If you’ve looked at a calendar lately, you may have noticed we’re already halfway through the year. That means it's already time to start thinking about budgets and expense management plan for next year. With steep rises in inflation this year, you’ve likely seen impacts to your technology costs and services. One way to fight these costs is to stay on top of your spending and explore technology expense management (TEM) to optimize costs and manage your budget.
The Basics of Technology Expense Management
Technology stakeholders in enterprises have the huge responsibility of managing budgets across multiple locations. This includes everything from phone bills to internet services to Zoom licensing, devices, and more. With all the discrepancies and billing errors, there’s bound to be money that slips through the cracks. What if there was a better way to manage these expenses?
TEM is a service that is provided by a 3rd party vendor to manage all of an enterprise’s technology expenses with proven methods that process, pay, and audit technology-related costs. It takes the heavy lifting away from technology stakeholders, so they can focus on more important business objectives.
Here are some of the ways TEM can help transform the way enterprises manage their technology and expenses:
Telecom Expense Management
Managing telecommunication expenses, including wired and mobile telephone fees, as well as the cost of phone and communication devices can be a complex process. Telecom expense management makes this process simple by streamlining the following areas: invoice processing and management, order and inventory, sourcing and development, and invoice and audit optimization.
Managed Mobility Services
With teams spread out across the world, the need for increased connectivity and productivity has skyrocketed. That’s where mobile device management comes in. Instead of dealing with inventory shortages and continuous software updates, MMS helps users manage the full device lifecycle, providing visibility, control, and optimization of devices and spend. This can include everything from help desk support, to pre-loading apps and software, and device fulfillment.
SaaS/UCaaS Expense Management
Does your enterprise need help managing Saas and UCaaS usage and cost? There are so many moving parts including data, apps, and licensing, that it can be hard to keep track of it all. SaaS/UCaaS Expense Management can help enterprises gain visibility, control, and optimization of the enterprise software ecosystem by making it easy to manage in one platform and increasing ROI.
Building a Better Budget with TEM
TEM can help enterprises budget better by solving the following issues:
- Incorrect billing
- Missing invoices
- Inventory visibility
For a deeper dive into 2023 budgeting, take a look at our budgeting considerations from earlier this year, which covers technology spending and factors with hard and soft savings. While you may not have this data on hand, a TEM solution will have everything tracked and managed throughout the year. This makes the budgeting process simple and efficient.
TEM also helps with cost cutting. As we head into an unpredictable economic climate, it’s more important than ever to be analyzing costs and see where you can save money. A TEM provider will do this automatically, so that the savings are built in year after year.
Looking at hard and soft costs helps drive savings across the enterprise. For example, one of the best ways to cut costs is by having a TEM provider secure a better deal with carriers, which can lead to up to 20% cost-savings in the first year.
How else can expense management help enterprises with budgeting and managing costs?
- Inventory management
- Contract management
- Benchmarking and forecasting
- Auditing for accuracy
- Automating to prevent late fees
- Managed bill pay
Other benefits of TEM include M&A integration, carrier performance management, service disruption prevention, benchmarking, RFx enablement, and quote to install cycle time reduction.
With all of these advantages, you’ll never want to go back to using spreadsheets to manage costs again. All of the moving parts can be simplified and optimized by using a TEM provider who’s an expert in the field and knows how to cut costs and optimize technology expenses for the enterprise.
