There are a lot of buzz words that live in the Telecom Expense Management world.
Many of them are very self explanatory like savings or cost reduction.
We are all smart enough to understand that if our cost goes down then we have more profits.
With that being said, as often as you hear the words savings and cost reduction, you also hear efficiencies and visibility.
I won't bore you with a breakdown of the monetary value that efficiencies bring, although I often see people that can not articulate that value.
This post is about visibility.
Not partial visibility, but TOTAL VISIBILITY.
Savings are the best, cost reduction is wonderful, efficiencies are great, but what is visibility and why should you care? To start with let's get one concept firmly in place.
It's all about the money.
Sorry to make it so overly simple but that is a fact.
This entire industry (TEM) exists because of the customer's desire to spend less money.
If your TEM platform provides your company with telecom savings then you spend less money.
If you spend less money then you make more money.
OK, enough of the Econ 101 lesson.
With so much emphasis (understandably so) put on savings, what is the big deal about visibility.
In its most simple form, visibility is knowledge and knowledge is power.
Visibility into your telecom spend goes far beyond the T1 that you got for $12.
00 less than your prior provider.
Visibility is the ability to look into every aspect of your telecom spend and see exactly what is going on.
As I mentioned before, any IT person can look at a bill and determine that one carrier is more expensive than another.
Let me give you a few examples of true visibility that actually have value.
Let's assume for a second that your TEM platform could give you this information.
You do the math and decide if there is any money to be saved here.
- Complete listing of every analog line you have (pretty basic stuff, I know) - A complete portfolio of your current bills broken down by location with an archive of prior bills (still pretty basic) - Filtered reports breaking down all T1's, Analog lines, Local Usage and Long Distance (getting better) - Your entire inventory of circuits, lines, DSL, calling cards, etc.
broken down by cost center and general ledger codes (starting to really show value) - The circuit ID numbers of the local LEC Loop for every T1 you have across the country (try getting this from your carrier) - The contract dates of every circuit with install date and term (no more automatic renewals) - The entire range of DID numbers associated to every T1 in your company (not an Excel doc in a manila file) - Every open installation work order with status, dates, configuration and notes (compare that to hours of your IT staff sitting on hold with your carrier) - Every open trouble ticket with updates every 10 minutes and all (see sitting on hold above) - Every disconnect order with contacts, dates and notes (how many lines never got disconnected) - A report that lists every analog line in your company that had zero usage (you might consider taking a look at those lines) - A library of every document you have signed with your carrier (seriously, call your current vendor and try this one) I could go on forever but I think the point has been made.
No one can argue that raw cost reduction is great.
The huge unseen value gained with total (not just seeing the bills in one place) visibility into your telecom spend will reap benefits equal to or greater than pure cost reductions.