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Category: Telecom Inventory Management
Valicom To Speak at Wisconsin Technology Association
Telecom Expense Management Presentation
Bills and Contracts and Assets – Oh My!
Thursday, April 18: 2 – 4 PM. Wisconsin Technology Association Meeting
Are you swimming in invoices from increased cellular services? Has BYOD or other telecom services forced you to review your telecom contracts? Are you wondering how many devices you have in your company? If you answered “Yes” to any of these, then you should attend this month’s educational session.
Please join Valicom, a twenty-two year veteran of telecom expense management, as they explain the different Telecom Expense Management (TEM) strategies to help you manage all your telecom bills, both wireline and wireless. They will review industry trends and how cellular services are forcing changes to contracts. Finally they will provide best practices to keep you on top of your cellular and wireline assets.
Meeting held at McCormick & Schmick’s Restaurant, Mayfair Mall – 2550 N. Mayfair Rd Wauwatosa, WI. If interested in attending, visit WTA-WI.org or contact us for details.
Tracking telecom inventory changes
We are continuing our series discussing how telecom management software streamlines telecom management tasks.
Now some of you may have thought, while we discussed telecom invoice auditing, processing and payment in our last post, “Hey – What about changes?“ Good question.
Telecom management software has to have a robust tracking mechanism for changes as buildings open and close, personnel get hired or fired, and devices get retired and replaced. Otherwise, any telecom inventory management program you may have in place will get derailed pretty fast. Telecom inventory is not something static, but rather a fluid environment that is ever changing as the image below well illustrates.
The Evolution of Wireless - Something Worth Tracking
A good telecom inventory and expense management software has various places that changes can be recorded, from ordering new handsets, to canceling lines or data plans. This ensures you have an accurate historical record for everything you own, allowing proper record-keeping and reporting. This is critical whether you want an accurate telecom inventory right now, or a way to track changes over time. The data should be simple to enter, update, and query. Software doesn’t do you any good if it isn’t designed to make things easier….
Want to learn more about telecom expense management software-as-a-solution? Check out Clearview – because, “When you see, you save.”
Training for BYOD – 10 Good Tips
Will Kelly over at Tech Republic posted a good article on training needed to introduce staff to a BYOD program.
Takeaway: Training is a critical part of any BYOD initiative, introducing users to security and policy guidelines and allowing IT and management to set expectations.
User training is integral to the success of any Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiative. The training needs to educate users on your BYOD policies, device access, device security, and any other particulars for using personal devices inside your enterprise. Here are 10 key aspects of BYOD training.
1: Define what BYOD means for the organization
2: Cover the process of onboarding BYOD devices
3: Explain expense reimbursements and/or stipends
4: Define BYOD device security policies
5: Review data ownership policies
6: Define what MDM is (and what MDM isn’t)
7: Teach how to use mobile office suites on corporate documents
8: Define the responsibilities of BYOD device users
9: Teach how to access corporate resources from BYOD devices
10: Teach about technical support and escalation paths
Telecom Management Software Vs Inventory Management
We are continuing our series discussing how telecom management software streamlines telecom management tasks.
In our series on how telecom expense management software can make your telecom management job easier, we’re starting with the Big Kahuna. Inventory. And it’s a doozy….
What’s the first thing your Mother taught you? “Always put away your toys when you’re done playing with them.” Good advice. The trouble is, you don’t HAVE the toys. If you are a typical telecom manager, your assets are scattered all over the company. POTS (plain old telephone service) lines running into buildings, smartphones in salespeople’s pockets, old pagers stuffed in drawers… We could go on, but you get the idea. This isn’t a bunch of blocks that you can stack in a pile and count.
So one of the key challenges of telecom expense management has always been “How do I know what to pay for if I don’t even know what I have?”
This is where telecom expense management software comes in. Imagine a neat drop-down menu that says “Inventory”. From there you have an intuitive interface allowing you to see all the data on your inventory items. What is it, where is it, who has it, what vendor is it from, what features does it have, and what does it cost. The magic of integration! In fact, the most powerful aspect of a good telecom expense management tool is its ability to deliver the Big Picture. Here is this bit of data, tied to this detail over here and those six things over there. Click, click, click and you can see the whole telecom landscape in one place.
Which sure makes keeping track of your stuff easier!
Next we’ll discuss the joys of cost allocation….
Want to learn more about telecom expense management software-as-a-solution? Check out Clearview – because, “When you see, you save.”
