Telecom Expense Management for Large Organizations

Our objective in writing this book was to provide the reader with a practical guide addressing the most common issues associated with Telecom Expenses Management (TEM) in large organizations. This book is aimed to the telecom manager and the techniques described here are practical and easily applicable. Note that from our perspective telecom expense management encompasses much more than just managing telecom bills and contracts. The way we see the issue, Telecom Expense Management (TEM) has almost the same meaning of Telecom Cost Management (TCM). There are some trends in the marketplace to limit the meaning of the definition telecom expense management to managing bills and billing, our view is that managing bills and billing systems are just parts of a bigger process. Throughout this book we are going to detail this view. The book is divided into fiftheen chapters, each of which deals with a specific aspect of managing costs in telecommunications infrastructures, it falls into five sections: “Managerial issues “,”managerial processes”, “Bill and billing processing”,”Traffic analysis” and “Specific aspects”. The first four chapters, “Managerial Issues”, are concerned with the structural aspects of managing telecom in large organizations. Chapter I explains our view about how the telecom area should be organized to enable the best results. Chapter 2 discusses the strategies to contract and negotiate telecom services in order to archive good prices and easy management. Chapter 3 discusses the policies and governance strategies which are basic to have a well controlled telecom structure and Chapter 4 discusses the delicate balance act between effort vs. benefits of the control. 1. How to organize a telecom control structure 2. Sourcing & Procurement 3. Policy & Governance 4. Cost vs. benefits of expense management methods The second section, ”managerial processes”, is concerned with the main processes associated to managing the telecom structure. Chapter 5 discusses the managing of the inventory of assets and services which in our view is the basis over which all control is developed, the subsequent chapter deals with the process of adding, removing and changing the assets and services contracted. Chapter 7 encompasses the processes and strategies associated to managing the contracts and Chapter 8 discusses the processes of registering the problems internally and externally (with the providers). 5. Asset and service inventory Management 6. Service Ordering and change control 7. Contract management 8. Help desk Management The third section deals with the “Bill and billing processing”, This section discusses what is more commonly known as Telecom Expense Management. Chapter 9 deals with the processing of the invoices, Chapter 10 focus into the billing auditing processes and Chapter 11 discusses the billing systems and how they should be implemented and operated to be able to become an effective control instrument. 9. Invoice Processing 10. Auditing 11. Billing systems The fourth section deals with ”Traffic analysis”.This section discussess how the traffic should be controled and managed. In our view, managing the traffic is the core of any telecom cost management strategy. In this chapter we explain how the traffic should be controlled and the main strategies which can be deployed in order reduce the telecom costs. 12. Traffic analysis and optimization Finally, in section five we deal with three specific issues, which in our view deserve to be discussed with more details. Chapter 13 is concerned with the mobile devices/applications, which is a growing issue in the telecom control effort, Chapter 14 deals with the issue of the risk of lack of connectivity for the organization and how it should be addressed and finally chapter 15 discusses how the information managed by the telecom area should be presented and distributed in order to be effective. 13. Mobile device/application management 14. Risk Management 15. Reports & analysis This book wasn´t thought to be read linearly as a story book, our idea was to make it more like a manual where you can jump directly to the chapter dealing with the issue that you have. Of course a linear reading would be interesting given the fact that some chapters support or complement others. We hope that you enjoy the reading and it became an useful instrument for you. We know that there is some lack of literature in this area of expertise and many lessons hard learned by the professionals in the field are rarely documented and shared. We made an honest effort to document and systematize this practical knowledge.