Wireless Expense Management

Last updated

Wireless Expense Management (WEM) is an extension of Telecom Expense Management (TEM) services and is the process of managing enterprise's mobile and wireless devices. However, not only auditing invoices are enough to fully manage the device from procurement to retirement. [1] Corporations need to be able to focus on their core business; the larger the business, the more there is to handle on a day-to-day basis. Businesses with a large mobile/cellular/wireless presence also have the expenses associated with them. These companies need professional Telecom Expense Management (TEM) to help them manage their wireless telecom bills accurately and effectively.

Contents

For a business already under pressure from their primary business obligations tasking an accounts payable department with tracking the ever-changing wireless technologies and changing General Ledger (GL), codes from acquisitions and mergers can be overwhelming and are not qualified to track what they need to look for to make sure that telecom bills are truly accurate and the business is not being overcharged.

Cellular (wireless) TEM

The first step in the 2-part process is capturing and analyzing the monthly cellular data and putting it into manageable reports. The second step is getting historical money back from the vendors and correcting the wireless invoices.

As simple as it may sound, these two steps are not so easy to do as there are any number of things that can change that will affect how much a wireless bill is and whether the company is being overcharged for services that have not been used.

Wireless devices need to be managed on a daily basis in real time. An effective and realistic plan needs to be put into place that enforces wireless policy and controls usage, this is critical to control costs. This is the job of a telecom auditing team or TEM. They can concentrate on optimization, ongoing wireless management and contract management to reduce costs and provide a managed invoice service. TEM provides contract compliance monthly checks, which catch overcharges from tariffs, surcharges, and taxes. This means that one knows exactly what they are paying for each month.

After the first initial audit of one's wireless telecom expenses they should find that their cellular services have been optimized, their overhead has been reduced and refunds paid back to their company so that immediately their company realizes the savings from the service of the TEM. This optimization focuses on the end user as well as viewing the group as a whole, while at the same time analyzing their voice, data, and features so that they only pay for the services that their business needs, thus lowering the amount one's company currently spends. Providing protection and benchmarking is important to each business and telecom auditing firm and these telecom auditing solutions really help in decreasing billing errors, tracking spending and increasing staff productivity. Even with companies offering BYOD (bring your own device), TEM providers can give consulting advice to help reduce overhead and ensure maximum savings. The cost for this service can be provided by many telecom expense management firms and some telecom auditing companies.

One's telecom auditing team (or TEM) can also take contract negotiation and compliance and the ongoing management of their wireless expenses out of their hands, resulting in monthly savings. Through the pooling of mobile optimization their TEM will identify wrong rate plans, unnecessary features, usage analysis, active and inactive phones, corrected surcharges, fees, and analysis for cellular and blackberry service as well as the analysis of data cards. This means that they only pay the taxes that they qualify for and get the tax exemptions that they deserve. You can reduce fees for SMS, data cards, data plan usage, voice pooling plans, international calling plans and usage, roaming, and extra fees that are not necessary to pay. With a centralized phone usage policy for wireless and bill processing one can ensure that their expenditure records are accurate. One's wireless invoices can also be authorized for bill payment which will result in less late fees and provide more information about their wireless phone network.

Optimization process

This is the process that a TEM uses to optimize one's wireless needs while minimizing wireless bills. Historically this was a manual process that can be very time and labor intense. Starting in 2009, Ken Scourtas (ReCellular Solutions) automated many of the processes seen as standard in the WEM industry today.

Main WEM areas of work and support:

Related Research Articles

In telecommunications, an audit is one of:

In telecommunication, provisioning involves the process of preparing and equipping a network to allow it to provide new services to its users. In National Security/Emergency Preparedness telecommunications services, "provisioning" equates to "initiation" and includes altering the state of an existing priority service or capability.

Automatic meter reading Transmitting consumption data from a utility meter to the utility provider

Automatic meter reading (AMR) is the technology of automatically collecting consumption, diagnostic, and status data from water meter or energy metering devices and transferring that data to a central database for billing, troubleshooting, and analyzing. This technology mainly saves utility providers the expense of periodic trips to each physical location to read a meter. Another advantage is that billing can be based on near real-time consumption rather than on estimates based on past or predicted consumption. This timely information coupled with analysis can help both utility providers and customers better control the use and production of electric energy, gas usage, or water consumption.

