Telecom Expense Management

Reach for Low-hanging Fruit to Reduce Telecom Expenses – Part 1

Comprehensive telecom expense solutions have been shown to be highly effective in reducing telecom costs, generating strong ROI and paying for themselves in less than one year of operation. Start by automating your invoice management system – you'll generate immediate hard dollar savings and productivity gains.

The value of reviewing invoices for accuracy before paying them is easy to appreciate. But for organizations that receive hundreds or thousands of telecom invoices every month, manually validating every charge on every invoice is a time-consuming and costly process. An automated invoice management system can be employed as an on-premise or outsourced solution, and should include four essential components: electronic invoice processing, dispute management, invoice validation and contract negotiation.

Electronic invoice processing: Invoice management solutions are effective to the degree that the data is made available in electronic form. Invoices received in electronic form can be processed more rapidly, accurately, and at lower cost than paper invoices. Electronic invoices can also provide levels of detail that are critical for thorough and accurate analysis, validation, and allocation.

Dispute management: An automated dispute management system can help you quickly and efficiently work with carriers to achieve credits and/or corrections for discrepancies identified during the invoice validation process. Best-in-class dispute management systems include an automated workflow component that provides full lifecycle tracking of the disputed charges, including disposition, amount recovered, important dates, and more. Invoices with disputed charges can be paid in full with disputes or short paid.

In Part 2 of this post we will discuss invoice validation and contract negotiation.

 

 

How Do You Reduce Telecom Expense?

Veramark CEO and President Tony Mazzullo has been featured in a recent edition of FEI.TV. Produced by the Financial Executives International (FEI) organization, in this episode of FEI TV Mazzullo discusses how companies can improve their bottom lines by reducing telecom and IT expenses without cutting services. The FEI.TV episode is now available online at http://fei.mashnetworks.com/player.aspx?clip=0101071029&type=text&q=tony%20mazzullo.

FEI taped the episode at its recent annual conference, held in May 2009, where Mazzullo discussed the same topic – cutting telecom and IT expenses without sacrificing service – with attendees. Key points in both the television episode and in the original speech include:

• On average, organizations waste between five and fifteen percent of the annual telecommunications spend unnecessarily
• Telecom Expense Management and IT Expense Management programs can help to optimize the expenditures and cut unnecessary spending without sacrificing services
• Many telecom expense management programs have approximately a 90-day payback period

"Billing errors or inconsistencies, network inefficiencies, as well as a host of other factors can negatively impact the telecom or IT spend within organizations," said Mazzullo. "Veramark is committed to educating companies about these issues and showing them how to correct them with a proactive telecom expense management solution. That's why I find it so critical to participate in industry forums and opportunities like this one with FEI.TV – to spread the message that so many businesses are paying more than what's necessary, and that we've got a way to help solve that problem."

FEI TV is the Internet Television Network of Financial Executives International. It provides best practices, case studies and corporate financial management research to more than 25,000 CFOs, treasurers, controllers and senior financial executives