Are You Tired of the Roller Coaster?
The thrill of r iding a roller coaster can be an adventure.Unfortunately, some Telecom Expense Management (TEM) partners can give you the same scary feeling. Imagining the sensation of the dips and curves; and who can deny the anticipation of climbing the hill for the ultimate tummy tingling sensation when you fly down the other side. At the same time, the dips, curves, and drops can leave you feeling wrung out and a bit queasy. How can something that causes excitement one minute make you feel uneasy the next? Interestingly enough, there are many things in life which produce these exact feelings. For example, how does your Expense Management Company make you feel?
Managing your Telecom and Communications invoices and services is a daunting task and not for the faint-hearted. It takes a special breed of person to deal with telecom services like wireline, mobility services/devices, conferencing, long distance, data and all the inter-related services that are woven into the patchwork quilt of Communications services. Understanding the multiple types of services that are available and evaluating the pricing and vendors is a time consuming, arduous task. Knowledgeable procurement of those services and validation of new invoices can be many times, overlooked.
Fortunately, there are Telecom Expense Management (TEM) companies that encompass Wireless Expense and Mobile Device Management and can assist with part or all of the day to day management of these services. The steps below can help you identify a TEM partner.
1. Identify your needs.
Is this a short term project? Do you just need to get your hands around what you have or do you need ongoing assistance with the day to day tasks of ordering services, managing the monthly invoices and expenses and validating the costs?
2. Determine what reporting you will need monthly to improve your current workflow.
Identifying the reports that will make you and your team’s life easier. Reports that will streamline your workflow will not only create process improvements but will create soft dollar savings.
3. Do you need buy in from other departments? Most likely you will need collaboration from the Accounts Payable department and the Finance area. If you are implementing full TEM, you will need participation from the Operations group as well. Talking with these departments early, to see what is needed, will go a long way in eliminating delays when you decide to move forward with a vendor.
4. Which vendor is right for your needs and your team?
This question brings us back to the roller coaster. Choosing the wrong vendor will be like riding the roller coaster…. It is fun at first however, when the monotony of the curves and the drops set in, the ride gets old quickly. Choosing the right vendor will take time, research and a lot of the old adage, “Trust but verify.”
A Telecom Expense Management company should be able to assist you with all your communications invoices; from identifying your organizations needs to the full management of the services on a daily basis. RadiusPoint’s TEM solution will manage every invoice type under the Communications services umbrella; utilizing proprietary software that can be applied throughout your organization for full transparency of services and costs.
RadiusPoints’ Order Management applies an end-to-end approach toward auditing current services, activating new services, and managing delivery with our provisioning and procurement services. All of this is in an environment made increasingly complex by third parties, multiple vendors and multiple technologies. Our process includes loading both paper and electronic invoices into the system, coding the charges, creating an exceptions report, setting up approval for payment, and interfacing with your current financial systems. In addition, we can take responsibility for any Moves, Adds, and Changes as well as making direct payments to vendors on your organization’s behalf.
Are you ready to get off your roller coaster? Contact RadiusPoint today to see how we can end your uncertainty, putting you back in control of your Communication invoices and services.