Telecom expense management (TEM) and international roaming services help companies optimize the costs and usage of their mobile devices, wireless services, wireline services, and managed mobility services. A TEM aims to reduce telecom costs, eliminate unused services, optimize policies, validate invoices, manage vendors and contracts, allocate costs, provide visibility through reporting, and oversee domestic and international mobility.

With the rise of mobility, telecom and wireless expenses have become one of the largest operational costs for enterprises. Managing cellular voice and data, global roaming, landlines, conferencing, and other communication services is complex, with costs spread across various departments, users, and locations. Telecom expense management brings centralized oversight to these fragmented expenses to identify opportunities for optimization.

Companies that fail to actively manage their telecom, wireless, and mobility expenses risk overspending by 10–30%, according to industry analysts. A dedicated TEM consultant provides the expertise and focus to rein in those costs. They provide detailed audits, policy recommendations, sourcing guidance, invoice reviews, allocation logic, reporting dashboards, and ongoing optimization. Their services cover three main areas: domestic mobility management, international roaming management, and wireline optimization.

Cost Savings

One of the most significant ways that telecom expense management (TEM) consultants help enterprises reduce costs is through audits and contract negotiations.

TEM consultants conduct audits of all telecom expenses, including wireless, landline, data networks, and conferencing services. The audit examines current contracts, services, and utilization rates to identify opportunities to optimize service plans, eliminate unused services, negotiate better rates, identify billing errors, and consolidate vendors.

Skilled TEM consultants leverage their extensive industry experience and knowledge of competitive pricing to negotiate improved contracts with carriers and vendors. They assist in vendor selection, contract reviews, and rate benchmarking to ensure competitive pricing. The consultant serves as an objective third-party advocate on behalf of the enterprise during negotiations.

TEM consultants are highly experienced in analyzing volumes, usage, and pricing to create optimal service plans. They also advise on strategies like BYOD (bring your own device) policies to control costs. Ongoing account management enables continuous cost optimization as needs change.

Overall, a qualified TEM consultant has the expertise to deliver telecom cost savings ranging from 10–30% for most organizations. Their auditing and vendor management services are key to significantly reducing an organization’s telecom expenses.

Policy Optimization

Company mobile and wireless policies often fall behind as new devices and plans emerge. A telecom expense management consultant partners with companies to ensure their mobility policies align with current business needs and usage.

A few key areas that consultants focus on include:

• Reviewing policies annually to account for changes in the market, workforce, and technologies
• Evaluating mobility needs across different departments and roles. Some roles may require unlimited data or international roaming, while others do not.
• Assessing new wireless plan options and features that could save money or improve productivity. Consultants stay on top of carrier offerings.
• Ensuring compliant use of company-liable plans and eliminating wasteful or unauthorized services. This protects costs and data security.
• Negotiating improved corporate liability plan rates based on overall company usage and spending. Consultants leverage volumes for discounts.
• Identifying policies that are too restrictive and hurt worker productivity and satisfaction
• Simplifying overly complex policies to improve understanding and compliance.
• Providing online policy resources and training to employees and managers
• Assisting with policy exceptions when justified by business needs

By optimizing wireless policies continuously, consultants ensure companies provide mobility solutions tailored to actual worker needs while maximizing savings. This leads to happy employees, lean spending, and advanced productivity.

Invoice Validation

A key benefit of working with a telecom expense management (TEM) consultant is their ability to thoroughly validate and audit invoices to uncover erroneous and fraudulent charges. Telecom invoices are notoriously complex and difficult to decipher, with pages of line items that are burdened with confusing codes, acronyms, and industry jargon.

Without proper validation, it’s easy for overcharges, double billings, and incorrect rates to slip through unnoticed. TEM consultants have the telecom expertise and resources to thoroughly audit wireless, wireline, and cloud service invoices. They check for errors, redundancies, inflated fees, unidentified charges, unused services, rate discrepancies, and charges for services never ordered.

