Telecom Expense Management Consulting

Telecom Expenses Management Consulting provides cost reduction, process improvement, and re-negotiation options following a thorough audit of internet, voice, private network, and mobility services.   Finding the right telecom expense management company can be difficult as experience matters.  Carriers do not provide a rulebook or set of outlines on their services which makes it difficult for the Dir of IT to Finance to decode billing, contracts, and SLAs.  The first step is to have someone internally serve as an advocate of a telecom expense audit because it requires time and access to the current environment contracted.  Additionally, having a Technical review of your network or voice design is critical to be mindful of next-gen changes including cloud connectivity.

4 Mistakes Companies Make with Telecom Expenses

Mistake #1 – Install a Telecom Expense Management Software

Organizations often make a huge misstep by adding a TEM platform into their business without fully understanding the root of their OPEX issues.  For example, you would not buy paper towels to clean up a water leak in a basement if you have not addressed where the source of the flooding is occurring.  Macronet Services partners and recommends TEM platforms for the right use case and not every company needs one.  Why?  We have uncovered many TEM environments that continue the pay the wrong billing amount, overlooked increases, and have not put in a mechanism for a change in service (or cancellation).

Mistake #2 Tech Team’s Responsibility

Tech often does not have the time or desire to constantly address billing or technical rate components.  Think about it, the shift to remote work, there are fewer offices in the network however they all need to route to your cloud or hybrid data center environment.  Cloud Networking has taken on a huge role in the new WAN environment and the question is, do you build a ZTNA, SDWAN, MPLS, IPSEC VPN, etc?  All of these have dollar sign implications which can be minimal and still achieve success for your users.  However, does the IT team have weeks/months to evaluate or should they leverage a partner to assist based on real-world experience?

Mistake #3 – Not having a basic system to alert when telecom services such as internet, phone lines, etc. expire.  Often, carriers can auto-renew services or increase pricing without warning which is part of their terms and conditions.

Mistake #4 – Lack of a closed-loop process to avoid increased expenses.  When you cancel services with a carrier, we find that 24% of the time, the charges continue to bill.  If the IT team cancels services but does not notify Finance who in turn does not audit future invoices

What is Telecom Expense Management?

Macronet Services Telecom Consulting Approach

We have 20 years of experience in telecom as our teams came from the carrier’s engineering, service delivery, billing, and analytic organizations.  This tenure has helped us perfect our process for clients saving Millions annually by delivering quick analysis, recommendations, and implementation of approaches based on the use case.

Our Process:

Contract Assessment:

This process is the most painful for the organization due to the following:

1. They can’t locate the contract internally – this is common, mostly because the signer, left a copy on their PC and they are no longer with the business.
2. Nobody wants to re-review the pages of language and what it means for the services procured.
3. Limited understanding of what is negotiable, terms missing or added erroneously.

We have an easy solution here to obtain an original copy of your contract from each carrier through our governance process.  This allows you to store it centrally with our tools or yours.

Invoice Assessment

After tackling the hard part of reviewing terms, and conditions within a Master Services Agreement, auditing the invoice is next.  We look for the following:

1. Services Billed as ordered
2. Service Locations
3. Carrier Surcharges and Fees.

Tax Assessment

Often, IT organizations sign an order for services with a limited understanding of how, if applicable, added tax can impact the expense line.  Voice and Data networks each have tax implications while others do not.  This is usually dictated by the organization and how the local government treats them.  That’s right, some carriers are subject to tax while others are not.  We will evaluate and explain if this impacts you favorably or unfavorably.

Mobile Plan Review

Mobile Expenses have become one of the more popular requests by customers due to a limited understanding if they are receiving a good monthly rate or if the carriers are overcharging them.  During our analysis of Mobile Phone expenses, we target:

1. Mobile Plans & Rates – We say plans as many organizations use more than one mobile provider due to coverage or legacy business rules
2. Employees – How often do you audit if former employees are still on your corporate plan?  You are not alone if you say never.
3. Data & Device Governance – Many companies lack the ability to control corporate data plans and traffic effectively.  Preventing social media or other non-work-related traffic can drastically ensure your employees are not hitting overages and are in the right-sized plans.  Also, Moves, Adds, Changes, and Deletes become very easy in a single interface, we’ll show you how to request this.

Also to consider here is replacing outdated POTS Lines with a mobile or next-gen analog setup with LTE backup.  POTS lines account for a 100% markup with carriers and costs can be reduced significantly in hidden areas such as Fire, Elevator, Burglar alarms, etc.

Benchmark Review

Taking all the findings, we deliver a comprehensive Benchmark overview of potential upgrades while lowering costs, effective terms to negotiate, and easier governance to keep expenses in line.  We take all of the pricing benchmark knowledge gained from 20 years of experience to now and measure that across pricing and terms customers should expect.

1. Telecom Benchmark is free.
2. Telecom Benchmark turnaround time takes 1-2 weeks depending on the size and scope of the network.
3. Telecom Benchmarks often find missing commercial terms a carrier did not provide.

Studies continue to show the need to focus on Customer Experience/Journey, Accessibility to cloud resources and Security are top of mind with CIOs.

We provide every organization a free assessment on potential savings.  See what you can save, have us spend a few hours on our telecom spend.