Business executives are often faced with a variety of challenges in their daily roles, including growing revenues, improving internal operations, and driving intelligence into the inner-workings of their enterprises. On the spend management side of the average company, specific areas sometimes warrant more focus and rigor than others…particularly when budgets are top-of-mind. For example, the growing (and evolving) non-employee workforce will comprise nearly 50% of the world’s total workforce in just a few years, forcing many an executive to reevaluate existing processes and programs for managing this intricate arena.

In regards to expenses, too many organizations take a simple stance: if it’s not causing visible or destructive issues, expense management should be relegated to the back office. However, these same enterprises often forget that, in today’s consistently-evolving business world, it truly does pay to allocate resources and energy to forgotten areas as a means of driving more strategic value.

Some estimates peg telecom expense management (TEM) as swallowing upwards of 10% or more of the average enterprise’s overall budget. Like its brethren in the expense management world (business travel), when viewed from this angle, the focus shifts; expenses occur day-in and day-out with their own specific rules and risks behind them, from expense fraud to ignorance of corporate policies.

However, unlike other expense management areas, TEM’s own specific intricacies call for its own specific set of solutions, technologies, and competencies. At its simplest, telecom expense management is a method enterprises use to streamline organizational spend on telecom assets such as desktop landlines/Voice over IP, cell phones, and other telecom infrastructure. TEM melds a few different strategies together—including inventory management, procurement and sourcing, invoice management, and usage management—to create a holistic picture of enterprise spend on telecom infrastructure and devices. And, it’s that last notion that should stand as reason enough for companies to alter their mode of thinking in regards to this category.

While TEM allows enterprises to organize and manage the dozens, sometimes hundreds, of different telephone bills the accounts payable team receives each and every month, this arena can not only go much, much deeper…it can be yet another drive of true strategic value. TEM can traverse beyond simple expense management (which should NOT be overstated, since it’s a significant budgetary item) to help companies manage equipment inventory, activate/deactivate phone lines as needed, and monitor telecom network spend to guard against overbilling and excessive usage charges.

In a business world where lightning-fast connectivity and myriad networks (business, supplier, social, etc.) sit at the center of any enterprise’s overall corporate strategy, it’s critical for today’s companies to embrace the concept of telecom expense management as a driver of network intelligence and unlimited spend management value.

Stay tuned for Part II of this article series, which will delve into the role of the TEM solutions marketplace.

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