TEM consultants also ensure billing accuracy by validating inventories, confirming contracted vs. actual rates, and reconciling invoices against original customer orders. Their goal is to ensure clients are not overpaying on any services. With their extensive validation process, TEM consultants can identify excessive charges and credits that clients are owed, putting substantial savings back into their pockets.

According to industry surveys, TEM consultants uncover an average of 5–10% savings just through comprehensive invoice auditing. Their validation expertise eliminates the burden on clients to pore through pages of confusing bills themselves. By thoroughly auditing and correcting billing errors, TEM consultants provide continuous savings over the lifetime of client engagement.

Vendor Management

Managing multiple telecom vendors and service providers can be complex and time-consuming for enterprises. A telecom expense management consultant can help consolidate vendors and streamline processes to gain efficiencies.

Some benefits of consolidating vendors include:

• Reduced the number of vendor relationships to manage
• Potential for volume discounts from vendors
• Simplified invoicing and billing through fewer invoices
• Streamlined contract management and renewals

A consultant can assess an organization’s current vendors and service contracts. They may identify opportunities to reduce duplication, negotiate better rates, and consolidate agreements. This allows companies to maximize leverage in vendor negotiations.

Consultants can also implement streamlined processes for ordering and provisioning services across vendors. This includes setting up centralized platforms for submitting requests, tracking orders, and managing assets. Automation and self-service options remove manual work for staff.

With consolidated vendors and centralized systems, companies gain visibility into all expenses. Reporting and analytics provide insights to make informed vendor decisions. Consultants help establish effective vendor governance to align providers with business needs. Their vendor management optimizes costs and processes.

Expense Allocation Telecom Hidden Fees

Accurately allocating telecom expenses across departments and users is a critical function of a telecom expense management program. Without proper allocation, it’s impossible to determine the true cost and value of services.

A telecom expense consultant can provide expertise in allocating costs based on usage and services rendered. This allows companies to see the full expense picture across the organization and charge business units appropriately based on utilization.

Some key expense allocation capabilities provided by consultants include:

• Usage-based allocation – Charging departments based on the actual services consumed, such as minutes used, data downloaded, devices provided. This ensures costs are fairly distributed.

• Allocation by headcount – Dividing expenses based on the number of employees in each business unit. Simple but effective.

• Hierarchical allocation – Creating allocation hierarchies to charge costs from top departments down to sub-departments

• Custom allocation rules – Configuring specialized allocation methods based on business needs, like weighting factors.

• Allocation auditing – Ongoing auditing of allocation methods to ensure accuracy and fairness over time.

Proper expense allocation provides insights into how money is being spent and where waste or savings opportunities may exist. It also enables showback reporting to business units on their consumption. Consultants have the expertise to configure and continuously optimize allocations to help companies gain control over expenses.

Reporting & Analytics

With the rise of mobility and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies, telecom expenses can quickly become complex and difficult to manage without proper analytics. A telecom expense management (TEM) consultant can provide invaluable visibility into overall spending and usage trends across mobile devices, landlines, conferencing solutions, and other services.

Detailed reporting and analytics from a TEM consultant empower organizations to identify opportunities to optimize policies, eliminate waste, negotiate better rates, rightsize services, and control costs. This allows finance teams to move from blindly paying invoices to making data-driven decisions about telecom services.

Some key benefits of analytics and reporting from a trusted TEM advisor include:

• Consolidated views of telecom spending across all locations, vendors, and service types. This enables organizations to identify top expenses and quickly drill down into details.

• Insights into usage and adoption patterns. This helps inform mobility and BYOD policies to align services with actual business needs.

• Identification of unused subscriptions and services that can be eliminated.

• Ability to detect billing errors and overcharges for quick recuperation of funds.

• Optimization of service plans based on usage profiles This right-sizes services to maintain service levels while reducing costs.

• Modeling of the cost impact of changes in service plans, equipment, features, or carriers. This enables informed decision-making for future investments.

• Trend analysis over time to forecast future spending and growth.

• Data to inform vendor negotiations and help secure preferred rates.

