Telecom Expense Management

In recent years, the pressures facing telecom assets and programs have multiplied rapidly. Resources are thin, the demand to reduce cost is high, business requirements and technology are constantly shifting, and vendor relationships and contracts must be tightly managed.

In the face of these challenges, it’s no surprise that many teams are at capacity working through the basic day-to-day tasks of ensuring that networks are running and telecom invoices are getting paid. Add to this the fact that telecom has continued to grow in importance. Telecom isn’t just an expense, it’s the lifeblood of any high-performing business and enables them to operate efficiently and effectively.

Without a holistic and strategic approach to telecom lifecycle management, performance across a business will suffer. Everything from ensuring invoice processing across the network is accurate, to auditing contracts and services to find opportunities to reduce costs, can get missed or deprioritized in the press of business. The vital base needs get met, but the higher impact, higher value work gets pushed.

That’s where telecom expense management comes in, which is about mastering the day-to-day of paying the bills, catching billing errors, avoiding late fees, and preventing disruptions, along with the long-term outlook of optimizing an organization's network to ensure the right technology, for the right people and locations, at the right price is in place.

ENGIE Impact's Telecom Expense Management (TEM) Solution

Our solution starts with Expense & Data Management (EDM) of your fixed and wireless networks which includes seven primary components:

1. Data Capture: Data collection, receipt, and tracking from disparate data sources.
2. Audit & Analysis: Comparison of the invoices to things like rates, contracts, and previous bills, to ensure they are invoiced correctly.
3. Cost Allocation: Chargeback the expenses to the correct sites, cost centers, and departments.
4. Exception Management: Dispute resolution, and task management activities.
5. Invoice-to-Contract Auditing: Contract repository for provider agreement rate information which we use for invoice auditing.
6. Payment Processing: Cash management and controls are put in place to submit payments to providers.
7. Reporting: Interface for transactions and reporting between you and your vendors.

This process gives ENGIE Impact a clear visibility and control of an organization's current network through auditing and bill and usage analysis, and of current and historic trends across spending and usage. This helps prevent late fees and disruptions and reduce spending through the reduction of unnecessary services, contract audits, and wireless policy development and enforcement, for example. Each organization's unique data drives recommendations on ways to optimize its network.

ENGIE Impact also offers a suite of other services like Fixed Network Service Order Management and Help Desk, to Wireless Procurement and Help Desk, all designed to support the business' telecom network through its full lifecycle from procurement to reporting to optimization services.

Telecom is more than just another resource expense that must be paid. It’s a vital component of a company's operations, and if managed properly, can affect revenue and profitability. ENGIE Impact provides subject matter expertise and frees up internal resources from the day-to-day management, allowing organizations to dive into the more high-value work.