With the Telecom Expense Management market slated to top $4 billion in annual revenues by 2023, it’s no secret that telecom costs are posing a significant challenge to businesses across every industry. While there is an increasing reliance on telecom services, including an expansion in wireless expenses related to the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud storage related expenses, service providers haven’t made great strides in simplifying the billing and contract management of telecom services.
The truth is while it’s often treated as a utility, telecom has in many ways become a complicated and expansive driver of modern businesses and it’s crucial for your organization to understand the associated expenses. But unless your organization has taken steps to become experts in telecommunications, it’s likely that you’re overpaying in some capacity for services. We’ve put together some cost reduction strategies that will help ensure telecom isn’t bleeding your organization dry one invoice at a time.
Take Control of Your Service Agreements
Service providers like to make you feel as if you can’t do without them. A major tenant of effective telecom cost reduction strategies is to remember that you’re the client and ultimately you control the service relationship.
Minimize Your Carriers
Depending on the footprint of your organization, it’s possible you have several carriers providing different telecom services across your organization. The best first step you can take is to ensure that you’re consolidating services to as few service providers as possible. This will ensure you’re getting the most value out of service bundles as possible.
Optimize Your Contracts to the Current State of Your Business
Speaking of bundles and contracts, remember that often times, telecom services contracts are often priced on your usage. Ensure that your rates, discounts, and business terms match up to any recent expansions or growth in your organization.
Pay For What You Need
One common source of overpayment is accepting default service and subscription arrangements, as you oftentimes end up paying for services you don’t need or will never use. Negotiation is key when it comes to telecom expense management. Optimize your contracts to ensure every service and line you’re paying for ties back to something you’re actually using, and if it doesn’t, work with the vendor to streamline your services. Similarly, make sure you’re not structuring your business around services you’re paying for, just because you’re paying for the service. Optimize internal policies to eliminate rogue expenses that only exist to take advantage of a line-item on a service contract if they don’t bring value to your bottom line.
Noncompliance is Waste’s Best Friend
Your organization should have standards of telecom usage in place, and methods of auditing invoicing and billing to ensure that your usage is inline with the terms of your service agreement. If your employees are constantly using your services in ways that result in penalties or negate usage-contingent discounts, then you have one of two problems – either your services need to be renegotiated to match realistic usage levels, or you need to put into place controls that ensure employees are using services according to the negotiated terms and conditions.
Don’t Tackle Telecom Alone
What we’re getting at is that here in San Antonio, we at TelResource know telecom has become increasingly complicated in recent years, and many companies are not prepared to tackle telecom expense management on their own. Structuring effective cost reduction strategies often requires a depth of telecom knowledge many accounting departments and organizations aren’t equipped with, and that’s where our contingency-based telecom expense auditing services come into play. You only pay if we find savings between the pages of your invoices, and our track record for finding savings for our clients is excellent. Once we’ve shown you what proper oversight can accomplish, we can talk about transitioning towards a relationship where we manage your telecom expenses so those savings don’t leave your bottom line. Contact our team today to find out more about how we can turn your telecom struggles into success.