With the expanding complexity of telecom, there is an ever growing push to integrate cost allocation into expense management. Managers want to know who pays for telecom services, and how much they pay, so they can make intelligent decisions using that data. IT and finance both want deeper visibility into what is driving costs, and hopefully, insight as to how the environment can be restructured to minimize the impact to the bottom line.
Benefits to IT + Telecom Managers
- Easily disperse entire telecom budget from the IT cost center to eliminate justifying a huge annual IT budget.
- Get trending reports to see where costs are going up or down, and why
- Gain clarity by turning a huge complex telecom bill into something comprehensible.
- Easily manage growth, whether organic or the result of mergers and/or acquisitions, via detailed cost analysis and breakdown.
Benefits to Finance Managers
- Gain visibility into how much departments or locations are spending, and on what, allowing for greater accountability
- Get customized reports on how various cost centers compare to one another and access detailed information on cost rollup
- See where the actual spend varies from the budgeted costs
- Make invoice auditing easier by increasing the level of detail available for review, enabling more savings to be recovered
Advantages of Outsourcing Telecom Cost Allocation
By utilizing a modern web-based TEM software tool, telecom cost allocation can be done internally. However, many firms still opt to outsource this task for a number of reasons:
More Efficient: An experienced TEM Auditor who does bill analysis and cost allocation all day, every day, can perform faster and more accurately than someone who does it infrequently and isn’t trained for the task. This frees up internal staff to focus on the higher value work they already do well.
More Detail: Invoices come brimming with information, much of which is often ignored. When cost allocation is outsourced to a TEM firm, the level of detail gleaned from bills can be extremely specific. For internal staff, the effort needed to gather this same level of detail often goes beyond the time allotted for this task.
More Savings: Usually with an outsourced solution, the team is also auditing the invoice. By using professionals that know what to look for, it leads to higher savings and better recommendations.
Telecom Bill Pay – The Icing on the Cake
The perfect complement to having Valicom help with invoice processing and cost allocation is bill pay. Once the invoice data is loaded, the audit performed and the expenses approved by the client company, the bills are paid and a data feed sent back to the accounting system. It eliminates the need to cut checks or schedule payments, and ensures that each bill is paid individually and on time. Gone are the days of having to deal with past due or disconnect notices, misapplied payments, obtaining check numbers or making a wide variety of payment arrangements with different vendors.
Learn more about telecom cost allocation or bill pay services by requesting a discussion and a demo of Clearview.