Every business has its unique set of goals. But there’s one thing that all businesses have in common, and that’s the goal of making money and earning profit. How do businesses achieve this goal money? Well, there’s an old saying that goes “you’ve got to spend money to make money”, and that’s exactly what they do.
Businesses need to acquire assets and services in order to create or deliver the products and/or services they offer. This much is obvious. What’s less obvious sometimes is the true value of the services they purchase to carry out their work.
For example, all businesses use IT and telecom in some way to do their day-to-day work, and they have to manage the expenses linked to this use. This IT andtelecom expense managementneeds to be done, but how precisely do we measure the impact of the management?
Here’s where return on investment (ROI) comes in. With ROI, businesses get to see how much money they received based on the money they spend. Of course, that’s easy to measure with tangible assets and services. How do you measure that for TEM?
There’s at least four approaches…
It’s Possible to Measure ROI of TEM
Seeing as no two businesses are exactly the same, we can determine the degree of ROI from implementing a TEM solution by looking at several areas. These include:
1. Cost savings from reconciling billing with telecom contracts and disentangling their details
Not only are some contracts more complicated than others, but businesses can have hundreds, if not thousands, of contracts to track and handle. This volume of data and detail lends itself to error in management, which can in turn bring about a lot of extra costs.
With the automated billing and invoice tracking that a good TEM solution delivers, all these contracts can be accurately monitored because the mistakes from human error will be minimized. There will be money saved from this accuracy, and that figure can go into the ROI calculation.
2. The tracking of Move, Add, Change, Delete (MACD) activity
Imagine this: You have an employee that left the company a year ago, but because you don’t have a TEM solution, you never noticed that this employee never gave back the company-owned BlackBerry they were using. Or, you lost track of assets linked to an employee who has transferred across departments.
Both cases can cause misallocation of costs, hence skewing the data. With a proper TEM solution, you can link employee movement with assigned IT and telecom assets. Each time you ensure an asset is retired, returned, or reassigned in line with employee movement, you’ve saved yourself the cost of buying something new you didn’t need or paying for services you’re not using any longer. These are real savings, one way or the other. And they all factor in to the value of the TEM solution.
3. Improved quality of historical records
The data you’ve been gathering for years without the benefit of modern management software is likely to be incomplete or inaccurate. This is especially true if you’ve been using simple spreadsheets or even pen and paper to track your IT and telecom. It goes without saying that this lower precision likely cost you more money than you’d have liked.
Implementing a good, modern TEM solution will allow you to dramatically increase the accuracy of your inventory and usage data. You’d get a clearer picture on what you really have and what you’re really spending. That, in fact, is key the value of TEM. By having accurate records overall – it helps you keep track of what you actually owe and it allows you to proactively plan your future IT spend better. The ROI of TEM in this case would be reflected in your actual budget.
4. Better targeted purchases of telecom services you actually need
You can tell that a sidewalk vendor would use much less telecom than a global online retailer. Where TEM would help is in clarifying subtle differences in telecom needs within a company. For example, just what type of mobile plans does the sales team need? Who in the company uses the most telco, and is he justified in needing it all?
These are the types of questions that TEM helps answer, and you can calculate the difference in your spend based on having this information versus simply doing a one-size-fits-all purchase of plans and devices for everyone.
Overall…
Calculating the savings mentioned above will allow you to put a dollar amount on the return from your investment in the TEM solution. These aren’t the only areas, however. TEM (along with its cousins, wireless expense management (WEM) and managed mobility services (MMS)) offers a host of powerful capabilities to the customer. And they all contribute to cost savings. In fact, a good TEM solution can help you cut anywhere from 5% to 30% from your IT and telecom expenses.
To learn more about these solution types and to really understand the business case for TEM, WEM, and MMS, download the free ePaper entitled “Will Telecom Expense Management Give You a Significant ROI” This paper was authored by the Telecom Expense Management Industry Association (of whom Cimpl is a member) and was created especially to help everyone really understand why TEM is crucial to companies.
The paper includes a useful table that helps you calculate ROI from a number of TEM areas as well as a self-assessment tool to determine your actual baseline telecom expenses. Created by experts, both tools really help the CIO and IT manager evaluate and justify the need for top-quality TEM solutions to non-IT executives. Reading the free TEMIA ePaper will get you one step closer to optimizing your IT and telecom expenses.
Final words for now…
Cimpl is Canada’s leader in IT and telecom expense management. Our signature platform, Cimpl, provides user with all the tools they need in order to find IT and telecom savings. We also offer professional managed services with a team of experts who will help you make the best of your time. Download our free Kaizen eBook to understand how to choose the right solution and vendor, and contact us to get a free assessment on your IT and telecom strategy.