enterprise, | | | | possibility of runaway non-business telecom usage and |
| the likelihood of ordering duplicate telecom products | | | | fraud will only increase. |
| and services is very high. Duplicate, unknown, or "zero | | | | These are three of the many difficult challenges |
| use" inventory contributes to one of the largest | | | | enterprises are facing in their quest to find ways to |
| wastage areas of managing telecommunications | | | | reign in and optimise their runaway telecom costs. The |
| expenses within any enterprise. | | | | path to wellness typically can be found by adopting a |
| Overpayment of Service Provider Invoices | | | | Telecom Expense Management (TEM) program. TEM |
| Telecom service providers are rife with internal legacy | | | | is a framework consisting of an inter-related |
| business and operational support systems stemming | | | | combination of industry best practices, business |
| from years of organic growth and mergers & | | | | process improvements, and innovative technologies to |
| acquisitions (M&As). These systems don't always | | | | provide a holistic approach to procure, control, optimise, |
| connect with one another and those that do; | | | | manage, and report the multi-faceted aspects of |
| information that is likely shared amongst these different | | | | managing the complex world of telecom expenses. |
| systems is not always accurate or timely. As such, | | | | This concludes part one in this two part series (please |
| service provider billing systems that depend on data | | | | refer to "Strategies to Control Runaway Telecom |
| from these peripheral systems may contain inventory | | | | Costs (Part 2)" for part two). In part two, I shall discuss |
| or rate errors that are sometimes inadvertently billed to | | | | the TEM lifecycle and its associated strategies that |
| the customer during the monthly billing cycle. This | | | | organisations should adopt in order to gain control of |
| results in customers being overcharged on their | | | | their runaway telecom costs. |