Living In the Past: Part Two – No more spreadsheets……
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Albert Einstein
As we discussed in Part One of “Living in the Past”, businesses should strive to keep an eye out for new tools and technology that can make their jobs easier. And I don’t mean easier as in “I get to leave for the golf course half an hour early”, I mean easier like “We saved 30% of our telecom spend over last year, because now we can actually SEE what we’re doing”. Most likely that Excel spreadsheet you’ve been using to manage your telecom expenses and wireless inventory isn’t doing anything more for you now than it was five years ago. Albert would tell you that it’s time to move on…
So you ask me, “If I ditch my spreadsheet, how am I supposed to keep track of all this stuff?”. Remember hearing about SalesForce.com, this great tool that is delivered via the web, and accessible from anywhere? Well, guess what. That technology is available for telecom expense management too. Via TEM software-as-a-service platforms, you can upgrade from spreadsheets to a fully functional, easy-to-learn TEM solution that allows you to view telecom inventory, track telecom invoices, manage telecom vendor relationships, get a handle on order change management and optimize your wireless spend… The options are as deep as you want to go.
Imagine having a customizable dashboard that can display widgets showing exactly the data YOU want to see. You can even pull them out to use when you have to present to your managers or company board, or if you’re a consultant, to your client. Gain efficiency by keeping all your data in one place, and gain flexibility through users with various levels of access, so they only see what they need to see.
Streamlining like this can save a ton of time, and as we all know (Without Einstein even having to tell us!) Time = Money. And that’s really the only equation you need to know.
Want to learn more about telecom expense management software-as-a-solution? Check out Clearview – because, “When you see, you save.”
Living in the Past: Part One – Stone Age tools for Stone Age results
“You can’t do today’s job with yesterday’s methods and expect to be in business tomorrow”
– Unknown
Most of us have probably heard this sensible business advice, but are you taking it to heart in your current work processes? Maybe not…
We all know that it’s a lot easier to use tried and true tactics, going down the same path every day, rather than tackling anything different. Heaven forbid – you might have to learn something new! But the price you pay for stagnation can be huge. New techniques arise, best practices evolve over time, fresh technology comes out…. Your competitors are probably on board. The 25-year old guy in the corner cube who wants your office is probably on board. You better get on board too, or the boat is going to leave without you.
So what kind of neat shiny new things am I talking about? Well, I’ll give you an example. A HUGE example. Granted, this doesn’t have much to do with telecom expense management or telecom invoice auditing, but we get to that in Part Two. This one tool helps to illustrate how the software-as-a-service technology is changing the face of business. Something you can use to automate workflows, and reduce costs for your business. But, this example is at work in your sales department…
Ever heard of SalesForce.com? If you’re in IT or a CFO, I forgive you if you haven’t. But, if you work in sales or customer service, you’re in trouble if you don’t know. It’s only the fastest growing, most heavily adopted, and slickest customer relationship management tool out there. Best part? It’s web-based. Delivered online, real-time with a password, it means you can access your data from anywhere, anytime – even at 3 am when your flight out of O’Hare is cancelled for the third time. At a convention in Singapore? No problem. One click, and all your customer data is at your fingertips. On vacation in Costa Rica? Just log in and there are all the campaign stats for that email you sent out last Tuesday.
Sure beats that crummy old rolodex sitting on your desk, doesn’t it?
And with this new technology comes an avalanche of new best practices, tactics, ideas, collaborative plug-ins allowing access to third-party data and services, and so much more. Probably something you’d want to know about, and be using to save your business money, before Jimmy-in-the-Cube figures it out and you end up working for him.
So, now that you get a taste of the type of tools available, stay tuned for Part Two to see how it can be applied to your telecom expense reduction tasks. Whether you’re an IT staff managing wireless expenses, a CFO looking for business cost reduction options, or a telecom consultant wanting a way to increase your capabilities while saving time and money, we’ve got a new toy for you…
Want a sneak peek? Get a demo of Clearview today.
New White Paper! Show Me Where it Hurts: Top Telecom Management Pain Points
Companies seek telecommunications management solutions because something hurts. They are losing money, time or control and are seeking a cure. Valicom’s new white paper “Show Me Where it Hurts: Top Telecom Management Pain Points” offers a review of common maladies in today’s market.
“The telecommunications management industry is always in flux,” says Nancy Peckham, CEO and founder of Valicom, “and we wanted to offer a current overview of what problems are top of mind right now. There is a lot of overlap where companies see common issues in need of solving. ”
Recommended for managers and C-level executives wondering if what they are facing is shared by their peers, or wishing to explore other areas of concern they should be addressing, the paper offers a succinct peek into what is ailing modern telecom environments. The need for software tools, the desire to do more with less, the challenge of invoice and contract management among other items are discussed.