The in-depth telecom data provided by a TEM consultant is essential for controlling one of the largest and most complex operating expenses for today’s enterprises. Expert reporting and analytics pay dividends by enabling fact-based strategies that reduce waste and optimize spending over time.

Mobility Management Telecom Hidden Fees

As businesses increasingly provide mobile devices and cellular plans to their employees, telecom expense management services help optimize mobile plans and features to meet usage needs while controlling costs.

A telecom expense management consultant can analyze monthly mobile usage patterns to determine the right size of voice, text, and data plans. They identify opportunities to switch plans or carriers to reduce costs without compromising service. Consultants also ensure compliant usage of mobile devices and prevent excessive personal usage that incurs overage fees.

For global organizations, consultants manage international roaming to avoid “bill shock” from travel. They may enable temporary roaming packages aligned to trip duration and requirements. Ongoing tracking of roaming usage helps inform permanent roaming packages tailored to business travel patterns.

Consultants also advise on mobile policy best practices regarding device selection, reimbursement procedures, acceptable use, and liability. Well-crafted mobility management policies balance business functionality, cost optimization, security, and compliance.

With a telecom expense management partner overseeing mobile usage, businesses gain visibility into a significant expense category and maximize their return on mobility investments. Proactive optimization and policy management deliver savings and ensure mobile technology enables employees without overspending.

International Roaming & Telecom Hidden Fees

International roaming can be a major expense for companies as employees travel abroad for business. Without proper management of roaming costs, they can easily spiral out of control. A telecom expense management consultant can help rein in international roaming expenses in several key ways:

• Control costs – Consultants have access to better rates from carriers across various global regions. They can negotiate discounts based on overall usage and spending. Many also provide alerts when usage limits are exceeded, so corrective action can be taken.

• Provide transparency into roaming – With detailed reporting, companies gain visibility into roaming usage and costs. This allows them to identify problem areas, set policies, and take action to optimize spending. Reporting may include roaming charges by user, country, network, and more.

• Enable policy enforcement – Policies can be established to restrict roaming in certain high-cost countries/regions, set usage limits, disable services like data roaming, and more. The consultant helps implement these policies across devices.

• Audit & validate charges – Consultants thoroughly audit international roaming invoices to check for errors and overages. This prevents overpaying carriers.

By leveraging a telecom expense management consultant’s expertise, companies can significantly reduce international roaming costs through better rate management, policy control, and auditing. Employees maintain mobile access worldwide while roaming expenses are optimized.

Conclusion Telecom Hidden Fees

Hiring a telecom expense management (TEM) service is an important investment that can lead to significant cost savings and improved efficiency for any organization. By partnering with a TEM provider, companies gain access to expertise and tools to optimize their telecom, mobility, and roaming expenses across the enterprise.

Key benefits of using a TEM service include:

• Cost Savings: A TEM provider can help identify and eliminate waste, negotiate better rates with vendors, optimize policies, and consolidate invoices. This leads to hard-dollar savings month-over-month.

• Policy Optimization: The TEM team will evaluate current mobility and technology policies to align them with business needs. This ensures costs stay contained while still providing necessary services.

• Invoice Validation: By validating, consolidating, and processing invoices, TEM services deliver transparency into expenses and ensure accuracy.

• Vendor Management: TEM experts act as an extension of your team to manage vendors, resolve disputes, and ensure ideal pricing.

• Expense Allocation: Expenses can be properly allocated to departments, cost centers, subsidiaries, etc for accurate accounting.

• Reporting & Analytics: Customized reporting provides visibility into spending and trends, identifies saving opportunities, and aids data-driven decisions.

• Mobility Management: Options for BYOD, corporate liability, and hybrid approaches are assessed to meet mobile needs efficiently.

• International Roaming: Management of roaming helps control these variable costs and avoid bill shock from international usage.

In summary, partnering with a trusted TEM provider delivers the expertise, tools, and insights needed to optimize telecom and mobility programs across the enterprise. The potential savings and efficiency gains make TEM services a strategic investment.