Accounts payable

Accounts payable (AP) is money owed by a business to its suppliers shown as a liability on a company's balance sheet. It is distinct from notes payable liabilities, which are debts created by formal legal instrument documents.

Telematics

Telematics is an interdisciplinary field that encompasses telecommunications, vehicular technologies, electrical engineering, and computer science. Telematics can involve any of the following:

Microsoft Dynamics GP is a mid-market business accounting software or ERP software package marketed in North and South America, UK and Ireland, the Middle East, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. It is used in many additional countries with partner supported localizations. It uses either Microsoft SQL Server 2005, 2008, 2012, 2014 or 2016 to store data. It is one of four accounting packages acquired by Microsoft that now share the Microsoft Dynamics Business Solutions brand. Dynamics GP is written in a language called Dexterity.

Fido Solutions

Fido Solutions Inc. is a Canadian cellular telephone service provider owned by Rogers Communications Canada. Although Fido's parent company, Rogers Communications, also operates another cellular service Rogers Wireless, Fido remains a separate entity and retains its own retail chain, customer service call centres, network servers and CEO. Fido pioneered the concept of providing unlimited service in select Canadian cities. Fido was the first carrier in Canada to launch a GSM-based network and the first wireless service provider in North America to offer General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) on its network.

Field service management (FSM) refers to the management of a company's resources employed at or en route to the property of clients, rather than on company property. Examples include locating vehicles, managing worker activity, scheduling and dispatching work, ensuring driver safety, and integrating the management of such activities with inventory, billing, accounting and other back-office systems. FSM most commonly refers to companies who need to manage installation, service or repairs of systems or equipment. It can also refer to software and cloud-based platforms that aid in field service management.

Telecommunications mediation is a process that converts call data to pre-defined layouts that can be imported by a specific billing system or other OSS applications.

Machine to machine (M2M) is direct communication between devices using any communications channel, including wired and wireless. Machine to machine communication can include industrial instrumentation, enabling a sensor or meter to communicate the information it records to application software that can use it. Such communication was originally accomplished by having a remote network of machines relay information back to a central hub for analysis, which would then be rerouted into a system like a personal computer.

Mobile asset management is managing availability and serviceability of assets used to move, store, secure, protect and control inventory within the enterprise and along the supply chain or in conjunction with service providing.

Expense management refers to the systems deployed by a business to process, pay, and audit employee-initiated expenses. These costs include, but are not limited to, expenses incurred for travel and entertainment. Expense management includes the policies and procedures that govern such spending, as well as the technologies and services utilized to process and analyze the data associated with it.

Revenue assurance (RA) telecommunication services, is the use of data quality and process improvement methods that improve profits, revenues and cash flows without influencing demand. This was defined by a TM Forum working group based on research documented in its Revenue Assurance Technical Overview. practically, it can be defined as the process of ensuring that all products and services provided by the Telecom Service Provider are billed as per the commercial agreement with customers', by ensuring network, billing and configuration integrity and accuracy across network platforms and systems. In many telecommunications service providers, revenue assurance is led by a dedicated revenue assurance department.

Inventory management software is a software system for tracking inventory levels, orders, sales and deliveries. It can also be used in the manufacturing industry to create a work order, bill of materials and other production-related documents. Companies use inventory management software to avoid product overstock and outages. It is a tool for organizing inventory data that before was generally stored in hard-copy form or in spreadsheets.

By definition an audit is,

Veramark Technologies

Veramark Technologies, Inc. provides services and software for Telecom Expense Management and call accounting. The company "specializes in controlling telecom expenses by managing a company's voice, data, and wireless services through a combination of auditing, consulting and software".

Emptoris is a brand within IBM's Commerce Portfolio.

Contact Telecom is a telecommunications and IT services company that develops data processing and software services for the telecommunications industry, established in 1998.

Visage Mobile

Visage Mobile is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that provides telecom expense management solutions for enterprises. Their product, MobilityCentral, is intended to simplify enterprise mobility management, as a web-based application. Visage MobilityCentral hosts a variety of tools including automated cost-savings recommendations, integration with AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless APIs, inventory management, and dynamic cost-accounting reporting. The company also provides managed services including device recycling, help desk management, break-fix, bill audit, wireless and fixed asset cost optimization, and bill pay.

TEOCO is a privately held telecom software vendor based in Fairfax, Virginia in the United States.

References

  1. ↑ Chrostowski, Savanna (2019). "Wireless Expense Management". RadiusPoint.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.