Telecom Expense Management

Who Needs Telecom Expense Management?

By Rob Tyler, Senior Marketing Technical Writer

Let’s say you have a business – a healthy, thriving business – with large sales and support call centers and hundreds of mobile workers using wireless in the field. Why should you invest good money in a service/software solution for telecom expense management (TEM)? You never have before, and you’re doing fine!

After all, your call centers have all the capacity they need. Sure, you bumped the ceiling a few times last year at peak hours, but the carrier suggested you add a few trunks and that solved the problem.

And when you expanded your wireless services and some of your field reps needed unlimited data, it was easy to add. Your wireless provider was extremely responsive to your needs when it came time to expand your services.

And yes, with all the complicated and lengthy invoices coming in, the bills and late fees were a nuisance for a while, but all you had to do was hire a few new people to process those invoices and everything is hunky dory. They even catch a billing error once in a while. Can you beat that?

How to Create a Business Case for Telecom Expense Management

By Robert Halik, Veramark Senior Telecom Analyst

Your stakeholders will need to be convinced that bringing on a telecom expense management (TEM) services provider will materially reduce your expenses and increase operational control in a low-risk fashion. To make your pitch successful, you must make your point quickly and your message must resonate in a powerful way. Here are two key talking points:

Contingency Audits Provide High Upside with No Exposure
You can start out slowly by engaging a TEM provider in an audit project with contingency/success fee-based pricing. Fees are negotiable, but if you engage a provider to audit your organization's invoicing with no upfront costs and a 25% success fee, you are essentially getting free audit work at no risk. If your TEM services provider finds $200k in billing errors, then you cut a check for $50k after your audit savings are realized. If your provider does not find any billing errors, it costs your company nothing.

This is actually a good deal for your company and TEM providers. Why? Because service providers will most often find errors that justify their effort. This is especially true when considering their contingency audit opportunities in the aggregate. A TEM provider is also eager to perform excellent work on your behalf to initiate a long-term relationship, so that they can perform additional professional services for your organization.

This is typically the way enterprise companies like to dip their proverbial toe into TEM waters.  It’s safe and easy. It’s a TEM no-brainer.

FUSF Fees – What are they? Do we need to pay them?

By Robert Halik, Veramark Senior Telecom Analyst

One seldom-discussed aspect of Telecom Expense Management is the payment of Federal Universal Service Fund (FUSF) Fees. FUSF fees are levied against service providers by the FCC to promote connectivity in rural areas throughout America, which typically do not have the same type of resources found in urban areas.

According to the FCC, the Universal Service Fund supports four public programs:

• Lifeline/Link-Up: Provides discounts on monthly service and initial telephone installation or activation fees for primary residences to income eligible consumers.
• High-Cost: Supports companies that provide telecommunications services in areas where the costs of providing service are high.
• Schools and Libraries: Helps classrooms and libraries use the vast array of educational resources available through the telecommunications network, including the Internet.
• Rural Health Care: Helps link rural health care providers to urban medical centers so that patients living in rural America will have access to the same advanced diagnostic and other medical services that are enjoyed in urban communities.
 

Fee – The Contribution Factor
The fee contribution factor fluctuates each quarter as mandated by the FCC. Each quarter the Office of Managing Director (OMD) announces the percentage for the FUSF fee. According to the FCC, the fee is determined by the following rationale: