UNCOVER FUNDS FOR YOUR GROWING SECURITY BUDGET
NEEDS WITH BETTER TELECOM EXPENSE MANAGEMENT
BY: ANDERS MIKKELSEN, PRESIDENT, BERLIN PACIFIC, WWW.BERLINPACIFIC.COM
F
or many IT leaders who want to bring more resources
to bear on protecting their business, finding
resources can be a struggle since feeding the existing
infrastructure gobbles up the lion’s share of the
budget, not to mention their best team members’ time
and attention.
While companies have sophisticated network management
systems, many don’t have comparable systems for managing
telecom expenses. People usually focus on the technical
success of their vendors first, and then on the cost. Unmanaged
expenses are often much higher than tightly managed ones,
and loosely managed expenses are somewhere in between.
Everyone can probably recall someone who spends money
without managing it and the disastrous results that ensue.
For IT leaders, minimized expenses means more money to
invest in projects that better protect your company from
increasing cybersecurity threats. One area that is ripe for
reducing expenses is telecom. Increasing the effectiveness of
telecom expense management can permanently slash landline
telecom and wireless telecom budgets by as much 50 percent.
What Does Good Telecom Expense Management Look Like?
Most companies are currently employing the minimum set
of interventions to keep their telecom expenses down. This
involves comparing each vendor bill with their previous
bills, looking for variances, investigating the variances, and
determining if the vendor needs to fix something or not.
Firms also periodically renegotiate their rates. While this
minimal system of management is very convenient, it leads to
organizations often paying twice as much as they need to.
Good telecom expense management holds vendors to specific
performance standards.
Here are two key standards you should require from your
vendors:
• visibility into the granular details of the telecom spend
must be provided, down to the individual services and their
usage
• documentation showing how every service relates to actual
current business needs
The organizational decision makers must be regularly provided
with lists or proposals showing all services that are:
• billed incorrectly;
• unused or unneeded;
• underutilized and can be consolidated or otherwise
rightsized; and
• above market price and off contract or otherwise open to
negotiation or repricing. (This implies access to current
market prices.)
Everything on these lists is an opportunity to save money.
Deep discovery can often lead to savings of up to 50
percent. Here are some examples of common situations
where overspending occurs:
1. It is often assumed that all lines were shut down
at an old location or moved to a new location. When
assumptions are verified, it is sometimes discovered that
the lines are still open at a location the firm moved out
of, each incident costing the firm thousands or tens of
thousands of dollars. Bills rarely tell customers where
their lines are located, so this happens surprisingly often.
2. One firm had a large number of phone lines that were
needed for fax machines. However, the fax machines had
been replaced by a fax server. While most of the phone
lines were eliminated, many were kept, and the firm was
paying for these unused lines.
To uncover items such as the above, there must be a
process to gain access to data that can be reviewed to
verify that everything is billed correctly and at current
market rates, that the services are needed, and that they
cannot be somehow rightsized.
The organization must have a process for using this
information to make decisions and to work with vendors
to implement these decisions. This includes the need
for consistent follow up to verify vendors make all the
desired changes.
Finding savings in telecom expenses is time consuming,
and someone will need to be tasked with the job for it
to be done effectively. Due to IT teams already being
pressed for time, it will likely make the most sense for
your organization to outsource this responsibility to
someone with expertise in this area.
Many experts in telecom—just by looking at vendor
records and without having worked for your business—
can tell a lot about how services are really being used
to help your business and can determine which services
should be changed to minimize costs and maintain or
increase service levels. By giving such experts a database
that provides visibility to costs, they can create easy-to-
understand proposals allowing decision makers to rapidly
understand how services can be better aligned with
business needs for the foreseeable future.
A good telecom expense manager will guarantee their
time is well spent by not requiring payment until savings
are realized—allowing your staff to spend a minimal
amount of time while simultaneously adding needed
money back to your IT budget, without any risk.
To schedule a free, no-pressure audit of your telecom bill
by a telecom expert, visit:
AMEXCLUSIVE.COM/TELECOM-SAVINGS.