The technology expense management (TEM) space is often complicated, and the level of nuance and complexity will only grow as businesses embrace more SaaS apps and cloud services. What enterprises need to stay ahead of this complexity is a platform that is simple and actionable and can deliver value quickly. The right solution also empowers organizations with a better understanding of their current state—licensing, service redundancy, and consumption patterns, for example—as well as a forecast of what future states are possible. That’s where the TEM programs comes in.
The right TEM platform can deliver insights into the kind of returns your organization will get by adopting other types of technologies for the network, for mobility, or SaaS applications. This expansion around what has traditionally supported telecom networks, expense management and mobility services, is a key part of the evolution of TEM solutions for enterprises.
There are some commonalities across companies of different sizes. Very large organizations—such as the Fortune 100 or even Fortune 500 group—with global footprints and tens or hundreds of thousands of employees benefit from a TEM platform that’s standardized to deliver quick insights and results, but customizable enough to provide the features and capabilities that very large organizations demand. In the enterprise space, typically spanning the Fortune 2000 to Fortune 500 segment, companies tend toward a more standardized approach to TEM. Many have already centralized some functions and eliminated some silos within their operations. At the mid-market level, scalability, ease of use, and affordability are organizations’ top priorities. The right TEM solution can support all of the above.
Company size can correlate to their TEM program maturity, but that’s not always the case. Huge multinational corporations continue to use standalone spreadsheets to track spending and SaaS subscriptions. Conversely, very small organizations may have off-the-shelf tools in place to identify and reclaim licenses that haven’t shown usage in the past quarter, for example.
What’s more important than simply looking at organizational metrics is to conduct a candid assessment of your business processes:
• Where do silos inhibit information sharing?
• At what level do governance activities occur across technology implementation and use?
• How does optimization of technology expenses and consumption happen now?
• Has your team already optimized telecom and SaaS spend, or are your expenditures still a black box?
To develop your TEM program and build the tools and capabilities to optimize the new breadth of technology services, the first step is to understand where you are in your journey. Without that foundational insight, you may not know you have a problem managing and controlling spend. Even if you recognize there’s a problem, it’s possible you don’t have a good handle on what the problem is or understand exactly where you need to focus your efforts to create results. Knowing where you are today enables your business to understand what it means to move from the present to the future using the most efficient path possible. You can model possible futures in a way that allows you to articulate projects or initiatives, plus understand what the financial benefits will be for making those transformations.
Your TEM program journey may encompass numerous elements, including:
• Identifying the type and scale of technology services you have
• Mapping your mix of traditional telephony services versus newer bandwidth-based services
• Adopting tools that allow almost real-time provisioning of bandwidth-based services to eliminate delays related to service provider implementations
• Gaining control over employee mobile devices and SaaS or cloud services to manage properly sensitive data
Consolidation and orchestration of SaaS services across the organization are also part of the TEM program journey. By bringing a comprehensive view of the entire installed base for every solution, expense, and subscription into a single pane of glass, your business will gain vital visibility. You’ll understand who’s buying what, which (and how many) licenses are active, if any licenses have been abandoned, and where redundancy and other waste exists that can be culled through a concerted consolidation effort.
Every company starts somewhere. No matter where your business is today, the Calero platform can help you build your TEM program. With insights available through our single, simple TEM solution, organizations can make progress toward gaining control over spend, building a deeper understanding of solution and service usage, and reducing waste and inefficiencies. Those actions together can move your business towards your ideal state, providing a clear pathway to optimize your global technology expense management strategy. Contact Calero to learn more.
