As we prepare to head into the fourth quarter of the year, enterprises are busier than ever managing technology, budgets, and expenses with remote and hybrid workforces spread across the globe. In fact, industry reports show that the enterprise software market is the fastest growing sector in the overall tech industry. With telecom, mobile, and SaaS being at the core of modern businesses, it’s essential to look at how a managed technology service can help reduce workload and improve efficiencies across your company.
- Expertise and Scale
Organizations typically don’t have the expertise or the bandwidth to manage their own Technology Expense Management (TEM) in-house, making managed services an attractive option.
As enterprises become overloaded and are forced to stretch resources, there are two main reasons to outsource TEM:
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- They don’t have the correct expertise in-house.
- They don’t have the people and resources (i.e., scale) to properly execute a strategy.
Most technology stakeholders are not proficient on matters such as billing, invoicing or device management, nor do they have the scale of resources to apply to the problem. When internal resources are asked to handle these sorts of tasks, not only do they have less time to spend on areas where they have expertise, but mistakes with critical financial allocations and issues with vendor disputes can easily add up. In most cases, enterprises will do the bare minimum, not operating at a level to find a sustainable solution.
A better approach is to partner with a managed services provider to handle these efforts. With years of experience, these experts act as an extension of your team to provide the outcomes you’re trying to achieve, while ensuring no issues arise related to invoicing or network management.
- Centralization
Managing TEM through one portal improves efficiency for enterprises looking to streamline technology processes and manage budgets effectively.
Centralization allows everything in the technology lifecycle to function through one system. For too many globally distributed corporations, no one team has a complete handle on all of the technology in place and its related expenses. An efficient technology managed services provider can ensure the firm has one portal through which to oversee and manage its technology footprint, from anywhere in the world. This also ensures that technology stakeholders are buying only what they need, without excess inventory or over usage.
- Automation
Keeping all of the moving parts in order through automation saves internal teams time and money with managed bill pay and expense management.
After technology has been centralized, it’s time to automate and take the heavy lifting off of internal teams. Too often, teams continue to manually implement ad hoc software to track inventory, handle paper invoices, manually allocate expenses, rubber stamp approvals, and write checks to pay bills. Technology managed services automates these kinds of mundane tasks, freeing up precious time in the work week.
- Visibility
This allows technology stakeholders to have a clear view of exactly what’s going on with technology spend and inventory across the company.
Through centralization and automation, enterprises can achieve visibility within their processes and platforms. A managed service provider can provide a level of visibility that allows the business to run efficiently.
By providing a single portal, managed services can help teams know exactly what’s going in their environment – across telecom, mobility, cloud, and other complex technology spend categories - no matter how disparate the operation. Technology stakeholders can stay up to date and align on spend at a glance, rather than having surprise charges and fees come up throughout the year.
- Optimization
As a last step, enterprises can optimize their telecom, mobile, and SaaS expenditures by analyzing usage and cutting out unnecessary spending.
The days of a company having only a few types of devices or just a handful of software licenses for the whole business are long over. As the bring-your-own-device trend becomes further embedded in enterprises and as the cloud makes it easier than ever to obtain and use software, the scale of today’s networks and technology environments is incredibly vast. Most technology departments are not equipped to effectively handle this scale. Last year alone, Garnter forecasted that annual SaaS expenditure will grow by more than 19%, yet 25% of this software will be underutilized or overdeployed,” throwing away millions of dollars in technology expenses each year.
The facts are clear: most enterprises simply don’t have the scale and resources to manage their SaaS programs, let alone mobile and telecom as well. Once organizations outsource to a managed service team and gain expertise, they will experience new levels of visibility and opportunities to optimize their network. For a mobile device, this might look like analyzing individual usage and optimizing data plans.
When it comes to TEM, every dollar and every device counts. Everything from billing discrepancies on an internet bill, to a late charge on a phone bill, or unused Zoom licenses can add up—costing enterprises revenue year over year. Instead of letting things slip through the cracks, or wasting valuable resources, why not look into using a managed service provider? As all of the small changes add up over time, the results will speak for themselves.
