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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware that the mobile carriers have been taking major pot shots at each other lately. ATT&T and T-Mobile especially, and between the nutty CEO antics and “mano a mano” marketing strategies, the tactics and analyst speculations fill industry news.
Before diving in, learn more about telecom expense management and how it works. As organizations expand mobile programs, BYOD privacy concerns have moved from a niche IT issue to a frontline workforce battleground. As a followup to our TEM in 2014: History and Trends...
BYOD: What is driving costs? In our previous post on TEM Trend One – BYOD Boom or Bust, we covered the issue of whether BYOD is helping with costs or not. It is worth discussing what is driving those costs higher, as it isn’t an easy answer. There are six main things companies are seeing…
Many firms just don’t have a good enough grasp of their current telecom environment to be able to determine if BYOD does them any good. It always comes back to “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”. If you don’t know where you are now, how do you decide where to go?
Mobile carriers have long pushed back on law enforcement, and customer, requests to provide a “kill switch” on their devices. A kill switch can come in various forms, but is intended to disable phones when stolen, making them less attractive to thieves by eliminating their resale value. With mobile phone theft making up a high percentage, 30-40%, of all robberies in the US the problem is very real. But carriers have been accused of refusing to provide such a feature, due to the perception that they benefit from stolen phones in two ways. First, the previous owner now has to buy a new phone, often at sky high “out of contract” rates. And secondly, the stolen phone is often activated by the new owner, gaining the carrier a new customer.
Valicom’s telecom expense management (TEM) clients reported continued high satisfaction scores for the fourth quarter of 2013. Since 2000, we have been surveying clients to learn how satisfied they are in eight key areas: professionalism, overall expectation, communication, quality and accuracy, understanding client needs, responsiveness, meeting deadlines, and overall value. The combined client satisfaction scores for the 4th quarter, and the average for all of 2013, were 3.93 on a 4.0 scale.
Telecommunications management has undergone a radical evolution the past few years, and new security, privacy and pricing trends are making “business as usual” almost dangerous. After 23 years doing telecom expense management, Valicom has seen enough of the industry’s history to be very alert to trends and fads. To address these trends, and give a solid overview of where the industry stands and where it’s going, they recorded their webinar “Telecom Expense Management 2014: Trends & Best Practices” and it is now available to stream.
The Telecom Expense Management Industry Association (TEMIA), of which Valicom is a member, is the voice for telecom and mobile expense management providers in the US. In conjunction with member organizations, they just released a new report on best practices for organizations that are transitioning employees’ mobile devices. The report, titled “BlackBerry Concerns Dial up Bigger Issues for Enterprises”, is available online from the Valicom telecom management white paper library.
Firms are adding security measures to manage mobile at an unprecedented pace, but that may not be enough. Personal mobile devices are still considered that to their owners – “personal”. “My stuff, not your stuff.” So security policies designed to protect the company may be balked at by users, and users’ own sloppy personal habits – like storing passwords ON their devices, or not setting up PIN access – can also undermine the efforts.
The buzzword for the Consumer Electronics Show in 2014 appeared to be “wearables”. Vendors are racing to market with eyewear, monitors, watches and fitness-related devices that all chain to your smartphone. The reach has expanded to every imaginable corner of human activity. Companies touted wearable baby monitors, golf gloves, gaming devices, and pet-tracking collars to keep a digital eye on Fido. Wireless carriers must love this trend, as unless you’re within a wi-fi zone, all that delicious data comes out of your capped plan and has the potential to drive up usage, and profits. For a peek, check out this slide show.
At the widely watched Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, the latest volley in the ongoing wireless carrier battled was unleashed. T-Mobile, in a move that has been hinted at by CEO John Legere, has offered to pay customers’ penalty fee with other carriers if they make the jump to them. The early-termination fee rebate could go as high as $650.
With the lightning pace of technological advancement, and the spread of BYOD and mobile management challenges, the telecom expense management landscape keeps getting more complicated. Telecom managers, CFOs, COOs and CEOs all need to keep up, both on technology and on trends, to know what is coming down the road that might impact their business.
With many telecom managers wringing their hands over whether “to BYOD or not to BYOD”, others find they aren’t so ready to jump on the bandwagon. They prefer to get down to business by better managing their current wireless environment, both to control costs and to increase visibility. As the old adage says, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”
Market to Market just released a report noting that the BYOD and mobile management arena will be worth $181.39 by 2017. This (impressive) figure includes all areas of mobile and telecom management for enterprise. The upward growth curve is huge, coming from just $67 billion 2011, and the majority comes from North America with 36.10% of the overall managed BYOD & Enterprise Mobility Market in 2011 at $24.26 billion; expected to reach $58.60 billion.
It’s easy to see that when you remember the telecom vendors are in business to make money. YOUR money.In other words, they are good at this, and maybe you aren’t.So either get someone experienced to the negotiating table with you, or at least put a game plan in place so you have the time and the information to make an informed decision. Here is where to start:
As new mobile data pooling options hit the market, the need for a strong wireless optimization program is even higher, as we discussed in a recent post.
Keeping track of telecom stuff has always been a pain. However, as the line between telecom and IT continues to blur (think: iPads) it is getting even more complicated. One employee could easily have several voice, data and wireless assets assigned to them. And to use the old cliche “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”, that complexity can have dire implications for your telecom budget.
In our series of posts on telecom management pain points, this one is a biggie. Most telecom managers get tired of dealing with invoice processing and payment. Invoices should really be audited every time, but even without that, there is still the matter of getting the invoices – either electronically or paper – GL coding everything, getting it approved, and then paid on time. Anything to keep Accounting is happy.
As we discuss pain points of telecom and wireless management, this one will probably be most familiar to readers. Invoice auditing is a long time tactic for reducing telecom expenses. Even if you just do a cursory overview of your bills each month, you can often spot problems that can be corrected to save money.
As we discussed in our blog post on telecom expense management software, which is Pain Point #1 – everyone seems to want online tools these days. But the pain that rapidly comes after you get the software is the realization that someone has to put all the information in there before it becomes useful. Enter “Data Loading”.
One of the top things we see in the market is firms searching for software. And we don’t mean old school Windows 95 type tools, but modern cloud-based subscription software. They want software, they want it to accessible online – minus the hassles of loading and managing it themselves – and they want it affordable.
