Explore our TEM blogs for expert perspective, real examples, and clear guidance to manage telecom and technology expenses confidently, with fresh insights added routinely.
In recent posts, we have been covering some of the top pain points we are currently seeing in the market. Pain points meaning a spot where a company is losing enough time, money and patience that they are willing to pay someone the make it go away. That’s where we come in, or where one of our consultant or partner affiliates can help.
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) has been a top telecom industry buzzword for a while now. Valicom will cover statistics from a recent TEMIA (Telecom Expense Management Industry Association) survey about how well BYOD works, and discuss what other options there are to keep mobility costs down.
A recent article on No Jitter highlighted the excellent ways firms can save on their wireless expenses by contracting a wireless expense management firm or consultant to audit their environment. Valicom offers wireless mobility audits, in addition to our wireline services. Some things an auditor looks for while conducting an audit were listed:
Founded in 1991, telecom expense management firm Valicom has weathered the changes, consolidations, technological expansion and increasing complexity of the telecom industry to grow and thrive. Effective July 15, they have relocated to an updated facility in the Madison, Wisconsin suburb of Fitchburg.
As the market gets more saturated with smartphones, carriers are finding a new challenge in keeping profits up. It seems that even as smartphones get smarter, the perceived technical leap between models shrinks, and the drive to upgrade slows down. Most users would agree that going from a flip phone to any smartphone model – HTC, Apple, Samsung– is like going from a buggy to a spaceship.
Ever wonder how telecom got so complicated? Valicom’s white paper “TEM in 2013: History and Trends”, offers some clues. The paper is a brief solid overview of the telecom expense management industry – where it came from, where it stands now, and trends for the future.
The Telecom Expense Management Industry Association (TEMIA), an authoritative voice for the Telecommunications Management, Telecom Expense Management (TEM), Wireless Expense Management (WEM), Mobile Device Management (MDM) markets and Solutions Providers publishes a case study on mobile services. TEMIA is upgrading its website with case studies that feature TEM, WEM and MDM solutions from its members.
About three weeks ago, we released a white paper titled “Top 4 Tips to Manage Business Wireless Costs” and have seen strong demand for that new title. Telecom and IT managers, along with CFOs and other financial analysts, are really struggling with mobile expenses and trying to seek out best practices to keep a handle on costs.
Wireless expenses may be the stuff of telecom manager nightmares, but wireline costs remain an expensive skeleton in the closet. Valicomfinds that its clients are wasting between 10 and 30 percent of their annual wireline budgets. Unnecessary business lines, unused circuits and illegitimate third-party charges mean many firms are overpaying for services, often for many years.
As most telecom managers know, third party charges on invoices, known as “cramming”, have historically been a major problem. Now that problem is rapidly infecting wireless environments and the federal government is taking notice. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently announced it is pursuing its first wireless cramming case.
TechRepublic just posted an interesting article on BYOD (bring-your-own-device), and some worst case scenarios. Whether or not to implement BYOD is a decision each firm has to make for itself, and its own environment.
Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam recently stated that 50 percent of their wireless traffic is for video consumption. He expects this to grow to 66 percent by 2017.
It’s been an interesting week for announcements in the mobile universe. First T-Mobile announced it would drop two-year contracts and phone subsidies, shifting instead to a fee structure where customers pay a discounted upfront charge for new phones, followed by small monthly payments until the entire cost is paid off.
Valicom released a new white paper today titled “Top 4 Tips to Manage Business Wireless Costs”. Recommended for anyone responsible for corporate mobile and wireless management, and seeking best practices in wireless expense reduction and cost control, the paper can be accessed from the Valicom telecom expense management white paper library.
Last but not least, any telecom expense management software worth its weight in kilobytes should offer lots of reporting. As they say, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”. And the beauty of all your telecom and wireless data being integrated in one system is that it allows you to look at it from many different angles.
Are you swimming in invoices from increased cellular services? Has BYOD or other telecom services forced you to review your telecom contracts? Are you wondering how many devices you have in your company? If you answered “Yes” to any of these, then you should attend this month’s educational session.
At this point, all your invoice and inventory data is already in a telecom management software platform. If the system is designed to help you remember to check your next invoice to verify the change you recorded was actually implemented by your vendor. All this is handled via the software’s “Issues” area.
Telecom management software has to have a robust tracking mechanism for changes as buildings open and close, personnel get hired or fired, and devices get retired and replaced. Otherwise, any telecom inventory management program you may have in place will get derailed pretty fast. Telecom inventory is not something static, but rather a fluid environment that is ever changing as the image below well illustrates.
To further our discussion of document management beyond contracts, which our last post was on, one of the biggest pain points of telecom has got to be invoices. Little missiles of irritation that arrive in the mail to ruin your day. Sometimes by the boxful. And you know you should really look at all of those – line by line, every single month – to make sure they are accurate. But really, who has the time?
While we’re on the topic of making your life easier and saving you time, document management comes to mind. In the modern era, no one wants a file cabinet stuffed full of papers hulking in the corner of their office. And they certainly don’t want to have to dig through it to find contract information.
We are continuing our series discussing how telecom management software streamlines telecom management tasks. In our last post, we discussed Telecom Management Software Vs Inventory Management.
