4 Reasons Why Telecom Management Is Hard and How to Fix It

Given the economic uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations are scrutinizing expenses to keep a lid on costs. However, one area of potentially significant savings is often ignored or overlooked — the telecom bill.

Gartner has estimated that up to 14 percent of telecom bills are in error, usually in the carrier’s favor. A thorough audit will often uncover excessive rates, unauthorized charges and fees for services that aren’t being used. However, poring over dozens if not hundreds of monthly invoices is a time-consuming, mind-numbing exercise that few organizations are inclined to undertake. On top of that, telecommunications billing is notoriously confusing and convoluted, making it difficult to compare charges to equally confusing contract terms.

There are telecom expense management systems that automate the process of auditing and monitoring your telecom invoices. But telco billing errors are only a symptom of a larger problem. The bigger issue is whether your organization has the right mix of telecom services to meet your business needs.

The Telecom Cost Management Challenge

Telecom expense management software cannot do the kind of assessment needed to optimize telecom costs. So why don’t more organizations take the time to analyze their telecom services?

They don’t know where to begin.

Few organizations have a clear picture of how many telecom services they’re using due to ad-hoc provisioning processes. The regional nature of telecom services exacerbates this problem — geographically dispersed enterprises will typically contract with multiple carriers to reach every location. Additionally, organizations that grow through acquisition often inherit a hodgepodge of telecom services across multiple locations.

One area of potentially significant savings is often ignored or overlooked - the telecom bill.

Telecom procurement and management are decentralized.

Telecom services are often provisioned to meet immediate branch location or department-level needs without an overarching strategy. IT personnel will order services, somebody in procurement will review and approve the contract, then accounting takes over when the bills start coming in. There’s no end-to-end process or effective communication among the various players.

IT doesn’t have the time to devote to telecom management.

Given all the pressing issues IT must contend with, telecom management often gets pushed to the back burner. Personnel in charge of provisioning telecom services typically sign long-term contracts that renew automatically. Because of the headaches associated with provisioning telecom, those services tend to remain in place long after their useful life has ended.

No one is keeping up with changes in the marketplace.

New technologies and services have dramatically increased the number of telecom options, making it difficult to choose the best mix of price, performance and availability. What’s more, few in-house personnel have enough telecom industry knowledge to negotiate contracts effectively. It’s easier to stick with existing services and established relationships.

How GDS Can Help

Telecom management begins with a complete inventory of all your telecom services and an analysis of the contract terms and rates. Armed with this information, you can audit your telecom bills for contract compliance.

As you perform your analysis, you should look for opportunities to reduce telecom costs and increase efficiency.

• Do you have any unneeded or overlapping telecom services that could be eliminated?
• Can you consolidate plans or renegotiate rates to obtain the best pricing available?
• Are your circuits sized correctly for current and anticipated traffic volumes?

Let GDS conduct a thorough review of your telecom environment

We can determine if our connectivity services could meet your business requirements more precisely and cost-effectively. We’ll work with you to identify the right services for each location and develop an implementation plan that minimizes costs and business disruption. We’ll handle the deployment from end to end, monitor your network around the clock — and present you with one simple bill for all services each month.

Telecom costs account for about half of the typical IT budget, an enormous line item that should be scrutinized regularly. Contact us to learn how we can replace your costly and inefficient telecom services with one comprehensive solution managed by our expert team.

Benefits of Managed IT Services from Global Data Systems

• Strategic Managed IT: We help you solve your technology related business problems.
• Connectivity: We get you reliable, secure connectivity anywhere in the western hemisphere in 48 hours.
• Support: When you need help simply call our 24x7x365 support number.
• Billing: Instead of managing hundreds of vendors - get one, easy to read bill from GDS.

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