Valicom brings expertise in this area, having offered telecom expense management services for over twenty years, including their web-based telecom expense management software Clearview. This new paper adds to a popular industry resource, joining many other white papers covering a variety of telecom management topics, on our white paper library.
“Show Me Where it Hurts: Top Telecom Management Pain Points”
Telecom & Wireless Management Pain Point 5 – Inventory Management
Keeping track of telecom stuff has always been a pain. However, as the line between telecom and IT continues to blur (think: iPads) it is getting even more complicated. One employee could easily have several voice, data and wireless assets assigned to them. And to use the old cliche “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”, that complexity can have dire implications for your telecom budget.
The first pain is to figure out what you have. Now. Today. You need a baseline like that so you can deal with Headache #2, which is to determine if what you have is really what you NEED. Those are two very different things. Building a good, accurate inventory opens the doors to a lot of other intelligent decision-making avenues. Are we only paying for what we have? Are we paying at contracted rates? Are people using the assets assigned to them, or could we cancel or consolidate some things? Is our wireless optimized properly? Could we be doing this better?
And all those questions can only be answered with inventory data. So get a software tool to track your stuff, or get a partner to do it for you, and start counting.
Want more information? Download our White Paper: “Telecom & Wireless Cost Control: What You Need To Know”
New white paper outlining seven best practices in managing telecom and wireless expenses. The white paper is a good primer for setting up a good telecom expense management program. The paper also showcases how modern web-based telecom expense management software tools support the use of these best practices.
Telecom & Wireless Management Pain Point 3 – Invoice Auditing
As we discuss pain points of telecom and wireless management, this one will probably be most familiar to readers. Invoice auditing is a long time tactic for reducing telecom expenses. Even if you just do a cursory overview of your bills each month, you can often spot problems that can be corrected to save money. By hiring an outside consultant, or a firm like Valicom, you can get into deeper invoice audits that involve pulling CSR (customer service records) from the various vendors, and verifying that services being billed for actually A) are in use and needed and B) are being charged at contract rates.
Through these deeper dive audits, you can often uncover a host of issues and areas for savings, which then leads to the challenge of credit recovery. There are different rules in different states for how far back you can request credit, and a follow-up audit needs to take place to ensure all those credits are applied. A follow-up audit can also confirm that any requested changes, like getting rates down to contractual levels or addition or deletion of services, are actually done properly, and billed accordingly.
You’d think it would be easy to have a telecom invoice come out clean, but industry stats have shown that up to 35% of telecom invoices have errors on them. That means room for a lot of improvement, and a lot of savings, which makes it one of our top pain points. One thing that has made telecom invoice auditing a lot easier in recent years is the advancement of web-based software tools to track invoices and inventory.
Want more information? Download our White Paper: “Telecom & Wireless Cost Control: What You Need To Know”
New white paper outlining seven best practices in managing telecom and wireless expenses. The white paper is a good primer for setting up a good telecom expense management program. The paper also showcases how modern web-based telecom expense management software tools support the use of these best practices.
Telecom & Wireless Management Pain Point 2 – Data Loading
As we discussed in our blog post on telecom expense management software, which is Pain Point #1 – everyone seems to want online tools these days. But the pain that rapidly comes after you get the software is the realization that someone has to put all the information in there before it becomes useful. Enter “Data Loading”.
And when we say data loading, we are usually talking about telecom and wireless invoice data. However, it can also mean populating inventories in the software too, but whatever it is, most people don’t have the time, or the desire, to do it themselves.
Telecom invoice data can be loaded two ways. Carriers often offer electronic invoice data, so the first option is just a matter of building the pathway to upload that data into the software. That usually isn’t the one that makes you want to shoot your computer in the face. The task that makes people want to jump out their office window is the manual data entry of pulling info from paper invoices. Paper invoice data needs to be entered into the proper fields, then a scanned PDF copy of the invoice uploaded so it can be viewed in its original form when needed.
So you can see why Data Loading is a pain point that begs for a service to solve it, and Valicom offers one.
Want more information? Download our White Paper: “Telecom & Wireless Cost Control: What You Need To Know”
New white paper outlining seven best practices in managing telecom and wireless expenses. The white paper is a good primer for setting up a good telecom expense management program. The paper also showcases how modern web-based telecom expense management software tools support the use of these best practices.